Changeling

Today is the day I change.

I can feel it, deep down in my very being, today is the DAY! I can’t tell you why I think that. It’s not a knowing, it’s just a feeling. A feeling that finally it’s here. After all this time spent slumbering, the awareness of everything around me veiled and distant, the spark of life, of self, diffused, almost non-existent, after all this time, the metamorphosis, the transformation is nearing its final stage, its completion.

Something that begun - I’m not sure just when, several days ago I think - is over. The changes to… everything is complete, or nearly so. I must confess it’s hard to remember much, in any great detail - from before that is - when I could move freely, when I could sense the world around me all the time. When I knew its pleasures, its joys, fears and disappointments. When the effort of just being alive was its own reward.

I remember the sun. Its warmth on my skin. I remember the rain, the water cool and wet. The need to shelter from both at times. Those times when the sun was hot enough to scorch my fragile skin, to burn and shrivel it. The times when the rain pounded down. When it was necessary to shelter from its bruising ferocity. To avoid stepping or falling into rapidly filling hollows and rivulets. The streams that became deep and fast enough to sweep you from your feet and whirl you to an unknown destination and a cold miserable grave amongst boulders, mud and uprooted vegetation swept from their edges.

Days and nights filled with everyday dangers and opportunities. I remember moving slowly through a land of colour. Greens mainly, all hues and shades of green, but also reds, yellows, oranges and white. I seem to remember others who were like me and others who were nearly like me. There were also others quite unlike me, yet were not that different from me. Some were near, some were further away. At least they were for a time.

Now? Now I cannot say when I last saw another like or even unlike me, one who moved through this world in a similar fashion, moving from place to place. Did we move with purpose or was it random wanderings that intersected occasionally?

At times I came across the corpse of someone who had succumbed to one of the dangers this world held. A dessicated, shrivelled, husk, a few shreds of skin hanging from some foliage. I always took care to avoid approaching those places closely. I had no wish to suffer the same fate as those unfortunates. The predators of this world did not announce or parade their intentions in obvious ways, except for the web spinners.

They laid their sticky traps and waited for the unwary to walk into them. Others hunted from the sky, waiting until you were crossing a clearing or had climbed too high in search of food or water to fall on you. The end coming quick or slow depending upon the predator’s preferred method of devouring you. Quick and the jaws cut you up quickly, others swallowed you whole. Slow and they turned your insides to liquid first or deposited their young inside you to feed on their host at leisure.

The world was filled with sound, the wind rattled trunks, branches, leaves. There were constant screeches and cries, some high pitched, others low and guttural. Whistles and croaks added to the cacophony.

 Then there were the noises I made as I moved through this green and oft times forbidding world. The soft pad of my feet on different surfaces, the crunch as I bit into a favourite item of food, the blissful pleasure as I savoured the flavour and textures, chewing slowly, thoughtfully, considering the next mouthful before biting down again. Feeling the energy from the food course through my body suffusing it with nutrients, and the building blocks of life I would need before and during my change.

My ‘change’. I pondered the words, simple words. Two words that described the end of one world and… I didn’t know what it would entail. What would I be on the other side? Would I still be me? Would it hurt? Questions that burned in my mind yet I had found no answers, I just knew it was… necessary, inevitable almost, something that was going to happen whether I willed it or not.

Several days ago - ten I think - the need to find a place where I could safely undergo this transformation, somewhere I would be sheltered from the sun, the wind and the rain, protected from predators, became an imperative. A feeling I could not ignore or dismiss filled my consciousness to the point where it endangered me as I ignored the possibility of traps and snares and open assaults in my desire to find a refuge.

I climbed a thick green trunk from which spreading palmate branches arched out on every side in uneven progression. Each branch divided again and again getting smaller each time. When I deemed I had climbed high enough I edged out onto a sturdy branch and carefully made my way towards its furthest point. The branch only dipped slightly from my weight and all around the foliage of the smaller branches hid the sky and ground from my view. Above, below, to either side, the branches moved gently in a breeze and I could feel my own selection moving slightly from side to side and up and down, small gentle movements.

I carefully attached lines to branches and pulled them one by one towards the centre and tied them off. I now had a bower that was protected in great part by the branches and leaves and hid me from hostile eyes. I rested for a moment, considering. The foliage hid me to a great extent but I knew somehow, that this was not enough. I needed to fill the gaps and swathe the interior so that nothing would disturb me as I underwent my metamorphosis. I took fronds from branches on the other side to my selected branch and wove them into the gaps until I had an impenetrable layer surrounding the inner space. I padded the opening that gave on the branch and the trunk and as I wove the last pieces into place, the light inside grew dim, soft and very green.

