A Bit of Bad Luck, part 2

The European Alps, 1082 BC

Zia pulled the cloak tighter around her lithe form, trying desperately to keep the cold wind that swirled about her from freezing her in her tracks. The blizzard had arrived without warning, eddies of whirling snow obscuring even the most obvious features from her view. She had spent hours plodding through it, looking for shelter, but now she was more focused on just staying alive. Despite her best efforts, her bearskin cloak was stiffening with ice, and whenever she stopped, the sweat that poured down her legs--sweat she knew could be deadly--threatened to freeze her extremities in place. She was beginning to believe she wouldn’t make it.

It had all started three months ago, when she had met Rhynsan. They had started out with casual meetings in the forest, which often begun with him surprising her with a basket of berries or dried fish. It was only after their meetings became more intimate that she learned that he was from the clan that lived on the other side of the mountain that jutted up like a bear’s tooth above Zia’s clan’s wooded valley. She knew of the bitter rivalries that had plagued the two clans for generations, and she knew the risk of continuing her meetings with Rhynsan. But she continued anyway. They were discovered by her younger brother two weeks ago, the day that Rynsan was killed and she was banished. They left her a spear, a bow with three arrows, her bearskin cloak, and a waterskin. She was forbidden from returning to the valley ever again.

That was only two weeks ago, and already she was near death. To leave the valley she had to travel through a treacherous mountain pass that was covered with snow all year round. She had almost reached the top when the blizzard suddenly appeared, and now she had no idea where she was.

A large shape materialized out of the blinding snow. It towered above her, a jagged monolith that stood like a sentinel guarding the chief’s village. Zia stumbled towards it, snow finding its way into every orifice she had exposed to the elements. Reaching its base, she found a small alcove and huddled into it.

Sheltered slightly from the wind, she sat until the blizzard abated.

~~~

It was morning when the last wisps of snow settled. Zia poked her head out from the folds of her cloak and gulped nervously.

She had no idea where she was.

Before her stretched a seemingly limitless expanse of snow, miles across and completely featureless. She could just see the peaks of mountains on the other side of it. Strange, unfamiliar mountains that she had never seen before. The monolith she was sheltered under was the only landmark for leagues around on the plateau. Zia felt impossibly small against it.

Getting up, she decided that her best chance was to reach the mountains that looked to be a couple of leagues away. Which meant she would have to cross the plateau. With a sigh that brought on a fit of coughing in the thin air, she set off.

She was only a few strides away from the monolith when the snow gave way beneath her. She was sent tumbling head over heels down a vertical ice tunnel, landing with a thump on a pile of snow and rolling into an ice-cold stream.

Spluttering for a moment, Zia began to weep, all the events of the last two weeks finally catching up with her. Even the cold bite of icy stream water refused to bother her. All she wanted now was to just die and be done with it.

Finally, sniffing, Zia sat up to see a stunning landscape. Stretching on as far as she could see was a forest of fantastic trees, with twisting branches and huge oval leaves. Between them wound small streams surrounded by moss covered rocks, short bushes and shrubs forming a thick undergrowth through the wood. Above it all loomed a ceiling of pale blue ice that cast the entire chamber in a soft gloomy light. It was the most amazing place she had ever seen.

She was brought out of her trance by the sharp bite of cold stream water seeping through her clothes. Cursing, she stripped completely, knowing that she was better off naked than in freezing wet clothes. Retrieving her cloak from the mound of snow, Zia wrapped it around herself and entered the forest.

It was even more amazing on the inside. The trees were covered in pale blue flowers as wide across as her outstretched hand, and small berries hung from some of the bushes. Flashes of dazzling light from the stream suggested to her the presence of fish. Soft croaking emanated from mossy alcoves hidden at the bases of trees, but further inspection only revealed a blur of frantic movement and large alarmed eyes that scurried quickly farther into the burrows.

As she took all this in, Zia was startled as she stubbed her toe on something concealed in the moss. Cursing at the pain, she bent down to find that she had injured herself on a plump cylindrical object embedded in the root of a nearby tree. Looking farther along it revealed several more, protruding straight up from the ground. They were each about the length of her hand, vaguely phallic, with a long slit at their tops. The end of each formed a large head thicker than the rest of the tube, further enhancing their humorous appearance, at least to Zia. Smirking, she stood up, eager to explore more of the forest.

However, as she straightened, she was startled by a large moth that fluttered into her face. Batting away at it with her arms, Zia lost her balance, landing directly and painfully on top of the root stalk. It entered her vagina, lodging itself firmly inside.

Cursing again as the moth flew away, Zia attempted to pull herself off of the stalk. However, her attempts were met with continuing failure. She was still trying when she heard a gurgling noise emanating from within the tree, specifically, the root she had been so rudely attached to. Her confusion turned to alarm as she saw jets of thick blue liquid shoot out of the other stalks nearby. Her alarm turned to horror as she felt the stalk inside her do the same.

The fluid was ice-cold, forcing a dim numbness through her body as it flowed out of the stalk. The feeling spread from her crotch into her abdomen, and then into her torso and thighs as the substance was pumped into her. She could begin to see it bloating her belly, forming a soft mound around her belly button. As her waist rounded out, the swelling spread to her breasts and buttocks, ballooning them out to the size of her head. She began to resemble a woman near to giving birth as she lost the ability to see the place where the stalk entered her body.

As the fluid began exploring new territory, Zia could feel it enter her arms and legs, forcing them out into rigid positions. The huge ball her belly had become began engulfing her entire torso, her back filling outwards until it resembled her front. She lost the ability to bend her knees as her thighs thickened wider than the trunks of some of the nearby trees. Her breasts became mounds resting on the turgid sphere of her torso, and her upper arms were now resembling thick cones. In a few moments her arms would be immobile.

Thoughts began racing through Zia’s head. Was this a punishment? A deserved fate of a woman who betrayed her family and her clan for a savage from another valley? Or was this simply her stupid luck for getting lost in that blizzard and winding up in this forest of glowing fish and dicks that grew from roots?

Zia’s limbs had been absorbed into her spherical body down to the knees and elbows, and what were left now resembled cones. Her crotch was almost lower than her feet now, although the numbing liquid prevented her from feeling the stalk embedded in it, pumping away. She simply sat there as her arms and legs disappeared into her huge bulk, hands and feet swelling up in the process. She could feel her cheeks, lips, even her tongue swelling, robbing her of the ability to call for help(even if there had been any) and rendering her nearly blind. The liquid’s numbing chill prevented Zia from feeling her hands and feet get absorbed into her body, or feeling her finger and toenails digging into her still-stretching skin. She couldn’t feel an adjacent root stalk rub against her, spraying her side with thick blue fluid. But she did hear, minutes later, the sound of the stalk penetrating her break under her weight, though she had no way of knowing that, using the English system of measurement, she was now around sixteen feet across. Zia had no way of knowing that, or what would happen to her, as the numbness enveloped her, and she drifted off to sleep...

