Jumping Jack, Jumping Jill
You can’t help but be a little curious as you think about all this; you recall how your introduction to this woman was her bounding out from the bushes and landing in front of you. You’re pretty sure a kangaroo can’t naturally jump that high and that fast, so, you decide to stay here for now and…
“How did you jump that high up back down there?” you ask.
“Oh, that?” Erin says. She snorts. “That’s easy to do. No normal roo can do it, either, if you’re wondering - pretty sure it’s a benefit to being half-human.”
You furrow your furry brow. “Then I can do the same?”
“Probably,” Erin replies. She gives you a glance over and smirks. “You’ve got yourself a sheila’s body, but, I doubt that would affect your jumping strength. You wanna try it for yourself, do you?” She rubs her hands together and motions to the flat area around you. “How you do it is simple - you concentrate your strength into your legs, yeah? And when you jump, you have to treat it like you’re jumping as a human the same instant you do the motion.”
You blink a few times. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
She makes it sound like it’s simple to do despite the fact you’re not a normal human anymore, but, you do remind yourself she has experience, or so she’s said she has. Still, you admit you want to try it out for yourself - after all, being able to leap that high could prove useful to you for survival reasons, right?
You turn your body and hop a few times to be clearer from her and the lake.
‘Jump like I’m still a human, she says,’ you think. Along with focusing your strength into your legs.
You suppose what that means is you put your power entirely into your feet, and when you think of jumping as a human, you remember how you did that - you crouch down a bit and breathe in slow. As you breathe out, you spring your body up and leap, the energy expelling from your bigger feet while you do so.
You end up jumping quite high into the air! So high that you freak out a bit from the sheer surprise, and you abruptly crash down onto the grass in a heap.
Erin chortles from where she’s standing. “Not quite like that, but good effort!”
You grumble and pick yourself up by pushing against the ground, which proves to help you right yourself quicker. You feel a little tingling from the impact, but, it’s far from being all that painful.
“Try doing it while you’re moving,” Erin says. “And don’t think so hard! Just do!”
You nod as you absorb this. ‘Okay, okay.’
You hop back a few spots from where you were before, then turn around and start to prepare for another attempt. This time, you start to hop, and as you do, you bring your feet down and put all the weight of your body into your feet; and when you move forward, you spring up and expel that energy again.
Your legs push against the ground, and your body sails up into the air, a good few feet higher than any kangaroo could naturally hope to jump, so high you feel lighter than the air itself as your stomach jumps up with you.
When you come down, you remain calm, and your feet absorb the impact and all your weight. They sting, but, it’s a brief sensation of discomfort.
You stop, and your arms flail. But you feel good inside because you did it!
‘Whoa,’ you think. You nearly fall again, yet your tail helps keep you balanced.
You glance back at Erin, who is bounding toward you, except she leaps into the air in a single, fluid motion, jumping even higher than you did. You swear she’s floating through the air as she gracefully lands on the ground beside you.
And when she lands, her tail drops down to the same level as her feet. She does a smaller little hop seconds after the landing, too, before she is still.
“Your tail is almost like a third leg,” Erin remarks. “Treat it like that, and you can learn to use it to help not only keep your balance, but also to jump higher and land much smoother.” She winks. “Keep that in mind, yeah?”
“Thanks,” you say.
She nods. “No sweat. Took me a while to get the hang of it myself.”
“Maybe if I practice it enough I’ll get adjusted to it,” you say. You can feel the energy swirling in you, and with it, you feel excited. “I never dreamt I’d be able to jump that high before. It’s like… not quite flying, but…”
“Gliding through the air, I’d say,” Erin remarks. She smiles again. “When you learn to master the motions and the landing, and you do it from start to finish… bloody hell, it’s fantastic, mate. It’s like gliding through the air in these great, big bounds. Just remember that your stamina ain’t infinite, and if you land wrong, you can still hurt yourself. Definitely gotta be careful with it.”
You nod in understanding. “What else can we do? That you know of, I mean.”
She taps her chin, providing a humorous image given her form. “I’ve been in this body for a bit longer than you, I’d gather. I would say we can climb faster, because our upper body is notably stronger than a common roo’s. Thing is, our primary strength comes from our legs, and not our arms.”
You wriggle your furry toes around in the grass. “Makes sense, I guess.”
“Yeah, roos in media always have superhuman kicks,” Erin remarks with a snicker. “And it’s for good reason. Think more along those lines, and you have a broad grasp of what we can be capable of. Just don’t try kicking any boulders, or you might hurt yourself.” She winks. “We’re not superhuman, remember.”
“Well, I guess, then, maybe I should…”
Before you can finish, that howl rips through the air again, only it’s much, much louder, and much, MUCH closer than it was. You and Erin turn to the direction you both came from, toward the start of the hill, and you realize…
“It’s followed us,” you say. Because of course the dingo decided to follow them.
“Aw, piss,” Erin mutters.
“What do we do?” you ask.
She looks around and points. “We can go to the cave and hide out, wait and see what this dingo is and what it wants, or we can flee the other way. What do you wanna do? And be quick!”
Your mind races.
Written by Hollowpages on 19 August 2020