It started to rain again when I made it roughly halfway back down to the ground. Very roughly. My claws already felt like I’d tear them out of my feet any moment now. But I was too occupied with clinging to the shaking tree, to properly check. I managed to navigate to the side facing away from the weather before the front hit, though. So at least my remaining descent didn’t get much more slippery.

Once I touched down on the littered forest floor my body was shaking with relief and exhaustion. That had been way too dangerous. But at least I had a destination now. I just had to wait for the sun to come up again, to make sure of the directions. I didn’t trust the wind in that regard. Especially not after being blown around for the whole evening.

It was completely dark now and I didn’t want to search around for shelter all that much anymore. Not that I couldn’t still see perfectly adequately. I was just too worn out to waste even more energy on that endeavour at this point. So I stayed in the relatively dry wind shadow of the scale tree and burrowed down a bit until I all but buried myself with dead wood debris. I didn’t even try to grasp any more magic before falling asleep.

I woke up panting after another nightmare. In it, I was climbing down a shaking tree. This time a dragonfly the size of a helicopter swooped down and picked me off, eating me bit by bit, never touching the ground again. That was just stupid. I’ve seen nothing that large since I was born. That was absolutely not rational. I really had to get a grip. Life was dangerous enough without being afraid of those kinds of conjured up delusions. Whichever god governed dreams must have had a real blast with me. I was very much in the mood, to tear them a new one right now.

On second thought, I really hoped they didn’t fall under memory. That would have been a bit awkward.

Well, I was awake. Could as well get started with the day. The sun wasn’t quite up yet but the predawn light told me, it couldn’t be all that far off. It was still drizzling a bit, but a glance at the sky with its thin cloud layer gave me confidence that I’d be able to orient myself after the sun anyways.

I passed the time until sunrise, searching for food again. My limbs and particularly my claws still hurt like hell, so I refrained from prying of any more bark from fallen logs or digging after escaping morsels. There were enough slow things around to get by anyways.

I even found some slugs that I tested with a few tentative licks. It didn’t burn my tongue, so I gobbled them up. They still gave me nasty stomach aches though. And they didn’t even taste all that great. So I vowed to myself, to stay away from snails and slugs and everything oozing mucus in the future if I could avoid it. Which made me remember that I still had to invent rope somehow. Baby steps…

Of course, gorging myself made me miss sunrise by quite a bit. Once I noticed the more defined borders between shadow and light it must have already been midmorning. Well, it was not like I had a schedule to keep. Nevertheless, I had to note that I was far too distracted. Again. The image of a giant spider jumping on me flashed before my mind’s eye for a moment. I gulped.

Anyhow, not to dwell on it, I oriented myself towards what I believed to be southwest and - a destination in mind - took the first proper step of my journey.

I honestly was a bit surprised how little the landscape was changing. Everything was damp and swampy - which was good for me, I guess? - and even though I started to recognize different variations of the same kinds of plants, they still looked very much like the same damn kinds of plants to me. It only got a little bit more interesting when I came across a pool or brook. I also found quite a few scaly frogs, horned toads with spikes or fins and different kinds of salamander-like things. Some of them looked very much like little lizards.

I ate the toads and frogs if I managed to sneak up on them - or watched them hop away if I didn’t - and left the salizards alone. Or lizamanders? No. I needed to find a better name. They reminded me a bit too much of my own species and I wasn’t under pressure to grow as quickly as possible anymore.

Speaking of my own species, I was pretty sure that I spotted some of them as well. On the first day of my journey there was a verdant green male at least twice my size, lazing around in a puddle, and three days later an even larger brick red female. She was watching me foraging around from quite far away, when I noticed her, with an eerie amount of interest sparkling in her eyes. I wasn’t quite sure if it was a sign of intelligence or hunger, so I didn’t stroll any closer and just avoided her. She didn’t follow.