Satisfied at last with my efforts I laid down in the centre of my bower and with trepidation closed my eyes and gave into the sensations that were coursing through me. My breathing slowed, thoughts calmed and I felt my body and mind relax. There was nothing more than that for a period of time and then I felt myself drifting away, my senses breaking up. For the first time I felt fear as pain suffused my body. Sharp, tingling pains at my extremities, throbbing pain from deep inside me. Pain that merged then separated over and over again and my sense of being followed suit.

Now, somehow, I know the change is complete. My body and mind feel whole once more, yet they are not the same as before. My body feels different, strange, not the me of before. I cannot say what has changed, not yet. I suppose that is what I should have expected but there is also a change in the way my thoughts, my mind, the me of me works.

I open my eyes to darkness, not complete there are fine lines - cracks really - of faint light. I tried to turn my head and it butted up against something hard yet yielding. I pushed harder and the cracks widened and as my eyes adjusted I could see that at least in front of me I was or had been covered in some kind of tegument. I resumed pushing against it and it split wider and my head began to emerge into muted light filtered through a patchwork of faded greens and browns.

I rested and took stock of my surroundings, I was still inside the woven haven I had created and two thirds of my body was encased in the brown semi rigid covering. I felt much weaker than I had before the change, lighter, a feeling of fragility, of the need to proceed carefully, cautiously, that I was vulnerable at the moment. When I felt strong enough, I edged my body forward again, struggling to extract myself from… was that my skin? From before? Why had it become so hard and yet now was becoming more friable as I worked my way from it?

I rested again as I pondered these questions and could find no answers other than ‘the change’. I looked around and could see the lines I had used to fold the branches down and around were close enough for me to reach and I cut three of them easily and the natural tendency of the branches to return to their original position, albeit slowly started them unfurling.

The light grew brighter and I could tell it was early morning, perhaps an hour or so past sunrise. Renewing my efforts to lose the encasing skin, I was able to reach the last two lines and they too slowly unfurled, allowing the golden morning light to enter my refuge. I finally dragged my body clear and the layer of tissue collapsed to the floor of my bower behind me.

As the branches slowly returned to their normal shapes the sunlight played over my body, warming and somehow strengthening it. I sat there, drawing the light, the warmth, its strength, into my trembling body and limbs and felt them respond. The feelings of weakness, of fragility, faded with each passing moment and I felt my body undergoing further changes.

That disturbed me for I thought I had come to the end of this trial and yet it seemed to be ongoing. Had I done wrong? Did I leave my refuge too soon? The thoughts made my heart beat faster and my breathing to quicken and this accelerated the alterations I could feel happening to me. I felt new muscles, tissues, the length of my back and on my head there were changes on top and in front as strange objects unrolled and straightened. As I turned my head I could see segmented legs filling with blood, strength, power.

I stayed there, basking in the sun as the changes to my body continued, the warmth infusing my body with energy, blood heating and spreading throughout the veins and capillaries, the heat hardening once soft body parts giving them definition and solidity. From the edge of my eye I could see something unfurling, losing its soft crumpled look, changing from pale, almost colourless, to a mix of red, blue, brown and white.

Closing my eyes against the brightness I waited. For what, I wasn’t sure, but as the changes I could feel slowed and then stopped I felt contentment, I had survived thus far. I would do my best to continue that survival. I twitched new muscles in legs, back, abdomen and opened my eyes and looked at the world I had been reborn into and pondered my next move. I realised I was hungry but knew that I could no longer eat the food I had favoured before.

I flexed the new muscles of my back and to my surprise felt a breeze move past my head on both sides. I turned my head and could see thin, wide, colourful appendages moving as I flexed those muscles. My puzzlement grew as I flexed the muscles faster and the movement of the appendages up and down quickened in response. The breeze grew stronger and I slowed the muscle movements knowing how to do so without thinking about it. As I did so I dropped from a small height I had been unaware of reaching above the branch.

When my breathing slowed, I essayed another bout of muscle twitching, faster this time and looking down saw my feet leaving the branch. A quarter of an inch, half an inch, an inch. I hovered above the branch as muscles flexed and unflexed in a rhythmic pattern and the appendages - my wings I realised - moved up and down faster and I rose slowly into the morning light.

My need to feed was growing stronger and instincts told me I should search for a certain type of food that would be acceptable to this new body. I found I could change my position by moving my wings on one side in a different manner to those on the other side. I was torn by the need to explore this new environment and mode of moving and the burgeoning need to eat. For the next fifteen minutes I managed to do both. I found I already possessed the instincts to change direction, speed, height, land or take off. I used the practice to search for the food I needed and found it not far from where I had emerged into this new life.

There were others like or nearly like me in a moving cloud of colour and energy around a large bush bestrewn with trumpet shaped flowers of deep red. The many coloured multitude that was gathered there, landed, drank, then rose again in a swirling complicated dance where instinct avoided collisions and all - including myself - gloried in the sun, the swirling fandango danced to unheard music. A sublime, exuberant dance, of life, for life, and this moment in the sun.