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I was ten days into my expedition into the Molorian jungle now, picking my way through the forest floor at a leisurely walk like I had the previous nine, with my objective nowhere in sight. Maybe the search was just a lesson in patience and humility—that wouldn’t be surprising. It was almost a meditative experience, wandering the forest with nothing but my thoughts and the occasional wildlife, though I was self aware enough to know that I probably needed it.
I needed people in my life, but it always seemed like no matter how hard I tried, the truth got out at some point. Those last nine days had really helped me come to peace with the fact that—yet again—pretty much all the relationships I had in my life had just evaporated in an instant.
A descendant of this jungle, perhaps it’s for the better if you just die in it.
I squished that thought as soon as it rose to the surface. That line of thinking was just a downward spiral and it didn’t serve any purpose but self pity. I’d been down that road before, and there was nothing useful there. It didn’t even help me feel better in the long run either. If I didn’t want to be outed, I just had to be more careful and maintain control of myself. Vigilance was key.
I looked down at my hands, my skin already a deep brown, almost the color of the dark wood from a walnut tree. Just the day before it had been a light tan. My body did that if I wasn’t constantly on the watch for it. Frowning, I tried to change it back, reaching into that deep part of me and trying to channel the power of my shapeshifting ancestors. At this point the bloodline was so diluted my abilities were basically negligible and I could only tweak minor characteristics of my body. Still, I felt the control and made my skin shift back to it’s lighter tone—or I started the process anyways. It would take an hour or two for it to complete but once I set the change in motion, it didn’t really require much thought to maintain.
That was both a blessing and a curse. It meant it didn’t require hours of sustained focus to change something as trivial as my skin color, but it also meant I could accidently initiate a change—most notably in my sleep. Several weeks back I’d walked out of my little home in a rush to get to the outhouse with light blue skin...and now I was wandering the jungle.
Just enough shapeshifting ability that people tried to lynch me when they found out, but not enough that I could do anything interesting. The worst of both worlds. It wasn’t even that useful for infiltration or thievery either—there was enough deep cultural paranoia that people always asked questions and had safe words.
I nearly jumped when I went to scratch my nose and saw that the skin on my hand was already light again.
What?
I’d just started the process a minute ago! How?!
Staring at my hand, I focused on changing my shape again, this time trying to change my fingernails deep red. I watched in fascination as over the course of about twenty seconds they slowly shifted in color until they looked like they were painted—much like those noblewomen did actually.
It looked decidedly strange on a man’s hands, but I couldn’t stop a smile from creeping over my face, and I let out a shout of joy.
“Yes! Yes!”
At some point my voice had slipped into a baritone and didn’t really match up with what I identified my voice as, but that only made me even happier. I could fix that too! Now!
“Is my voice better?”
I grinned when I heard it slip back into it’s normal midtone. That had only taken seconds! All those things that took me an hour to normalize in the morning were changing nearly instantly!
That reality settled over me and two major things became clear. First—my problems were gone. Of the seven times I’d been forced to flee, five had been because I’d been unable to normalize my body before somebody saw me in the morning. There just hadn’t been enough time. But now...it was only taking moments. The time it took to change clothes.
And the other fact...the temple must be close. The place of power that had created the first of my ancestors had to be near. Or at least I was drawing closer. It’s magic could extend for hundreds of miles for all I knew, and I still might be at the very edge of it.
Still, I found myself grinning like an idiot. Even if I didn’t succeed, my problems were half solved. I still might shift involuntarily sometimes, but at least now I could quickly fix it.
For the rest of the day I played with my features as I picked my way through the jungle. I changed my skin color, altered the shape of my nose and even grew a large beard. I was disappointed to find that I still couldn’t change the frame of my body however. When I tried to alter my bones I ran up against that wall again, like I was trying to push against a stone that simply wouldn’t move. As I’d learnt at an early age, altering the shape of my bones was substantially more difficult than changing flesh, which was in turn more difficult than something like skin tone or hair.
By the time night came, I was both mentally and physically exhausted—far more than I had been the previous days. Drawing on my magic did take a small toll on me, even if it meant I needed another hour of sleep at night on days where I used it heavily. The sun wasn’t even down when I’d found a downed tree to sleep with my back to for the night.