I also encountered several newtagators. All of them, at least the ones that I saw and didn’t just hear, were bigger than the ‘Thing’ and tumbled through the undergrowth with a carelessness that screamed to the world, that there was absolutely no predator, they had to be afraid of. They’d honestly been quite the majestic sight if they only hadn’t been so gods damned ugly. That blackish-brown was an absolute no for me. It’s as if they wanted to look like a log of excrement. As if their smell wasn’t bad enough already.

Suffice to say, I gave them the widest berths I could. I’ve seen one sprinting after a salamizard - no, still not quite right - once and knew that I couldn’t outrun them, yet.

Of course, the stupid nightmares didn’t stop either. The first night I was crushed to death by yellow-green males in a toad-like mating frenzy. Let’s better not talk about that one. The second night, there was the spider again. This time with a small brood of baby spiders nibbling away at me. The third night another storm hit after two days of no rain and I first thought, I’d get a repeat of the shaking tree climb. But no, I was chased by an enormous newtagator, that just bulldozed through any vegetation in its way. Strangely enough, the night after I met the brick red female, I didn’t dream anything at all. I just slept and woke up better rested than I had been since before my metamorphosis started. The following day I had to come across a giant scorpion of course. I leave it to everyone’s imagination of what I dreamt that night.

I got into the habit of coating myself in fresh mud to hide my ember-red scales every day after I felt like nearly suffocating when the old layers dried out too much the first time. Taking a swim was extremely liberating and felt quite nostalgic at the same time. In running water more of the former than the latter. That is also where I found my first crayfish. Or at least what looked like crayfish to me. I was so excited, that I ignored all the fish that were too fast for me to catch anyways, snatched it up with my hands and dragged it out of the creek.

It naturally clawed at me, but its pincers weren’t big enough to get a decent grip on my skin. On the other hand, its shell was too hard for me to bite through and I really didn’t want to swallow it whole. Especially not alive. So I looked for a bunch of rocks and smashed them repeatedly into my bounty from every angle imaginable. It was quite a mess. In the end, it was more soup than meat, but it still tasted like heaven.

At the end of that particular day - it should have been day five if I didn’t miscount somewhere - lying in a newly dug out mud and debris shelter, listening to the soft rain and trying to figure out magic again, I reminisced about my first successful use of tools. That called to mind, that I still had to invent rope. Which resulted in further pondering about what plant of those I discovered so far, would be the best choice for that project.

The long thorny crawling millipede vines seemed to offer the simplest solution, but they were, as I said, extremely thorny. I still thought it would be easier to get rid of those than to tediously dry and weave something else together. I decided, I just had to try it first before coming to a final verdict. My focus successfully ruined again, I didn’t even try to manipulate the magic energy again and just went to sleep.

On day six I tried to root up some vines multiple times, but finally just gave up after pricking myself more times and in more places than I wanted to think about. Let’s just say that I shelved that idea and went on with my journey. In other news, I caught two more crayfish that day. Well, these ones looked more like prawns, but they were equally delicious all the same.

The seventh day I reached a river. It was pretty wide with a slow current, but I expected there to be ‘bigger fish’ in there than I could handle. The problem was, I had to cross it. It was flowing from somewhere to the south to pretty much straight northwest. I first decided to follow it upstream, under the assumption that it probably originated in the mountain chain, I was trying to reach. That turned out to be a wash when it curved more and more eastwards by early evening.

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So I spent the night hyping myself up for the daring endeavour of crossing the treacherous depths of the foreign river the following day. I only succeeded in getting even more nervous than I already had been.

When I woke up on day eight, it was pouring buckets. The river was churning and I didn’t think that it’d be any different underneath the surface. That should have been a good thing since it would make it harder for potential hunters to sense my movements. But I also didn’t know that river at all and the more turbulent it got, the easier it was for me to lose track of where I was. Since I didn’t want to waste another day on that stream, I was set to cross over regardless.

After filling up on bugs and worms again, I dauntlessly plunged into the water. Because I was not afraid. Not at all. I’d just had to swim to the other side as fast as I could, dodging anything in there, that might or might not be waiting in ambush for me. Like I said. Not scared at all. This would be just like swimming through my old pond. Absolutely no need to be nervous.

