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(Word Count: 2,432)
Lily woke up from the sun shining through the curtains and reflexively reached out for her cellphone to check the time. Her wing stretched out, failing to grasp anything. She looked at her wing dumbly as a new wave of sadness washed over her. So it wasn't some weird dream. She sighed heavily.
She looked around. She was inside of the flower she had fallen asleep on. Sometime during the night, it seemed to have closed, enveloping her with the petals. What she had mistaken as the sun through her curtains, was instead the sun through the petals. That was an interesting discovery, she had heard of flowers that would open and close with the sun, but she had never seen it before.
She stood up, to push her way back out, and when she did the flower opened back up by itself. ‘Huh.’ She looked around at her surroundings. None of the other flowers were closed or looked like they were opening. ‘Did this flower close to cover me as I slept?’ The thought was ridiculous, but here she was. It wasn’t like any flower she had ever seen, and too vibrant, and now it seemed almost alive. In a good way though. Something about it was comforting to her.
She was still on the cliff face with the occasional lone flower ledge. About 70 feet down, was a narrow valley. To her left was a larger basin, with that lake that she had seen on the horizon. To her right, the valley continued into the mountains. Above her was the patch of forest she woke up in.
What was she even going to do? She started pacing around in a circle, brainstorming to herself. She needed some sort of goal, otherwise she might just die. Eaten by something. She needed to get stronger.
‘But how? I'm a hummingbird!’
She had to learn how to absorb this magic energy that Laura had talked about. That is, assuming anything about those fantasy stories Laura talked about had any merit. But it was all Lily had to go off of. She still wasn't sure if she was in a Western or Eastern fantasy, but Laura had said that to connect with their magic, in either case, they were required to meditate. And killing stuff. She would need to do the same. She grimaced at the thought. But it was either that or get killed herself. Meditation first. She was way too small to be trying to hunt something yet. She would need magic first.
She glanced down at the flower. It almost seemed alive. Its nectar was unnaturally good. If these flowers weren’t magic plants somehow, she didn’t know what else could be. Would meditating on the flower be good?
Lily nodded to herself. That sounded logical. Meditate on the magic flower to get the magic. Now she had a plan. This cliff face with the magic flowers would be her base of operations. she would meditate to try and sense the magic. Once she unlocked one of those points, she would feel more comfortable exploring during the day to try and find someone.
She sat back down on her flower, and closed her eyes. She began to meditate, focusing on her senses outwards. She could hear other birds chirping in the distance. Some are below her. Others above her. Insects buzzing. She could feel the cool breeze on her face. The soft petals on her feet. She took in everything, and tried to parse it out in her mind, searching for any unfamiliar sensations.
It was hard trying not to fall asleep, actually. When she started nodding off, or felt hungry, she would shake herself awake and drink some of the nectar in the flowers nearby. She always felt better afterwards.
It felt like hours passed by, but there was nothing different that she could tell. Frustrated, Lily whined, chirping angrily, ‘Oh, why couldn't it have been Laura that transmigrated? Well, uh… not that I want her to die or anything, just that she would at least know what to look for! I'm just flying by the seat of my pants!’
After no success focusing outwards, she turned her attention inwards. Specifically on the warm feeling of satisfaction upon drinking the nectar. The flower was the only thing around here that seemed even the slightest bit magical. Surely its nectar was magic to? Right?
It seemed to work. Overtime, she almost felt something like a pressure within herself. She focused on that feeling.
During this cycle of meditation and eating, she was only vaguely aware of the passage of time. There were some periods of darkness, and other periods of light, but beyond that nothing registered besides that pressure that slowly built.
She didn’t know how much time had passed, but it was when she had just drunk some more nectar when she felt something. It was a shifting within herself. The pressure released, which felt like a pipe that just came unclogged, and suddenly things were flowing within herself.
She felt powerful, energized. Like she had never truly been alive before now. She spread her wings and marveled at herself, exulting in the feeling.
Then suddenly two things happened. One, the flower tilted and dumped her onto the ground beside it. Two, the feeling turned from pleasure and power to one of intense nausea. Suddenly she knew that whatever it was that had been clogging that node within herself was coming up. She flopped to the ground, turned to the side, and vomited.
Thick black chunks streamed out of her, and splattered on the ground and over the edge. For the little tiny bird that she was, it seemed like a truly disproportional amount of vomit came out of her. She stared in disgust and horror at what came out of her. She gagged at the taste in her mouth, and again when the smell hit her. Spitting and hacking to get the taste out of her mouth, she flew off to a different ledge. ‘Sorry, flower!’
Did Laura say anything about that black gunk? Was this normal? She couldn't remember. Though this didn't seem like anything from a wizard's or adventurer's story. It felt like this was leaning more towards those cultivator stories.
She gave herself a check up. Despite the intense nausea from before, she felt crazy good. Better than she ever had, actually. Wide awake, and clear minded. Also, it was like a new sense awakened within her. Now she could feel the energy in the air, like floating clouds that didn’t shift with the wind but randomly. There were many sources of this energy, the flowers on the cliff face radiated it out, the valley below her was packed with it, and off in the distance were several sources. She didn’t know how she knew that the energy she felt from those sources were coming from somewhere, she just did. Instinctually, she knew she could find them. Maybe once she got stronger, she would see about finding them.
The only downside was that she smelled foul and needed a bath.