~~~

The waking seemed to take an eternity. Her eyes would open momentarily, blurry trees and deep blue ceiling the only things she could see, before they would close again and she would return to her torpor. So it came with a certain surprise and relief when Zia finally woke completely and had returned to normal. But further surprise came when she realized her current state.

As she sat up, she looked down at herself to discover that she was covered in a thick layer of furry moss, extending down to the tips of her toes and up to her face. She could see a small clump of leaves protruding from her belly button, and tiny white flowers extending above those. She gave the plant a soft tug, and it came out, roots and all, taking a small patch of moss with it. The next several minutes were spent tearing as much moss off of Zia’s body as she could. That finished, she took in the other changes.

Her hair had grown extensively, now reaching well past her feet and forming a thick curtain that concealed her completely from behind. She was rather pleased with this, however; the women of her clan never cut their hair, letting it grow throughout their lives. Long hair meant great age and wisdom, and Zia’s hair was now longer than anyone’s she had seen. However, she’d have to make sure it didn’t drag behind her, so she tied it around her chest, to keep her breasts warm.

That was when she noticed that she didn’t feel cold. She was completely naked, and she knew the forest had been just as cold as the plateau above when she first arrived, but she felt quite comfortable, not too warm or too cold. At first she thought maybe the climate had changed inside the forest, but she eventually realized that the tree liquid she had been filled with must still be inside her in small amounts, lowering her body’s temperature and making the surrounding air seem warmer. Coming to that conclusion, Zia made her way back out of the forest to retrieve her clothes.

However, when she found the mound of snow, now much smaller and hardened into ice, all she could find of her clothes were a few scraps of ancient leather and the rotted-through shafts of her spear and arrows, their heads lying unattached. Zia slowly began to realize that she must have been asleep for a very long time. It would explain the moss, and her hair and her clothes, but she herself appeared unchanged. She looked at her arms, finding no wrinkles, although her skin looked pale blue instead of its normal pale cream color. Feeling her face, she found nothing to suggest that she had aged at all. Somehow, Zia thought, the tree’s liquid had preserved her youth, for what appeared to have been many, many years, possibly centuries. Everyone she knew was probably dead or....