The noise was disorienting at first. The rain was still hammering down from above and the surging currents that instantly tried to toss me around didn’t make it any easier. Visibility was abysmal and the water had so many unfamiliar flavours, that I had trouble filtering out those I knew. But nothing was accosting me. So far, so good.

I stayed right beneath the surface and paddled forward as fast as I could. I was a lot faster before my transformation when my then bigger tail did most of the work, but I’d still be at my pond if I hadn’t gone through that and not here, to uselessly complain about it in the first place. So I wouldn’t. Much.

Be that as it may, I still got along swimmingly… Yeah, ignore that, please.

I made decent progress and popped my head out of the water to see how far I still had to go. I was nearly on the other side! Diving down again and continuing on I was about to relax a bit when a searing pain shot through my left hind leg. I reeled around to come face to face with a monstrous fish that reminded me of a pike with long needle spiked fins.

I yelped out in anguish. It honestly sounded more like a croak, but the situation hardly allowed for the careful consideration of semantics. Because the damn thing didn’t let go. I lurched and twisted around as my life depended on it, but it only bit down harder and dragged me ever more downwards. I was flailing around, clawing at the monster’s head, biting, scratching, tearing, all the while frantically trying to get loose.

Either it didn’t care or its skin and scales were too thick for me to damage in any way that mattered. But I didn’t give up. I couldn’t give up. After what felt like a small eternity of desperate struggle something finally gave.

Most of my leg tore off.

At first, I only noticed that a big chunk of the biting pain was gone and I was free again. I instantly shot to the surface and the remaining way to the shore. It only dawned on me, what happened, when I crawled up the embankment and seemingly couldn’t find any footing on my left side. Then the pain came back.

I dragged myself into the underbrush and hid away there. It wasn’t even noon yet, but I doubted I would go anywhere for a little while.

I mostly stayed busy with licking my wound and admonishing myself for my stupidity. Why did I have to stop in the middle of the river to look, if ‘I was quite there yet’? Maybe I would have made it in one piece if I just kept on until I hit the other side. Maybe not. But why take that dumb risk? That was just plain moronic. I was supposed to be a genius, but I didn’t quite feel like one anymore ever since the time on top of that tree. I couldn’t even get rope worked out. How would I ever figure out magic? And now I was even missing a leg!

Everything came crashing down on me at once. I hadn’t really experienced self-doubt in this life, yet. And I purposefully avoided diving too deep into previous me’s memories of that kind. It wasn’t a pretty feeling.

I took my time recuperating. Three days passed during which I only moved onwards while I was eating and stopped again, looking for or making another shelter, as soon as I felt full. The nightmares were back in force and of course, it didn’t stop raining once. At least not while I was awake enough to notice it.

Those increased downtimes gave me an opportunity to sort through previous me’s more painful memories. Which there were a lot of. I mainly was looking for some kind of solution for my newest emotional problem. There had to be a way to move on, right? It turned out that watching a lot of depressing stuff is not a good way to fight depression. Who’d have thunk? The only thing, it did for me, was being amazed by myself for holding on till the end, starving myself to be able to stretch out provisions for even one day more. I genuinely didn’t know why I had done that. At some point, it nearly seemed like old me did it out of spite.

Well, if I could do that back then, I was confident that I could do it again now. I was still alive. Nothing too bad had happened. Learn and live on, right? I even was pretty sure now, that my leg would grow back at least partially. If previous me remembered that right…

Anyways I wouldn’t go anywhere, moping around like this and I had to be places.

Maybe the spirits could help me figure out magic, once I found some. They were supposed to be made of the stuff, so they had to be able to teach how it worked, right? And even if they weren’t, I still had to find them to fulfil Memory’s stupid ‘little task’.

The only place I could think of, where I’d possibly find something made of fire in this wet and swampy world, were hot springs, geysers or a genuine volcano if I could find any. And since I hoped that my patron goddess didn’t expect me to track around the world searching for years, my best bet right now were those mountains I’d seen the smoke from. So on day twelve of my expedition, I finally moved on.

