Let Go

The hour went slowly. I hung from the branch with my back feet hooked into the bark and felt the crack on my back widen, a little at a time, like a zipper being pulled by someone who wasn't in a hurry. The night was cool. Somewhere below me, the stream kept running. Nothing came to bother me, and I was grateful for that, because there was nothing I could have done about it.

Then the pressure started.

It began in the middle of my back and spread outward, a deep, slow push from inside, as if the body under my shell had decided it was done waiting. The split opened wider. I felt the cold night air on new skin, soft and wet and tender. My old shell didn't want to let go. It held on at the edges, at every joint, and I had to work against it, rocking my body back and forth on the branch, pushing and resting and pushing again.

[Molt] in progress
Shell integrity: 0%
Do not fall.

"Do not fall." Thanks.

My head came free first. The old skin over my eyes peeled away, and the world got sharper all at once, so sharp it almost hurt. I hadn't known my eyes were clouded. I had thought that was just how this forest looked. Every leaf had an edge now. Every drop of water on the bark caught what little light there was.

Then my forelegs. That was the hardest part. My scythes had to slide out of the old scythes like hands out of tight gloves, every spine and hook pulling free one at a time. It took a long time and it hurt, and I didn't stop.

That was when the Echo spoke again.

"Wait," it said. It sounded far away, and it sounded scared. "Wait, please. I'm still in there."

I knew what it meant. I could feel it. The Echo wasn't in my new body. It was in the old one, the empty shell I was crawling out of, holding on to it the way it had held on to everything. The old habits. The old fears. The way I used to reach with hands I didn't have anymore.

"I don't want to go," it said. "I remember things. Rain on a window. Hot coffee. My bed. If you leave me here, who's going to remember those?"

I stopped pushing for a moment and hung there, half in and half out of myself, and I thought about it honestly. That was the one thing I'd always done, in either life. I thought about things honestly.

"I will," I thought. "I'll remember them. You don't have to stay in there to keep them. You just have to come with me."

It was quiet for a long time.

"It's better out there?" it asked. "Really?"

I thought about the skink rolling in the mud. The rat cutting left and me cutting left with it. The sun on the flat rock and my scythes shining after I'd cleaned them. Not one moment in my old life had felt as much like mine as those did.

"Yes," I thought. "It's better."

The Echo didn't answer. It didn't need to. I felt it let go of the old shell, and I felt it come forward, and then it was just there, the way my own thoughts were just there. Not a voice behind me anymore. Not someone else. Me.

I pushed one last time, and my body slid free.

[Molt complete]
Shell: fully restored
New shell hardening: ~6 hours
New trait: Clear Eyelids

[Soul imprint: Human ~ complete]
Human Echo: integrated.

I hung there under the empty shell, pale and soft and shaking, and I listened for the Echo out of habit. Nothing. Not silence, exactly. More like a room where two people had been talking, and now there was just one person, and she didn't need to talk to herself anymore.

I still remembered the rain on the window. I remembered the coffee. They were mine now, the same as the skink and the rat. They didn't pull at me anymore. They were just things that had happened to me, a long way from here.

When the sun came up, the light hit my new eyes, and they stung. Then something happened that had never happened in this body. A thin, clear film slid down over my eyes and back up again, so fast I almost missed it. The world went soft for an instant and came back clean. I had blinked. I did it again on purpose, just to feel it, and the sting was gone. I could still see right through the film when it was closed, but now the dust and the glare and the mud had something to stop them. Such a small thing. It made me want to click out loud.

Then I looked down and saw myself properly for the first time.

My new shell was almost white at first, soft as wet paper, but it darkened as the light hit it, turning green, then a deep, hard green with brown along the edges. I was bigger. Not much, but enough that the branch bent a little more under me than it had last night. My scythes were longer, and the spines along them were sharper and cleaner.

I flexed them slowly, then quickly, and there was no lag at all. Not a second. Not half a second. My body moved exactly when I wanted it to, the way breathing happens. I had spent five days fighting this body and learning it, and somewhere in the night I'd stopped needing to. It was just mine.

Hunger Clock: 54%

Molting had cost me. I was hungry, and I knew where to start. The old shell still hung from the branch above me, empty and pale, the shape of who I'd been yesterday. I climbed up to it and ate it, every brittle piece. It tasted like nothing. It still felt like the right thing to do.

Hunger Clock: 61%

By midday my shell had hardened enough to hunt. I climbed down to the stream, found a fish holding still in the shallows, and didn't even think about it. I waited, I aimed where it was going, and I struck once. Clean. No wasted splash, no second try.

[Kill] Stream Fish ~ Lv.1
XP gained.

I was halfway up the bank with it when the roots beside me rustled. A gray blur with a long bare tail shot out, straight for my fish, the same trick as before. Maybe a cousin of the last one. Maybe they all just thought this was a good idea.

I didn't chase it this time. I didn't need to. I saw it coming before it left the roots, dropped the fish, turned, and caught it in the air with one scythe while it was still reaching for the fish. It didn't even have time to squeal. The whole thing took less time than it would have taken my old self to say "hey."

[Kill] Root Rat ~ Lv.2
XP gained.

Something in my chest clicked twice, quick and light, and this time I knew what it was. I was laughing.

I picked the fish back up and carried both of them to my flat rock in the sun, and I ate them slowly.

Hunger Clock: 85%

While I ate, I noticed something strange. I was happy. Not relieved. Not proud. Just happy, the plain, quiet kind I couldn't remember feeling in my old body, not even once.

I had told the Goddess I never wanted to be human again. I hadn't known then how right I was.