It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it wasn’t like I had been given the time to pack bedding when I’d been run out of town. I just a waterskin and a bag that I kept filling with fruits from the trees. It was the twenty second night I spent sleeping without a bed, but perhaps the most restful sleep I’d had in months.
***
The sunlight poking through the trees slowly stirred me from my sleep. The ground was still damp from the rain over the night, but the air was warm and I was used to the moisture at this point so it wasn’t particularly bothersome. Rolling over a bit and cracking my eyes open, I was half way through rubbing the sleep from them when I realized what I’d just seen.
I jumped, startling the person who was knelt down just a couple feet away from me. The woman started backwards at my own sudden movement and much to my surprise, it wasn’t actually the sleep in my eyes making me see double. She really did have four arms.
She wasn’t exactly human either—though neither was I technically, I just looked like it—but she seemed to be one of the lizard folk I’d heard lived in the jungle. I’d never heard anything about them having an extra pair of arms though, and I was well traveled, so this evidently wasn’t normal. Yet...this jungle was a strange place known to have stranger things happen within.
She seemed on edge and was clearly watching me for any sudden movements, and one of her lower hands had found a small stone on the ground, which she now held clutched like she’d use it as a weapon if need be. Right—as I’d never seen one of her kind before, she’d probably never seen a human.
I made an effort and visibly relaxed my posture, hoping the change would put her at ease. “Sorry, you just startled me,” I said, trying to sound relieved.
Her expression grew a little terse before clearing and she shook her head, saying something I couldn’t understand. While it all sounded like gibberish to me, the meaning was pretty clear: I don’t understand you—or something along those lines.
Fortunately, she dropped the stone and pointed to herself, saying one word:
“Kraersi.”
My eyebrows went up a little bit.
“Kraersi,” she repeated, touching her chest again in a more exaggerated gesture.
“Krar-si,” I repeated, pointing at her.
She smiled slightly then repeated her name, correcting my pronunciation. “Kra-air see,” she said, emphasizing the split in the first half of her name, and the hissing sound on the S.
“Kra-er si,” I tried again.
Her smile broadened a bit as she nodded. “Kraersi,” she said quickly this time, as though to say I’d got it, or at least well enough. Then she pointed at me and tilted her head questioningly.
“Hylac,” I said, gesturing to myself in a similar way that she had while introducing herself.
The lizard woman thought about it for a moment before repeating my name back to me, evidently trying to get it right on the first time.
“High-la, High-lak,” she said, getting the hard C right the second time she tried.
I smiled and nodded—two bits of communication that we seemed to share at the very least.
Looking a little proud of herself, Kraersi got back up into her kneeling position and looked like she wanted to approach but was unsure. It was amazing how expressive her face was considering it wasn't human at all. Still, I had to ask her about the arms...if I could figure out how. Was it normal? What was the deal?
Hoping she could read my expressions as well as I could hers, I gave her a slightly questioning look and lifted my left arm up, touching the place on my ribcage where her second pair of shoulders were set, then pointed at her and gave a questioning gesture.
Truth be told, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but a glum look wasn’t it. She obviously caught my intention instantly and for some reason didn’t appreciate it, eyes going downcast and her large ears following a bit.
So not normal, evidently.
But...was she a shapeshifter too then? Did she have the same issue I did, getting forced out of society despite doing her best to conform?
I tried to make an apologetic gesture which seemed to work in catching her attention again, so I sat forward and pointed to the back of my hand, shifting the skin tone. Perhaps if I showed her something weird about myself whatever offence I’d caused might be undone. Or perhaps it’d scare her like every other human when they realized I was a shapeshifter.
She watched me with a reserved curiosity until she realized what was happening, the skin on my hand deepening to that dark brown it was the previous day. It got an instant reaction from her—excitement. She bounced forward until she was sitting right next to me, staring at my hand closely for a moment before holding up one of her own in response.
Covering her body was a series of colorations that looked natural in shade, but were a bit too artistic to have been natural. I’d assumed they were tattoos at first glance, but the one that extended down her forearm onto the back of her upper right hand was blotchy, like it was just a simple skin discoloration.
She had an expression of fierce concentration and it wasn’t hard to piece together what she was trying to show me, so I sat patiently and slowly started to smile as the skin on the back of her hand slowly started to change. It was just the dark patch that was shifting, becoming a little less random and more tattoo-like, similar to the patterning on the rest of her body.