Walking on three legs was awkward as hell. It was slow going and more than a few times I stumbled because I forgot about it for just a moment. The constant hopping wasn’t made better by the long tail, I dragged behind. For a bit, I tried to curl it around and use it as a kind of crutch, but that was a complete bust. So I just went on slowly and steady, staying under some kind of cover whenever I could.

15 days passed by that way. And I was reassured by my leg growing back a small chunk. It wasn’t a perfect reconstruction, but at least I had a knee joint again.

The most memorable encounter I had during that time was a herd of massive millipedes, three or four times my length. They were consuming plants left and right and left a path of absolute destruction in their wake. I spent a whole morning just watching them from afar, after being woken up by the racket they made. They didn’t seem to care for meat at all, stubbornly devouring the shrubbery wherever they went. It felt genuinely nice to be reassured that not everything bigger than me was out to make me a meal.

Otherwise, it was just more of the same. I didn’t meet any more members of my species. I mused that I’d probably left our territory behind by now. Plenty of scorpions, spiders and big ugly bugs, though. And a few newtagators of course. I stayed away from larger bodies of water, whenever I could. I really didn’t need to encounter more fish. Sadly, that meant I had to do without crayfish too, though. But I put up with it since I very much liked my remaining appendages to stay intact and attached, thank you very much.

It rained less, but still at least every other day on average and food was plenty. I tried some mushrooms when I was bored with the same old crawlies. Turned out, I could digest them, but they were really bland. I also found a small nest of genuine eggs. With a soft white shell and all. They were absolutely tiny, but also very yummy. And it meant that there already were some small reptiles around. I didn’t discover what kind and I disappointingly didn’t find any more of those nests either.

Now, in the early afternoon of day 28, I found myself facing another river. I’d only had to cross small brooks since the last one. And thankfully most of the time I could cross them via fallen trees or similar natural bridges. This one was too wide for that, but I hopefully didn’t have to cross it at all. Because it came straight from the southwest. If I could just follow it, I’d hit the mountains eventually. All fingers crossed.

From then on I noticed a steady shift in vegetation. When I entered the foothills, it got quite a bit dryer and a little bit less lush. My eyes nearly popped out when I identified my first conifer. It didn’t look anything like a modern one I knew of, but it undoubtedly had needles for leaves. It wasn’t a tree quite yet either, more like a largish bush. But still, it was a conifer. Maybe some of the plants I saw before were ginkgos and cycads as well? I wasn’t so sure anymore, but previous me thought, those were supposed to be the earliest seed-bearing plants. It didn’t matter much to current me of course, since I couldn’t eat them anyways. It still was fascinating.

When I entered the mountains proper I started to notice a small problem. I had no idea where to go from here. The higher up I got, the fewer insects I found easily crawling around. It still was plenty, if you knew where to look for some hiding morsels, but it took more time off of travelling and didn’t make me optimistic regarding the food situation higher up.

Then, on a particularly rainy day, I reached my first little peak. Well, it was more like a plateau, but nevertheless, I could see far and wide in every direction. Once the rain let up probably even further. Not as much in case of the southwestern direction as the others, since the genuine mountains rose up over there. It still was a better view than everything I had to reorient myself, ever since back on top of that damn tree.

It was only midafternoon, but I decided to take an early rest. I had made it to my first objective and slept quite happy with myself that night.

When I woke up, it was still pretty much dark, but the rain had stopped and the sky was clear enough to see the stars. I guessed that it was right before first light, considering the faint glow from beyond the horizon. At least until I noticed that I looked west, not east. I had to wait for the sun to rise to make a better estimate of the exact direction.

Still, something over there produced light. And enough of it, to light up the sky above. If this wasn’t a random wildfire after lightning struck, then what I was seeing right at that moment, was hopefully what I’ve been looking for all this time.

I really hoped Memory knew what she was sending me into.