But she didn’t want to think about that. Instead, Zia focused on what she was going to do now. She knew she couldn’t climb up the ice tunnel, and it was sealed shut anyway, so she would have to find a place to live in the forest, find sources of food and water, and try and live down here. Resigning herself to the situation(though also feeling thrilled at the thought of exploring more of the forest), she set off.

~~~

The next several weeks passed quickly for Zia. She caught fish from the streams, and ate berries from bushes, and found the stream water to be the purest she had ever seen. There was a slightly sweet, icy taste to it, which she believed might be tree juice that had leaked into the water. She built a shelter under an especially large tree, using hardened dead wood and the large leaves from the tree. Things started to settle into a gentle rhythm.

She found the creatures of the forest to be quite magical. Zia had seen no large creatures like wolves or bears, or even small things like mice. There were no mammals in the ice forest, as far as she could tell. However, she would sit quietly in the evenings and listen to the chorus of frogs that lived in their burrows under the trees, and would watch the fish in the streams dance and flash with dazzling lights. On one occasion she woke in the early morning to find a large owl marching around her shelter, looking at things curiously. Upon her sitting up, the owl looked at her in surprise, churred warmly, and hobbled away, flapping its small, flightless wings.

However, Zia’s favorite creatures were the moths, the very creatures responsible for her predicament. The adults were huge, each with wingspans large enough to cover her entire face, but it was the caterpillars she most enjoyed. They were fat, green little worms, but their sides bore glowing spots that would change from blue to green to red and all colors in between. She would raise them on ice tree leaves, and then watch them spin silk cocoons the size of her fist. These she would hang above the entrance to her shelter, and wait for them to hatch. So far, however, none had.

Zia knew that eventually she would have to sleep again, but she would wait until she was finished exploring the ice forest. However, nothing could have prepared her for summer.

She assumed it was summer, anyway. Zia had been banished early in spring, when the ice forest was in bloom, and it had been the same when she awoke. So the season that came after it must be summer. That was her reasoning, anyway.

She had spent several days in the far end of the ice chamber, past the forest and into an area where the streams coalesced into a magnificent waterfall. Zia spent a long time swimming in the pool below it, even riding down the huge cataract, but eventually she returned. And she was astonished at the forest’s transformation. Nearly every plant she could see bore fruit; from small little rock mosses to the ice trees themselves, which were laden with huge fruits each larger than her head. She immediately began trying different kinds, producing many different results. This tree moss berry tasted like moss, this bush’s was sweet, but this one’s was bitter. There were small plants that carried seeds she liked the taste of. The palm-sized fruits of this vine reminded her of the wine her village would make for celebrations. One berry fizzed as it went down her throat, and made her belch several times for a while afterwards.

But her last thing to try was one of the fruits from the ice trees. She pulled one off easily, eyeing it almost warily, rather daunted by its size. But, shrugging, she bit into it.

The taste was almost overwhelming. As her teeth sank into the soft fruit, juice gushed out, filling her mouth with a sweet, intoxicating flavor like nothing she had ever tasted. It was addictive; each bite of the fruit made her want another, and another, and another. Soon she had finished the entire fruit. Hunger(and thirst) sated for a moment, Zia sat down with a groan, rubbing her bulging abdomen. She wanted more of the fruit, but she felt like her belly would burst if she took another bite. But a few minutes later, this became a genuine worry as she felt her stomach become fuller. Looking down with alarm, she could see it slowly expanding outward, an angry bubbling emanating from within. But just as she began to feel as if she could hold no more, the feeling dissipated. However, she could still hear the bubbling, and still saw her belly expanding. It continued for several minutes, and by the time it stopped, Zia could no longer see past her belly to her feet.

She smiled broadly as she rubbed her enormous abdomen. This would definitely take some experimenting.

Zia waddled back to her hut, hindered a bit by her new shape. As she came around a tree and caught sight of her home, her eyes lit up with delight. Hanging from several cocoons were her moths, their eyespots flashing brilliantly in the dim forest light. Hurriedly waddling the rest of the way, Zia took one of the moths in her hand, feeling its soft body crawl about her palm.

It suddenly took off, startling Zia and making her fall backward. Regaining her senses, she looked to find that the moth had landed on top of her belly. One by one, the other moths joined it, and Zia drifted off to pleasant slumber. When she awoke, they were gone.

A few weeks later, Zia now faced a tough decision. She had explored the ice forest as much as she could, but it seemed time to go back to sleep. As much as she loved her new home, there was a part of her constantly yearning to feel inflated and full again, yearning to see what another few centuries of change would bring. She could no longer deny her desire.

The morning came. With some regret, Zia disassembled her hut, placed her caterpillars in the nearby trees, and left the area.

The ice tree she had selected was large, and its root stalks were long and rigid. Lowering herself carefully onto one, Zia noted a young sapling growing nearby. That would be her meter when she woke up, if it was still there.

As the cold sap rushed into her, Zia gave in to her feelings and leaned backward slightly, moaning in pleasure. The liquid flowed into her, forcing her belly outward, swelling her breasts and buttocks. The several minutes it took to expand into a giant sphere were ecstasy for Zia, but eventually her swollen tongue muffled her cries of pleasure, and she fell into torpor before she heard the root stalk break...

