“As long as I am breathing, in my eyes, I am just beginning.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy
Opening her eyes, Tabitha saw an utter nightmare of a landscape. Before her was a desert that she has never seen, the sands were a combination of brown, gold, black, and red. The sky itself was a stranger, dark blue with bright red. The air was acidic, and the heat would have been unbearable for anyone else, but to her, it felt like summer’s temperature.
She saw dozens of flaming geysers shooting up to 20, 40, 50, a hundred feet into the air. If the flaming geysers were not enough to tell her that she was not on earth anymore. It would have been the plateaus, some of them standing from a hundred and fifty feet to five hundred feet in height. And let us not forget the floating landmasses in the sky. They were like tiny islands in space, some of them looked barren others remind Tabitha of the corals in the reefs.
Where in God’s name am I? As Tabitha asked the question, she sniffed the air and smelled…brimstone? That is when it hit her. Fire and brimstone, a barren landscape with no sign of water or vegetation.
“Am I in hell!?”
Tabitha was truly frightened then.
“All because I wouldn’t worship a god that brought death and destruction to the world. This cannot be right!”
Tabitha was on her knees for some reason, she did not know how she got to that position. But as Tabitha moved her hands forward to brace the ground and stand up. She stopped and stared. She was no longer staring at the environment before her, Tabitha was staring at her arms. More precisely, she was staring at the color of her skin. Before, her skin complexion was so light that most people thought she was an albino. Now, her skin was completely crimson. It was as if she had dived in a pool of blood.
“What the hell is going on?”
Tabitha demanded in a whisper knowing full well that no one was there to answer her. As she moved her arms to get a good look at them, her eyes went all the way up her arms until they reached her hands. Tabitha’s hands and fingers were completely blood red, except for her nails.
“My fingernails are black like obsidian steel or something. Fingernails? They look more like claws.”
As Tabitha examined her claws, she realizes that they were about three or four centimeters long.
“They’re more like talons than claws. Black talons? Sounds like the name of a jet fighter squadron.”
Tabitha looked down at her body and noticed for the first time that she was completely naked, and her body was completely blood red.
“Did I turn into a different species or something?”
Then, Tabitha felt something move on her back. As she turned her head around saying.
“Is something on my back?”
Her eyes widen in surprise at what she saw.
“I have wings! How…why? I don’t understand what’s going on!?”
Tabitha took in a deep breath to calm down, she smelled the sulfur and brimstone, but it did not bother her. Then, she breathed out and saw actual smoke coming out of her mouth.
“This is getting weirder and weirder by the second but wait. One thing at a time, first the wings, and then I’ll deal with my smoky breath.”
Tabitha went back to examining her wings, and the first thing she noticed is the color. Although, as far as she could tell by briefly studying her body which is red. Her wings are blue? She could not understand why her wings are blue and her body red. As Tabitha was placing a hand on her forehead, she brushed up against something hard and bone-like. Tabitha paused and shifted her eyes up, and she saw wings and a red naked body was not the only things she possesses. She had horns, long curved horns and they were blue too. Tabitha looked to her back again at the wings, she studied them closely.
The skeletal structure of her wings is a deep dark blue, while the wing membranes had a lighter shade of blue. When she moved her wings, Tabitha found out that it was no problem. It was like moving a second set of arms, just in a different manner from the norm.
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“As if any of this is normal.”
Tabitha let out a nervous chuckle but continued with her examination. She went back to her horns, and from what she could tell. Her horns are about a foot or so long and curved, protruding from both her forehead. Tabitha felt around her head and discovered with both hands that she has pointed ears, like an elf. Her hair, she was glad to discover was still as black as it ever was, but longer. Going down to her waist as she held a strain in her hand. It was then when she remembered to examine her mouth and she did so with her tongue. Among the other discoveries that Tabitha has made, she found out she had fangs like a vampire and that her tongue was split several centimeters down the middle.
“I have a forked tongue! Wait, wait, wait, wait a minute.”
Tabitha bent over and took in deep breaths, and every time she exhaled. Dark smoke came out of her mouth.
“Let me think for a minute. I have horns and wings. I have fangs as well as a forked tongue. And my body is red like blood. But I can’t be, it’s just not possible.”
Tabitha wanted to deny what she was coming to realize, and then something struck her right leg at the calf. When Tabitha looked down to see what it was, she saw a long blue snake. Or so she thought when she looked at it closely trailing the length of it with her eyes. Tabitha realized that it was no snake, the long blue bull whipped thing is her tail.
