[open] don't think twice

[Terin]

T E R I N it’s not the devil at your door its just your shadow on the floor Returning to this world had been just the same as leaving it. A thrill, a momentary sensation of being aware of each individual scale and cell and atom of my being, of feeling them become brighter and then, just as quickly and inexplicably, the feeling leaves. Around me, the ocean has changed - less salty, with a current that somehow feels like more than just water slipping against my sapphire blue scales. I had dreamed of this last night, and I wonder now if that had been some sort of portent, a sign that the universe would bring me back. I had wanted it to be so, and perhaps that wanting had manifested in the way that this world’s magic so oddly does. I rise in the water, wearing the watery skin in which I am most familiar. With my head above the waves, I can see mountains ahead, red to the east, pine-forest cliffs to the west, and only sea to the north. Nothing looks familiar. I follow the fresh water, keeping low in the water as the afternoon sun fades. The sea floor becomes a bay, and then a river, and the moon now illuminates my steady underwater progress. Dawn has begun to color the sky by the time I drift into the lake. Weariness makes my scaled body feel heavy and sluggish, and I climbed into the shallows to the sound of the earliest bird calls. A large flat rock provides the perfect place to rest. A glance around in the dim light reveals no one to object, so with a few tight circles, I curl into a tight blue and white scaled ball. The end of my tail still trails into the water, but I intend to get a few hours of sleep and then carry on toward the Mountain a little farther downriver.