The body was a thin body. Thin not in girth, but in density. The landscape was visible through her hands. The feeling was not light; gravity was visible and seemed to have a special task for holding her to the ground. Bands of various thicknesses connected her joints to the earth. Her hands passed through them as through a sunbeam. She took in the green, breezy fields and their inhabitants. She didn’t see anything attached to the horses or cattle, and they were secure to the ground. Perhaps only humans we tethered? It was curious. Footsteps approached at a run or trot, and there were several pairs.
This moment was the only constant from her various travels: should she hide and observe or risk meeting what was coming? This time the pastoral surroundings gave her courage, perhaps from a false sense of safety, but she remained in the full view as a line of jogging men in bright, clownish clothing breached the hilltop. Three legs apiece, the extraneous one seemed in use to be something of a training wheel to keep them from falling to their right as they all leaned ten degrees off the vertical. A total of eight eyes (and these were paired in the usual way) noticed her and quickly looked away with a forced casualness.
She tried to speak but found no voice, even though she was sure she had spoken a few words on arrival. Had that all been in her head? Was this a telepathic planet? She reached out with her mind but found only her own voice. Pardon? Excuse me? Please stop. I need help. Please. Her panic grew and her gestures amplified, but the bands restricted them to the normal range so that the waving of her arms in terror merely looked like the waving of a hand in greeting. The men were nearly to her, so she decided to jump in their path. She didn’t even reach two inches in the air. After they had passed, their whispers entered her ears, and the one distinct word among them was “cult”. They were gone.
Exhausted, the girl made a pile of herself and began to think out all of this information and hoped that her own logic had some shared characteristics with this world’s. The evolution of these people was clearly out of her realm. She couldn’t move easily, but she could see her own gravity. It was not subject to her will. There was some strange religion of which she was a part. Perhaps the bands were some sort of magic? Her frustration bubbled and built until she couldn’t just remain thinking. More information, more experience. That is what she really needed. How could she really make any real judgments based on three-legged men and her own capacity to move? Up she stood and took a step. Her foot snapped back to her place beside the road. Was she stuck here? No. She tried the other foot. Same result. She tried to kick her one foot, then the other, and then both. Nothing. Crawling? Maybe that was her movement? Crouching down, her hands reached out to the ground but jerked back to her body immediately before touching the ground.
I WANT TO CROSS THE ROAD!!!!!!!!!!
This moment was the only constant from her various travels: should she hide and observe or risk meeting what was coming? This time the pastoral surroundings gave her courage, perhaps from a false sense of safety, but she remained in the full view as a line of jogging men in bright, clownish clothing breached the hilltop. Three legs apiece, the extraneous one seemed in use to be something of a training wheel to keep them from falling to their right as they all leaned ten degrees off the vertical. A total of eight eyes (and these were paired in the usual way) noticed her and quickly looked away with a forced casualness.
She tried to speak but found no voice, even though she was sure she had spoken a few words on arrival. Had that all been in her head? Was this a telepathic planet? She reached out with her mind but found only her own voice. Pardon? Excuse me? Please stop. I need help. Please. Her panic grew and her gestures amplified, but the bands restricted them to the normal range so that the waving of her arms in terror merely looked like the waving of a hand in greeting. The men were nearly to her, so she decided to jump in their path. She didn’t even reach two inches in the air. After they had passed, their whispers entered her ears, and the one distinct word among them was “cult”. They were gone.
Exhausted, the girl made a pile of herself and began to think out all of this information and hoped that her own logic had some shared characteristics with this world’s. The evolution of these people was clearly out of her realm. She couldn’t move easily, but she could see her own gravity. It was not subject to her will. There was some strange religion of which she was a part. Perhaps the bands were some sort of magic? Her frustration bubbled and built until she couldn’t just remain thinking. More information, more experience. That is what she really needed. How could she really make any real judgments based on three-legged men and her own capacity to move? Up she stood and took a step. Her foot snapped back to her place beside the road. Was she stuck here? No. She tried the other foot. Same result. She tried to kick her one foot, then the other, and then both. Nothing. Crawling? Maybe that was her movement? Crouching down, her hands reached out to the ground but jerked back to her body immediately before touching the ground.
I WANT TO CROSS THE ROAD!!!!!!!!!!
Her voice scared her. The horses looked at her, but she barely noticed because her leg tethers were suddenly gone. It took her a moment to understand that they were missing, but she soon sprinted across the road and would have kept going clear into the pasture, but she fell hard onto the ground once she had completed the crossing. The bonds were back in place. No. She cried. Her face and hands hurt from the scrapes and blossoming bruises, but the bitterness in her sobs was from her loss of freedom. She wanted to go home now. She wanted a warm bath and a good dinner and her parents reading to her before she fell asleep.
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