I grinned. So she was at least a little bit of a shapeshifter. I had to try again, hopefully not offending her this time.
Touched her lightly on her lower arm near its half-shoulder, I then touched my ribcage where there was definitely no arm, and made a frustrated gesture, before making the skin on my hand change color again—then I made sure to follow it up with an earnest look. Hopefully the message was clear.
She didn’t take it negatively this time, just with looking slightly confused. Finally, she touched the skin on the back of her hand where she’d changed its pattern slightly, then the shoulders of her lower arms and shook her head.
I sighed. So she’d probably been born with them then. She sighed as well, leaning her back against the same fallen tree I was. Both her upper hands were holding her lower two similar to the way one might cradle a finger that was hurting, or perhaps frustrating you in some way.
After a moment Kraersi got to her feet, holding out a hand for me to follow her. I took it and she pulled me up with surprising ease, showing that perhaps the athletic figure wasn’t just all looks. Not letting my hand go, she tugged it along, leading me through the forest to wherever she was headed. I didn’t resist or try to free my hand but did find it a little peculiar—I could have just followed along behind her without issue but she seemed insistent on leading me. Perhaps it was a cultural thing, a people with four arms not really minding if one was occupied as they led someone.
As she led me, I found myself admiring her. Yes, her physiology was strange, but it wasn’t exactly unappealing—though perhaps that was my shapeshifter side being more open to bizzare things. She was nearly as tall as I was, and it wasn’t because her torso was elongated to fit some extra arms. Instead she was just a bit leggy, her hips the same height as mine, even if I had an inch or two on her. That long limbed nature extended to her tail too—much more so with it than anything else. It was easily five feet, maybe even six, and it flowed out from behind her elegantly, swaying behind her this way and that, and judging by the way the tip curled occasionally, it was also likely prehensile.
And while the hair she did have was thick and wavy, she also kept a portion of her crown shaved on the left side. That as far as I knew, was common for women among the lizard folk. The couple illustrations I’d seen of them all seemed to portray that style, but the fact that it was smooth skin void of any hair told me that was probably her rudimentary shapeshifting again. It clearly didn’t grow like that, unless the lizardfolk all had an asymmetric hairline.
Curious, and a bit on a whim, I reached out and touched her scalp, brushing my fingers over the smooth skin to see if there was any hair there which had been recently shaved off. She glanced back at me and giggled—giggled!—and ran a couple of her fingers over the smooth patch as well, before combing her fingers through her much longer hair and tossing it over her shoulder.
Yes, I decided, she wasn’t just cute, she was really cute.
Of course it didn’t help that her clothing was far less than modest, her top being some cloth pulled around her breasts and tied around her back between her upper and lower arms. What she wore as a bottom was even worse—I didn’t want to even call them shorts because they only covered what was between her legs, the entirety of her thigh and most of her bum completely visible. The makeshift clothing was also in really rough shape...but if I didn’t know better, it looked like it was made for a human originally, and she had just repurposed it. How long had she’d been wearing that for? It was a shame I couldn’t just ask her. Her situation was obviously strange, but I wanted to know why.
Eventually we got where we were going, coming up to a particularly large tree that stretched above the canopy and had an impressive makeshift ladder tied to it with vines. It looked like she cut down trees a little thinner than my wrist, taking their trunks and making a ladder out of them that was about ten feet tall, then tying it to the giant tree so it would stay put.
And above it was another ladder. And another.
I looked up at it in awe as the makeshift ladders tied to the trunk stretched all the way up into the canopy and out of sight. Kraersi looked at me, obviously pleased at my reaction, and maybe even a little proud of herself. Then she finally let go of my hand and grabbed hold of the ladder, starting to climb. Once about ten feet up she looked down at me, hopeful that I would follow.
When I tested the sturdiness of it, the ladder seemed pretty solid even if the wood had some flex to it, so I followed her up, trying not to look down too much as I did so.
By the time I was fifty feet up in the air, I was really starting to wish I had the shapeshifting my ancestors did. Being able to turn into a bird if I feel off would have been really nice, but instead I was mortal as any human. If I fell off this ladder, I would definitely die.
Relax. She probably climbs this thing all the time, and she has a tail and two extra arms. She probably weighs a lot more than you and she’s still here.
