Groggily I try to open my eyes, but they refuse to open. My body feels frail and won’t respond no matter what I do. Sleep overtakes me as a wave of lethargy assaults my mind.

“Hey, you’ll be late for school if you keep sleeping!” shouts a tall, thin girl with hazel eyes. I open my eyes to my dimly lit bedroom with the blinds drawn over the windows, barely letting in the morning sun through a thin slit. “Okay, okay,” I grumble as I practically fall out of my bed, “let me get my clothes on and I’ll meet you downstairs for breakfast.” My sister chuckles lightly under her breath before saying “I already ate breakfast, it’s already almost time to go!” I take a quick look at my digital alarm clock, and suck in a quick inhale of the somewhat stale air, as I yelp and rush to get ready. My sister chuckles again and heads off downstairs, where I can only presume she prepares to go to school. I quickly take a look around my room, which is littered with geodes and geology textbooks I found relatively cheap on the internet, before I run downstairs. Without time for breakfast, I bolt out the door as a rumble shakes my stomach. “Oh, I hate that damn alarm clock, it never fucking works!” I mutter as I chase after my sister.

As I catch up to her, and her friends, at an intersection, I can’t help but speed up a little. Sweat is beginning to bead on my forehead from this early morning exercise, but I pay it no mind. Though I don’t really know my sister’s friends very well, their company is better than nothing for the trek to school. As I approach them, I shout out “Hey, Marissa, wait up!” She turns around in the middle of the intersection and waves happily to me before lightly jogging towards me. As I catch up to her, a sudden tingle runs down my spine. I quickly look up at the road in time to see a car barreling through the intersection, making an illegal turn right onto the road Marissa is on! I yell out to her to watch out, but she is still somewhat oblivious. I put on a burst of speed to reach her, but the car is almost upon her. The driver, as if just noticing the people on the road, begins to break, and the car’s tires screech trying to gain traction. In the last moment, Marissa notices the car only 5 feet away from her, and stares blankly as a look of fear reaches across her face. The car swerves at the last second, missing Marissa by inches, and continues to swerve away. My full-on sprint quickly becomes a tumble as I notice the car swerving toward ME! I try to roll away but my inertia carries me right into the car, as I hear a blood-curdling scream and then silence. I think I’m dead.

My eyes still won’t open. I don’t even know if I have eyes, or how long I was sleeping for. Is this Hell? I feel something slimy entangled around my leg. Actually, I feel something slimy all around me! What is happening to me?! I struggle to get out of this damnable place but my body feels weak. Sleep overtakes me again.

I awake to a warm feeling tantalizing my skin. It is almost invigorating for a moment, but then it starts to harden. I don’t know what is going on, but change must be good, right? I try to open my mouth, and surprisingly it works! My mouth feels powerful, it opens and closes despite the crusty feeling around the rest of my body. I try to tear myself free, but only the section around my mouth seems to clear away. I feel more than know that my mouth is more of a beak now. Struggling against the quickly hardening stuff around me, I quickly run out of energy and fall into another deep slumber.

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I awaken, and this time I instantly know something is different. The crusty layer around me feels fragile, and I am able to squirm around in it. I quickly push myself forward, and bump into a rock wall. I think it is some form of shale, as it is very smooth. I try to bite through it, and succeed in shaving off a bit of its surface. I quickly turn around, exploring what options I have. I ascertain after a few moments that I am encapsulated in a kind of cuboidal hollow stone. After that, I try to move the rest of my body to see what exactly I AM now. I have four legs without any fingers from what I can tell, I have a tail-like structure jutting out from my backside, and I have a powerful beak of sorts. Mustering all the strength I have, I push off from the base of the cube with my legs, and strike at the wall with my beak. I hear a crisp cracking sound as the wall chips away. I repeat this for about eight times, until I feel my beak hit air. I quickly bite away at the small hole, until it is large enough for my head to fit through, then I collapse as my energy runs out.

After what feels like a long rest, I crawl out from the cube. Everything is still dark, and I have ascertained that I do not have eyes at all. I rubbed my face against the corner of the rock and felt nothing at all where my features would be. It frightens me to be in this strange body with no ability to see at all. Suddenly, I feel hungry. There is no rumble in my stomach, but I just know I need to eat. Thinking logically, I must have come out of an egg of sorts, as I was able to sustain myself somehow. As I thought more about it, I came to the conclusion that I had reincarnated as this creature. Making my way back into the egg, I tried to eat the fragile crust that once surrounded me. It didn’t taste like anything, but I knew deep down that it satiated me. It is hard to explain these foreign feelings. Instead of normal senses, like hearing and sight, I have a sort of sixth sense in my brain. It tells me when I am hungry, what is food, where to go. After eating all the leftover sediment, I once more began to think about what sort of being I am. Certainly nothing like this existed on Earth. I thought about my sister, mother and father, and hoped everyone was okay. I quickly came to the realization that that was my old life, and now food was of the utmost priority, and I had no idea where to begin. It seems that I live off of rocks or minerals, or that my body at least craves them. Thinking up to here, I began my hunt, as my Sense drove me.