“Oh my God. I have a tail. I have horns, wings, and a tail, my body is red, and I’m in a hellish landscape with floating rocks and flaming geysers. I’m a demon in hell. But wait a minute?”
Tabitha thought carefully for a moment.
“If I’m a sinner as the Romantians proclaim, then I should be a damned soul burning in hellish fire for all eternity. Something is off. I shouldn’t be a demon in hell, yet here I am in this form. I imagine that if I were human, I would not have been able to survive in a place like this. The heat, the toxic air, this environment is not hospitable to humans.”
Tabitha studied every inch of her new body, she felt strong, stronger than she has ever been.
“Could I do magic? Demons have the ability to do magic. Maybe I can do magic? But how would I do that? And if I’m a demon in hell, are there other demons around?”
That question gave way to other questions.
“How do real demons act? Should I be on my guard if I meet other demons? How powerful are each individual demon? Is there some kind of category or level? I am completely in the dark here, this is new territory for me.”
Tabitha looked at the landscape with its desert, towering plateaus, multicolor sky, and shooting flame geysers again. She shook her head in wonder, disbelief, fear, and resolve.
“Well, I’m not going to learn anything just standing here.”
Tabitha realized that she was standing on one of the plateaus. It was perhaps two hundred feet high.
“Even if I do get off this plateau, where do I go? I know nothing, absolutely nothing. Unless I can find another demon out there. I cannot trust any demon to give me the correct information. I’ll just be whistling in the dark.”
Tabitha sighed.
“It can’t be helped. I may not know how I got here or why I’m even here in the first place. What I do know is that I won’t get anywhere by staying put.”
With a clear goal in mind, Tabitha began experimenting with her wings. Over the plateau was a two-hundred-foot drop, she was not going to climb down. So, she started flapping her wings. She flapped them as fast as she could with all her concentration and strength. But she did not lift off the ground. Tabitha found this irritating if she could not fly then she could not leave this area. And Tabitha did not like the thought of being stuck here for a long time. For one thing, it might be dangerous if another demon came along and discovered that she did not know how to use her wings. The other, it would get real boring real fast staying here.
“If I can’t fly it will be a problem. Maybe it’s not about flapping my wings really fast. Birds and bats fly instinctively, its second nature to them. They don’t think about flapping their wings, they think about moving from one location to another. The rest is instinct.”
Tabitha thought for a long time on how flight works, she did not think that normal flight was the same for demons in hell. Looking up at the sky, Tabitha imagined being up there. Suddenly, she was ascending, moving up!? Tabitha quickly looked over her shoulder to see her wings flapping rhythmically without her even telling them to. It was like an automatic thing, completely on their own. But the moment she took her mind off ascending to the sky, her wings stopped flapping and she fell back to the plateau. Luckily, she was only a dozen feet off the ground. When she landed, Tabitha did not feel any pain or discomfort from the landing.
“My body must be really strong to not feel anything. But that’s for another time, I think I have a handle on this flying thing. It’s not about using my wings consciously. It’s about using them subconsciously. I thought about going up to the sky and my wings did the rest on their own. Does that mean that the nervous system of my wings is connected to a different part of my brain? If so, then how does that work?”
Tabitha huffed out a laugh.
“Look at me, trying to put all of this in biological terms. I should stick to figuring out how to fly instead of figuring out how it all works.”
Again, Tabitha thought about going up to the sky, and like before her wings flapped without her telling them to. Tabitha flew up slowly, then she thought about going a little faster. And she sped up. Tabitha let out a laugh of triumph, but she kept her concentration. Tabitha for the next half hour practiced flying in different directions. She went up, down, side to side, forward and back. Always keeping close to the plateau just in case she lost focus.
“Okay, I got the flying down. So, where do I go? In which direction do I fly towards?”
Tabitha said to herself as she looked in different directions. It did not matter where she looked, the directions all looked the same.
“Nothing jumps out at me, but I can’t stay here.”
Tabitha hovered 30 feet above the plateau, her wings flapping without conscious thought. Tabitha was not even thinking about her wings, she was getting better and better at flying.
“Well, I guess I’ll go that way. After all, that direction was the first thing I saw when I first opened my eyes.”
With her decision made, Tabitha launched herself in the direction of her chosen path.