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Chapter 3: To the Air
Lapis stretched out slowly waking up. Hazel did have a decent enough fire to keep them warm for the
night, which Lapis was thankful for. She may live in a naturist’s colony and so had no discomfort at all
with being naked, the stone floor of a cave would not have been an enjoyable bed to lay on without the
warming heat from the flames and the warm furry log that was pressed to her back.
Shifting and feeling around she realized that the ‘log’ was the lower part of Hazel’s body. The snakehuman
had coiled a long circle around both lapis and the fire, and at some point in the night she had
pressed against Lapis’ back.
Groaning and shifting up to a sitting position Lapis tried to look on the bright side of her current
situation, and not finding much, other than the fire and that the snake thing, while a little rude, wasn’t
hostile.
“You up?” she asked patting Hazel’s… tail? torso?
Hazel groaned and shifted, “Hmm hands off my ass, kangaroo girl”
“You don’t have an ass, snake thing” Lapis responded but it was at least with a bit of humor.
“Don’t remind me” Hazel said shifting her upper part upright, gently rubbing her hands over her furless
front side in an apparent attempt to warm herself after sleeping on the cold floor.
Lapis sighed, “You know I might be able to help with that.”
Hazel paused and a blush started to form on her face, “Uh,, ya. As glad as I am to finally have non
hostile company, I’d still prefer not to be groped to warm me up.”
“I don’t mean actually fondling you, I… here” Lapis shifted around so her back was too the snake
woman, “Just press yourself to my back”
Lapis held still and soon felt Hazel’s hand wrap around her middle as the woman pressed her upper
body to Lapis’s back, “Thank you…”
“Not a problem” Lapis assured her, trying not to think too much about the other girl’s bare bust pressing
into her upper back. Just held still and let the girl warm herself in Lapis’ fur, “As cold as I got last night
on the stone floor, I can’t imagine it would have been pleasant for someone with no fur at all upstairs.”
“It gets bad sometimes. I once was almost certain my nipples had gotten frostbitten at night” Hazel
nodded and took a breath, shifting a little but mostly still holding tight onto Lapis, “I hope its not weird
to say, but you are amazingly soft”
“No that’s fine” Lapis chuckled, “It’s a compliment for most, though usually something you’d hear from a
lover.”
Hazel suddenly shot back, letting go and pulling away, “What. no I didn’t mean.. if . I.. im sorry”
The sudden removal of the pressure behind her had Lapis off balance and she flopped onto her back,
“Wha? no its fine. I know you didn’t mean anything by it.”
“ok, good. but.. I think im warmed up enough” Hazel stammered, “At least till tomorrow… and the day
after… and after…”
“Hey we’ll get out of here” Lapis asserted and stood up, “I don’t intend on living in a cave forever. I’ll
find my way home somehow”
Hazel just looked down. Her long snakelike body coiling around itself in obvious distress, “I’m not sure
that’s possible. I searched the caves, trust me. I’ve been here months, I’ve searched everywhere in this
place, I can’t find a way back, the tunnels changed somehow and closed in the way I got here, just like
with you. I think they change sometimes even normally”
“Dammit” Lapis cursed, “What about outside? You said that there was some sort of magic forest?
maybe there’s a different cave? Like this one takes people TO here, and another sends them back?”
“I guess its possible, but I have no reason to thing its true, and as I said, its dangerous out there” Hazel
shook her head, “I only go out to grab fruits and such to eat, then I rush back. the creatures out there
will….”
Lapis paces around the fire, absentmindedly brushing out her morning fur and pondering the situation.
“Well, I have no intention on living here the rest of my life. If there’s really no way to get back through
the cave I have to try, plus I do have quite the advantage over you.”
“Oh?”
Lapis spread her wings to their maximum, stretching her muscles fully and showing off a bit in the
process, “I can fly. should run into fewer monsters that way”
Hazel actually seemed somewhat hopeful in contrast to her normal somber self as she led Lapis up to
one of the cave openings. They exited by a relatively small fissure on the side of a mountain that
evidently housed the cave system. Outside was indeed a forest, and very definitely not the one Lapis
was in when she entered the cave. The trees were immense for starters, not sequoia or redwood huge,
but very very large for their apparent species, a simple oak a few hundred feet from the cave mouth
looked to be 500 feet tall as far as Lapis could tell. Closer to the cave though there were fewer
plants/trees, and what was there looked charred.