She eyed the valley beneath her. There was at least a stream down there for sure. Maybe she should go take a bath first, and then she would try continuing her meditation. There was no way that she would be able to concentrate with her smelling this foul.
Having made up her mind, Lily flew down into the valley. As a human, she would never have been able to make herself jump off of a cliff, even with safety gear. Now though, the height felt natural and it didn’t even occur to her to be scared.
As she flew, she noticed that it was a whole lot easier, and that she could fly a lot faster than before. She wasn't an expert on hummingbirds, but she didn't think they could ever fly this fast. She was like a tiny, feathery bullet. Maybe she should lean into that? She was tiny, and fast. That means really, really hard to hit. She could zip around and flee if anything tried attacking her.
The more she thought about it, the better it seemed. She was, like, smaller than a golf ball. There was just no way that she could conceivably leverage her strength or defense. her best defense would have to be her speed and dodge around things. Her best strength would be her speed to lend power to any strike she does, and that's even supposing she gets close enough to strike something.
No, she would have to be a ranged attacker. Lily giggled to herself at the image of a powerful lightning bolt coming out of a tiny little hummingbird.
She dipped below the tree tops and she was greeted with the lush, thick foliage that she could see before through the canopy. The essence was dense here.
She saw several birds going about their business, but luckily nothing seemed to be interested in her. She didn’t have to fly very far to get to the small creek that ran down the center of the valley. She looked around suspiciously, for anything that was nearby or seemed interested in her. Nothing. Ok.
She didn’t know much about how birds bathed, but she knew that if she got too wet it would make it hard to fly. In her situation, that could mean death. So she just wetted her wing, and started scrubbing a little at a time as best she could. She also used her beak to start pruning and cleaning.
She was nearly done when suddenly she felt like she was being watched.
She immediately spun around and found a frog staring hungrily at her. They both stay frozen, locked in a tense staring contest, both waiting for the other to make the first move. It’s about twice as big as her so it definitely sees her as prey. She uses this stalemate as a chance to think about what she was going to do. Should she fight it, or just run away? Lily used her new senses to see if this frog is somehow magical, and to her surprise she does feel a faint bit of essence from it. In fact, that bit of essence seems to be rising within the frog as if it's going to cast a spell.
Run away it is. In a burst of motion, she leaps into the air to fly away. The frog pulses with its magic, and a barrier surrounds them. She smacks beak first into the barrier. Her instincts screamed at her to dodge and she spins to the side in the air. A tongue as thick as she was slams into the barrier right where she used to be. If it weren’t for the fact that hummingbirds could fly backwards, she would have been caught.
If it weren’t for the fact that something was trying to kill her, she would have been amazed at the sight of a magic barrier. But now it was preventing her from fleeing. She would have to fight. She faced the frog warily. How would she even kill it? She didn’t think her talons would do anything to it. Could she stab it with her beak? It was pretty long. That could work.
The frog seemed irritated that it didn’t catch her the first time, and shot its tongue out at her again. It was pretty fast, but now that she was watching for it, Lily had more than enough time to dodge. She flew above it, and it shot past her. No time to think, she shot towards the frog.
Unsure of how well her beak will pierce the frog, she didn’t bother slowing down and just rammed into it beak first. It tried to jump away to dodge, but with how fast she was at flying, it was too slow. Surprisingly, her beak pierced very well and she ended up giving the frog a headbutt. Lily had aimed for its eye, that way even if she didn’t get a good hit in she would still blind it, but she had pierced straight through its brain.
Needless to say, the frog was dead.
Not even the burst of energy she felt within her could distract her from the disgusting sight of a deflating eyeball that was way way too close to her face. ‘Ew, ew, ew! Why!? Just… why!’ She kept her beak firmly closed, as she planted her feet on the shoulders of the beast for leverage and pulled her beak out of its eye socket. ‘Ew!’ The eye came away with her, still skewered onto her beak. Utterly grossed out, she had a mild freak out and shook her head vigorously until it flew off of her.
After another bath, she flew hastily back to her flower perch on the cliff. Only when she was safely back on the magic flower did she calm down to focus on what had happened. She had been attacked by a frog. She had nearly died again. With the bear, and the spider webs, and now this frog, death seemed so much closer here in this world. It scared her, but she steeled her resolve. She would survive.
Lily turned her thoughts towards the fight itself. It seemed like it had been waiting for her to flee, it had that barrier ready for that moment. It seemed like it might have been a good 1-2 combo to catch its prey. Use the barrier to keep its prey from running, and when they run headfirst into the barrier use that momentary stun to catch them with its tongue. She had to admit that it was pretty smart. It had almost gotten her, after all.
Aside from that initial blunder, and how gross it was, the fight seemed to be easy. When she was prepared for it, she could easily dodge its attacks. When she attacked, it couldn’t dodge her, and she killed it in one strike. She moved her thoughts towards the rewards. When the frog died, she felt a surge of energy within herself.
It seemed like fighting would be a much quicker way to gain power. But it was too dangerous. While that frog only casted a single barrier, who knew what abilities other creatures could use? Meanwhile, she didn’t have anything yet. While the idea of quick power was tempting, even after the eyeball fiasco, it would have to wait until she had some sort of ability herself.
The cliff should be relatively safe. After all, she had spent who knows how long meditating to find her magic. What was another few days?
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