~~~

The waking was similar to the first time, but, as before, it did end, and Zia awoke to darkness.

This was different than night, when plants and animals provided a small bit of colorful light. This was pitch darkness. Zia tried to yell, but found her voice blocked by something stuck in her mouth. It was gritty, and tasted of soil.

She attempted to reach up and pull it out, but found her arm restrained. Tugging as hard as she could, she felt her bonds break and she reached up and tore away the moss covering her eyes.

Now she could see the clump of leaves that protruded out of the moss where her mouth should be. Taking them by their base, Zia gave a hard yank, and out popped the plant, roots and all.

As she tried to sit up, Zia found herself restrained by what looked to her like a level plain of moss, extending a ways around on either side of her. She was completely immersed. Undaunted, she started to tear away at it, working her other arm and torso free. Something hopped franticly out of a hole near her belly, and Zia heard the frog croaking as it scurried away.

Eventually freeing herself revealed that plants had found their way into other parts of her body. Zia removed all of them, including one in her belly button, which had very attractive blue flowers. Her hair was more than three times the length of her body, and when she tied it around her torso, it fully covered everything that would need to be covered up in polite company.

Zia turned as she heard voices. They were far off and indistinct, but they were definitely human. Running through the forest as fast as she could, Zia realized that the voices were coming from the old ice tunnel that she had fallen through, all those years--centuries? millenia?--ago.

She stopped at the perimeter of the forest and observed the group. There were five, and all were wearing dark clothing that muffled their outlines. From the voices she deduced that there were four men and a woman. They were standing below the ice tunnel, which was now bright, illuminating a large patch of forest. The strangers seemed to be looking out at the trees with considerable excitement. The woman, as far as Zia could tell, was trying to convince them to go in, making excited hand gestures toward the ice forest.

Zia was nervous. These people were strangers. They weren’t speaking any language she had ever heard. Their clothing was different, they carried bizarre objects, and their faces were concealed by dark masks. Taking a deep breath, Zia calmed herself, and stepped out of the forest and towards the group.

It was one of the men who saw her first, pointing and crying out excitedly. They all stood for a moment, seemingly stunned, before the woman started to approach Zia. Zia did likewise.

The others followed the woman’s lead, and now they stood before the ice forest’s inhabitant, cautious, and perhaps nervous, too. Finally the woman spoke.

It was gibberish to Zia, lacking sounds her people used and containing others of which she knew not. Zia replied, “I can’t understand you.”

The woman turned to one of the men, speaking. Zia noted that, while he spoke the same language, it sounded slightly different. The man handed her a small object, which the woman handed to Zia, indicating that Zia place it by her ear.

When she did, she let out a gasp as part of the device jabbed itself into her ear. Screaming, Zia attempted to pull it out, but it had lodged itself firmly inside, and refused to come out.

She blacked out for a moment, and when she opened her eyes, she was on the ground, and the woman was kneeling next to her, holding the evil object in her hand. Scrambling to get away from it, Zia was stopped short by the woman speaking.

“Are you alright?”

She sat there, dumbstruck for a moment, before answering.

“I... yis, I’m aulright.”

It was their language she was speaking. They had given her their language.

The woman looked at her oddly for a moment.

“Say ‘Nobody’s seen the Jabberwocky’s chowder.’”

Zia was confused for a moment before answering.

“Noubudee’s seen th’ Jabbawocky’s chaoudah.”

The woman turned to the man who had given her the--vocal implant?

“Mike, did you give her an Australian accent?”

The man, Mike,--short for Michael?-- looked embarrassed.

“I thought I selected the Sydney area. She sounds Tasmanian.”

Mike talked similarly to Zia, but there were clear differences. The woman’s voice had been extremely different, pronouncing some sounds more clearly, and others not at all. She was from--America?

“Can you tell us your name,” asked the woman, with that odd accent of hers.

“I’m Zia,” she replied, glancing around at them all. “Who are you.”

The woman smiled. “I’m Alli. This man here is Mike, that’s Desmond, and the two back there are Rick and Carson. We came here to explore this ice cave. It seems that it’s your home.”

“It is,” she said. “I’ve been here for a very long time.”

“You don’t look that old,” said Mike. “Were you a child with your parents, perhaps?”

“I’m older than I look. It’s probably been a few centuries.”

They looked at each other, amused. Anger flared briefly in Zia’s mind. They didn’t believe her? Alli grabbed her arm, helping her up. Shock showed clearly on her face.

“You’re so cold!” She pulled out another, different device, pointing it at Zia. Her eyes widened with astonishment. “Two degrees Celsius. That’s impossible!”

Zia smiled.

“Welcome to the ice forest.”

The European Alps, 2586 AD