I flipped between that thought and mild panic and I got higher and higher, until we finally reached the canopy where the foliage was dense enough that I might be able to catch myself if I fell. That’s when Kraersi climbed off the ladder onto a platform that seemed to be made in a similar fashion to the ladder—thick wooden branches tied together with vines. White knuckling the ladder, I had to test my weight on the platform before stepping onto it, prompting my escort to giggle softly before taking my hand again and drawing my attention to our destination.
It was a home—a little hut she’d built in the canopy of the jungle.
It wasn’t small either—even by the standards of a normal home built on land. She’d built it to rest where three enormous branches of the giant trees crossed paths, having laid multiple layers of branches and poles similar to the ladder to create a floor that was probably sturdy as anything I could find on the ground. It had some walls and some open areas, all covered by a roof made from the giant leaves of the canopy threaded between branches.
I was so fascinated by it that I actually hardly noticed as she led me across a series to platforms and makeshift bridges that brought us right to the doorway. It was a good thing we didn’t share a language because I couldn’t have expressed my amazement in words if we did.
She seemed proud as she led me up to the door, reveling in my fascination at her construction. Had she really done all this with nothing?! I glanced at the poles and noted how they were cut through—not broken or chopped. She must have a saw in that case, which meant she likely had other tools...but still. It was incredible that one person alone had done this.
I followed her inside the main entrance to the tree-hut itself, doing my best to keep my nerves calm, despite knowing that I was in a fort probably a hundred feet up in the air. The inside of the home seemed closer to a storage space than a place to live in all honesty, the first room we passed through lined with rudimentary shelves and a couple boxes and woven baskets. She had some freshly picked fruits lying alongside a rack where some meat was hanging, and a variety of wooden bowls filled with different colored powders that I could only assume were spices.
By the meat wrack there were a couple tools—a dagger by the looks of it, which she’d likely been using to butcher the animals, alongside with a couple primitive hunting spears, a similarly crafted stone axe, and the metal saw I’d correctly guessed she had a moment earlier. In fact, the saw was distinctly out of place among the other tools—where had she gotten it?
I freed my hand from hers and knelt down beside it, pointing at the tool questioningly. Her response was to immediately grab my hand again and lead me deeper in the house, the knowing expression that’d crossed her face telling me she’d understood the question, and needed to lead me to where she could show me the answer.
One room deeper into the hut was what truly surprised me. It seemed to be the center room and was the first I’d seen that had a door instead of an open doorway. It slid to the side as she didn’t have hinges to mount it, but the walls were also much sturdier here, evidently trying to protect whatever was inside from the elements, and once inside I understood why.
She lifted the door and pulled it aside with relative ease, revealing a room that was empty save for a table and two boxes in the corner.
And on that table was a map.
I felt my jaw fall open a little, and slowly stepped forwards to get a better look.
It was crafted from parchment—dried animal skins she’d likely made herself—and next to it were a couple quills, alongside with a wooden bowl that had some soot next to it to be mixed with water into ink.
The map itself was extraordinarily detailed, the very center of it so fine it was almost artistic, and spiraling outwards with drawings indicative of so many different landmarks. She’d outlined where the trees were thick and where there were clearings, and there were other spots marked with little drawings of animals which must have indicated hunting sites. Some of the hills that broke up the normally flat terrain were marked, and in the very center was a giant tree. She touched that center point, and then gestured to the room around us before saying one word:
“Domme,” she said simply. The meaning couldn’t have been clearer.
“Domme,” I repeated softly. “Home.”
Kraersi gave me a sideways glance and smiled while trying the word several times, then drew my attention to one specific portion of the map—a part where the trees stopped and fields began. There was a little home drawn in there alongside with five figures—a man, a woman, and three children. She’d marked a river which passed by the homestead and…
I frowned. Was that...the Marolchuks? They had a sizable portion of land at the edge of the jungle and were on the…
“That’s the Learen River…” I breathed. The map was far more expansive than I thought! Had she actually mapped out the entire jungle?! No...there were a lot of empty patches still...but she did have the edges—or at least a good part of them.
Kraersi looked at me quizzically, trying to piece together what I might have meant, then tapped the homestead that belonged to the Marolchuks while her other right hand made a sawing motion.
