The Lamia

9-6

The forest has given her back her purpose, and with purpose comes will. But even so it is not easy. Her dream-shifts are normally instant, but in her forest dream such changes now come slowly, and are not always what she intends. 

Her tree-trunk form begins to resemble her human body, and her face takes shape. Soon she can open her eyes and see with them. But she still has roots going deep into the earth, and leafy branches above. She focuses on shifting her roots into snake form and drawing that part of her body out of the earth so she can move. 

As she does the arms and hands that had begun to form out of her tree branches elongate and change into batwings—but without the membranes that might enable her to fly with them. Folding her wing-fingers and raising up the forward part of her now otherwise snake-like body, she is able to begin moving through the forest in spite of this encumbrance. 

As she is trying to bring her shaman dream into focus on the batwing problem, she happens to cross a little brook. The trout dream intrudes, and her long snake tail begins to grow fins and become more fish-like, slowing her progress. As the nature of this change comes deeper into her dream, gills take form on her long throat, making it difficult to breathe properly. 

The batwings remain, and now she realizes that her bat hearing has returned as well. Huge bat ears have grown out of the sides of her otherwise human-appearing head. Meanwhile her fishtail becomes more pronounced, so that her only remaining snakelike parts are a long neck and torso. This strange combination of forms leaves her nearly immobile. 

She tries to summon from the forest dream the form of a creature that can move easily through the woods. But all she manages is to momentarily acquire a foxtail in place of one of her dorsal fins. She can do nothing more. The collective nature of the forest dream is too strong in her, and she can no longer single out just one form from it, even her own.

Seemingly stuck with this awkward combination of different parts, she hunkers down where she is, in hiding, waiting and hoping for some semblance of normalcy to return.