“This was. well I screwed up making a fire once” Hazel explained.
“Well it will make getting back easier if I can see the burn mark” Lapis said fluttering her wings to get her
muscles used to what was about to happen. “Before I go. How exactly did you get… changed? I’m
guessing it happened out here somewhere?”
Hazel nodded, “I got attacked by a snake, huge thing, bit me and was coiling around my body, I think it
wanted to eat me till I.. well till I brained it with a rock” Hazel grinned, “Felt at least a little good about
myself after that and since I’d been living on fruit so long by that point I decided to have snake meat for
dinner. It tasted great after a bit of cooking, but the next day…”
“Wait you ate snake and then got.. half snaked?”
Hazel nodded, “Either that or its bite, I guess, one of the two. Been pretty strictly vegetarian since then,
just in case.”
“Ok got it, no eating animals. Ok stand back I’ll take off, I’ll be back later” Hazel stood back as Lapis
spread her wings again then with a powerful kangaroo jump, she launched into the air and flapped
down hard, starting the climb into the air.
“I’ll collect dinner for us!” Hazel called up, “You’re good with fruit and herbs, right?”
Lapis gave the thumbs up to Hazel then flapped to gain altitude. She flew in a long circle and given the
size of the trees she boosted herself by flying close to them and kicking off as she went, maintaining
speed by her jumps until she rose above their immense size and was in the open air.
Above the trees the view was incredible. The forest seems to go on forever, dotted occasionally with
clearings or trees that stood immensely tall even for this place. Some appeared to soar the better part
of a mile into the air. Just the sight of the monsters gave lapis some vertigo, and the only reason she
could behold their full size is that they were so far away and apart. The ‘regular’ trees, as huge as they
were looked like little more than grass off in the distance around the base of the titans, and straining the
edge of her vision she could swear she saw whole forest growing amongst the branches of the beastly
trees. Something else seemed strange though Lapis couldn’t quite put her finger on it and was having
enough trouble comprehending the dimensions of this place already.
Lapis looked back down to center herself. She could see the scorched area around the cave opening,
and she could see the mountain next to her. Similar to the titan trees this mountain defied her
experiences on scale. It just bloody well just kept going. By now lapis was flapping nearly 1000 feet up.
About as far above the trees as the trees were tall, the ‘normal’ ones at least. MUCH higher than she
normally flew, as it was much higher than most things, she was familiar with. She knew she could go
higher, and heard of folks, particularly dragons, going to 10,000 feet, but she didn’t want to get tired at
thousands of feet up. The mountain next to her towered so far above she wasn’t really able to see the
top for hazy clouds around it obscured vision above a certain point. It wasn’t a sheer cliff or anything. It
was cone shaped like you’d expect, not even that steep all things considered, just huge both in base
circumference and zenith. From the ground it would be very hard to see how big it really was. The cave
system they immerged from must be miniscule compared to the mountain itself or there was no way
that Hazel had actually explored all of it.
Lapis flapped and soared along at a leisurely pace to avoid exhaustion. With some effort she pulled her
eyes away from the mountain and the titan trees and focused on the forest below her. She scanned it
for any sign of intelligent life. Fires, Roads, anything at all that could potentially mean help. She didn’t
see anything for a long time. Though she hadn’t explored that far in the grand scheme of things and it
would take her a long time to really prove that they were alone. What she was starting to get a grasp of
was what had seemed strange before.
The horizon was wrong. A horizon line should be a fairly sharp border where the planet curves away
from you. Go higher see farther, but the planet curves away regardless. The horizon was much blurrier
than it should be though. There were clouds among the mountain tops but she was well below cloud
layers right now so haze couldn’t explain it, but the forest, instead of having a clear line she couldn’t see
past seemed to just sort-of blur out. Trees got less and less visible farther they were away dissolving
into the blue of the sky with no clear border between them. Moreover, her altitude didn’t seem to help.
When she was just over the trees, vs 1000 feet up, her view distance before things blurred out seemed
to be the same. As she flew in one direction things came into focus in front of her and blurred out
behind her, so it’s not like the world ended or something.
Focused on trying to figure out what she was seeing she didn’t notice a dark shape take wing from far up
the mountain behind her.