“Ah,” I said, nodding, which seemed general enough that the meaning was understood. There was a good chance she had stolen it...though I couldn’t really blame her. We probably would have heard something if they’d been trading with a four armed lizard woman that couldn’t speak english.
But the fact that she had a saw from some farmer on the edge of civilization wasn’t really worth noting considering I’d just learnt she had mapped out a portion of a jungle which nobody else had done before. There were literally no maps beyond the edges of the Molorian jungle—they simply didn’t exist. The deeper one got, the more dangerous the creatures got until…
I looked at Kraersi, not suddenly worried for my safety—if she’d wanted to hurt me, she could have already done so easily—but instead starting to connect the dots in my mind. The Molorian jungle only existed today because the parts of it that still stood were never cleared by the settlers. The original settlers had stories of being hunted by strange and outlandish monsters that seemed to lurk within it and within it alone. Tigers that stood ten feet tall. Carnivorous monkeys whose jaws split open to reveal a maw of razor sharp teeth. The list went on and the stories got truly wild the deeper the explorer had gone. The treeline today was where the settlers had decided it was no longer worth turning into farmland.
And my shapeshifting powers had started to grow stronger as I’d entered the jungle—the one place that harbored these monsters. Were those facts related? They must be—these creatures must have trace amounts of the same magic I did. Was that why Kraersi seemed almost...insecure about her extra arms? The lizardfolk lived in tribes but she was alone...was it because she was one of...them?
The realization settled over me like a heavy weight, and I looked away from her and slowly back to the map, scanning it for more details. Sure enough, one portion in a rather well drawn area had a little symbol shaped like a campfire, and several tailed people around it. When she saw me looking at it I heard a small sigh.
I looked to her then touched the camp, before touching her lower arm and saying the one word she’d taught me so far. “Domme?”
The way her eyes tightened and she looked away from me slightly was a powerful expression of sorrow and pain. She shook her head and blinked back tears.
“Uze nah,” she whispered, looking back to the little drawing. One of her unoccupied hands reached for the feather and dipped it in the ink bowl, before carefully drawing in another figure near the camp. This one had four arms, and Kraersi took her time to carefully finish the drawing before slashing a harsh line through it.
“Ey no kyat Kraersi,” she whispered, expression deeply saddened. “Nah domme. Uze nah.”
I didn’t understand what she was saying word for word, but the meaning was clear enough. They didn’t want Kraersi. It’s not home. Not anymore.
Without really thinking about it, I pulled her into a hug. She tensed up for a moment, not realizing what I was doing, but then a moment later she melted. Tension flowed from her body and she rested her cheek on my shoulder, sniffling softly. One by one her arms wrapped around me in reciprocation, awkward in the most literal sense, like she wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do.
I would have released her, but she didn’t seem to want to do that. In fact, her embrace only got tighter after a couple moments. Her breathing was unsteady, like she was struggling to keep it together, though after a couple moments she seemed to get it under control.
“Aitah,” she whispered softly, repeating the word several more times.
Eventually she released me, offering a look of immense gratitude before returning her attention to the map. She looked to me, then to the map, the question posing itself. Where do you want to go?
I peered over it, looking for some sign that might be indicative of the fabled temple I was looking for. She didn’t have anything obvious marked directly, but I did notice that where the map was not filled in, there were various creatures drawn near the blank spots.
A sabre toothed tiger. A two headed snake. There must have been two dozen little drawings of various twisted creatures. Kaersi noticed what I was looking at and started to shake her head.
Glancing around, I picked up the quill she’d used to draw and dipped it in the ink bowl. Kraersi was very quick to offer me a seperate piece of parchment so I didn’t draw on her map, then waited patiently to see what I was about to do. I tore off a small corner of the parchment and drew a small building the way my mother had described it all those years ago—a pyramid with several flat sections and a staircase up the center. Then I set it in the blank area of the map and moved it around, hoping my message was clear. Finally, I held my hand up and shifted the color of my skin from brown to green to blue and back again. “It’s home,” I said softly, using a word I knew she had heard me say already. Perhaps she could piece it together.
She watched me for a moment then nodded slowly, picking up the little drawing I’d made and examining it closely. After a moment she placed it very deliberately on one of the blank parts of the map and traced a circle with her finger in the area it could be.
I grinned, and she smiled back.
It seemed I might just have a guide.