My brain feels like it's splitting in two. I'm shivering in the rain, stuck in a large Arctic Squirrel’s body. Now that I've become it, it doesn't seem that much larger than my human body. My head, my limbs, my torso... I guess the squirrel seemed so gigantic because I was so used to the tiny squirrels around the city. And my tail. I have a tail! It's longer than I am tall, and so bushy. I want to lick it clean. There's rain and mud soaked into my fur. The squirrel’s instincts are there, but I have to push them down. I’m myself again. Or as myself as I can be.
My legs are powerful. I don't know how far I've come from the woods, but I moved lightning fast. I've seen squirrels climb trees as tall as a building in the blink of an eye. But is this it? Am I just a squirrel now forever? A squirrel that eats people and peaches?
Concentrate. I let the peach pit drop away, its sweet scent wafting all over my muzzle and my fur. The grass swirls around me as another wind picks up. The squirrel's mind blares like a neon sign. It keeps screaming danger, danger! As well as food, hungry, now! A need as relentless as the rain.
No, I keep telling it. I'm not a squirrel. I'm a human! But how can I turn back into a human?
I think about the words I'd gotten in my head.
And
Acquire and Assimilate. They felt like prompts to enable action. Like in those turn-based games that I always thought were too slow.
But maybe... maybe there's a menu or something? A list of everything I can use? What kind of fever dream is this place? As soon as my thoughts mention menu, I feel that strange nudge again. So I focus on that, thinking about variations of menu. Screen. Player info. Character info. Stats. System.
I'm not sure which one of those did the trick, but words flash between my thoughts:
> [Samiya]
>
>
> [Epithet: N/A]
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> [Level: 1] [Progress: 35%]
>
> --
>
> [Job Title: N/A]
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> [Level: N/A] [Progress: N/A]
>
>
> --
>
> [Soul Expression: Organic Transmutation]
>
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>
> [Skills:
>
> [Current Form: Arctic Squirrel]
> --
>
>
> Stats:
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> Power: 1 (+9)
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> Stamina: 1 (+6)
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> Durability: 1 (+8)
>
> Agility: 2 (+19)
All the words come up instantly, filling my head till I swear it’ll burst open. It’s too much for the squirrel’s mind, but I can make sense of it. I just have to concentrate. Ignore the squirrel's nature. I'm me. I'm Sam.
I inhale deeply, my fur-covered chest bulging. My boba shop uniform is in tatters. I don't know what happened to my pants. The world is entirely rain and wind and grass. My tail swishes with nervousness; I don't want to be a squirrel forever.
Lightning flashes. Another barrage of thunder batters the sky, and the squirrel's mind panics again. I flatten my body against the ground, hiding in the tall grass as wind sweeps across me. My snow-white fur must stick out like crazy. Any predator could spot me from far away. What eats squirrels? Foxes? Wolves? Hawks? If giant flesh-eating squirrels exist here, what did the carnivores look like?
My heart hammers against the mud. The squirrel's anxiety makes my own feel like nothing. But the squirrel's body makes so much better use of that anxiety than my human body ever did. It's an endless energy rushing through me, a current. The squirrel just wants to run. To sniff. To find food and shelter.
But its eyes are weak. It’s too dark. There’s too much rain. My nose seems to be only good for food, and I want to get to that woman's house. With my wide eyes, I try to search for the lighthouse. I can see above me, around me, and somewhat behind me without turning my head. But everything beyond a few feet is a dark, wet blur; I guess squirrels use their smell and hearing more than their sight at night. And they kept out of the rain. Maybe these Arctic Squirrels just stay in the snow where there’s better visibility and they can hide quickly.
I don't want to get eaten as a squirrel. Think. Think! I had that menu thing in my head. But the thunder distracted me. I pull it up again, trying to calm the squirrel's franticness, trying to ignore the heavy rain. When I spot it, I almost sigh in relief. I don't know what soul expression means, but the list of skills seems clear enough.
I focus on being human just as I'd pictured the squirrel before. I focus on my long, slender arms. My legs. My hair that's falling out. My blemished, ghostly skin. I try to picture myself based on the reflection in Jia's mirror before it swallowed me. The dark bags under my eyes. The emptiness staring back at me. And then it comes. The notification.
"Yes!" I squeak. The first thing to change is my face. My jaws and nose squish backward, flattening against my skull. It grows in size. My dark nose lightens and turns triangular, and my tongue shrinks. The fur on my cheeks recedes as my long dark hair shoots out of the back of my head like wild grass.
For the second time in my life, I'm a half-girl, half-squirrel. Then my arms extend. My large buck teeth slurp back into my gums, and dear lord, the feeling of your own bushy tail getting swallowed by your backside is... well it's like getting spanked really, really hard. Except it doesn’t hurt. It sort of tickles. Before I know it, I'm lying in the wet grass, pummeled by rain, naked except for the scraps of my uniform and underwear. My panties had somehow survived the transformation and back. I’m trembling and wet and cold, my heart still pounding almost as quickly as when I’d been the squirrel.
My arm's not bleeding anymore. Nor my face. There's no sign of any injury. No gaping hole. No red flesh. It's the same pale thing it's ever been. The wind threatens to steal me away, but I managed to stand. I hug myself and push on, squinting. Human eyes aren't much better than squirrel eyes in low visibility, and I'm looking for any sign of a lighthouse.
My skin is soaked. My hair sticks to my face, my shoulders, and my back. I try to search for the cloak, but I've no idea how far I'd run as a squirrel, and it could be anywhere, concealed completely by the darkness and the storm. All I'm wearing are the tattered remains of my boba shop uniform. It's really only a few straps of cloth stuck to my shoulders and back. The sleeves are somehow still intact. And I’m rather happy about my underwear. It’s some sort of protection.
I walk through the tall grass that comes up to my knees. It tickles and scratches, and my heavier human body sinks slightly into the mud that keeps trying to suck my ankles into the ground, but it's much better than struggling through the snow.
Light flashes ahead, and I brace myself for more thunder, but it never comes. The light appears again, shining from somewhere in the distance. From a point that's high up, but not as high as the sky. That has to be the lighthouse.