Jungle
You lay there half conscience and propped up, a little twinkle catches your eye. A mouse crawls on your face sniffing your muzzle, you scrunch your muzzle at the smell as the tiny creature runs off afraid. You adjust to using your deep pits to sense the smells and temperatures of things; the world seems to be wholly made of scents and different heat signatures. This is going to take a bit to adjust to.
You take a moment to gather yourself, realizing where you’ve ended up this time around. The most disorienting thing being that your vision is almost completely nearsighted. You can make out tall trees, blurs of greens and turquoise, snaking vines hanging from a canopy so high up that you cannot even begin to comprehend how high with your eyes alone. You take your time adjusting to all of the smells and sights around you, you thip your tongue a few times to try out your new olfactory nerves, and with satisfaction you can find yourself way less disoriented by the surroundings while using all of your senses in tandem.
The breeze carries the earthy scent of the soil and the trees, the footstep of an ant would rouse enough scent molecules for you to detect with your delicate tongue. You smell the musky animals all around you, and then an insatiable desire within you makes you regret not eating that mouse from earlier.
“So I’m in the jungle.” You look up higher than you believe the canopy goes, which requires you to crank your neck all the way back just to see the shooting angular vines pointing in all directions with you standing at the center of the infinite dark green mass. Suddenly you smell something foreign, through the soles of your feet you can hear little scurrying all around you, maybe even something else?
Instantly, a feeling of terror comes over you as you realize that you and the mice are not alone. Your body seems to carry you over thick jungle roots at lightning speed; adrenal glands pumping. You don’t seem to sense anything actually chasing you, though that encounter really spooked you. Better safe than sorry. And better tired and out of breath than eaten in a dangerous sounding jungle.
You really start to rethink this decision.
“How can I enjoy this? It’s like survival of the fittest out here.” You say regretting your choice in outfit. You eye an especially large tree and in an instant decide to climb it, your sticky fingers clinging to the bark of the trees with ease. You realize that you are among the fittest, your skinny body being pulled up the tree with ease. You perch on a high branch and scan the scents in the area, and the nearby area seems to be clear according to your expertly tuned pits. “You know maybe I can enjoy this.”
You sit atop your tree and look around at your new kingdom, your body now allowing you to explore the environment in ways you never could have before.
Written by Driftingdragon on 07 October 2019