Chapter Text
Right. So. That takes us to the present. Me, a low-level warlock, lying on my back. In a mud puddle. In a fucking rainforest.
Rain pattered through the jungle canopy above me. And it was not a dream. I was already soaking wet. The sensation was very vivid. And my favorite pajamas were probably ruined, which probably shouldn't have been one of the first things I was worried about, but dammit, I liked these pajamas. They were comfortable. Or rather, they were comfortable. Now they were covered in mud and soaking wet. At least the temperature was currently at a comfortably warm level, and not likely to induce hypothermia.
I groaned. Me and my big mouth, I thought. I propped myself up and looked around. I had landed on the bank of a muddy creek that was swollen from the rain and flowing quickly. A few more feet to the left and I might have drowned. Small blessings, I guess? A chorus of bird calls echoed through the trees (they were mostly yelling about territorial boundaries) over the constant patter of falling raindrops. The foliage was intensely green, and dense —and me without a machete. Without anything, apparently, except for the clothes on my back.
No phone. No shoes. No bra. No shelter. No food. Fuck.
So anyway, like I said, I'm having a morning.
Welp. With no supplies of any kind, no particular survival skills, and no sign of the asshole warlock patron who sent me here, I was probably going to die. And only a few hours before I was supposed to go on my first date with my crush! She was going to think I stood her up! That's some bullshit. Totally unfair.
At least I had superpowers! That was more than nothing. There were animals everywhere; maybe if I talked with them, they could give me some information that could save my life. Making friends with the birds around here might be my only hope. I closed my eyes, tried to ignore the water dripping down my back, and listened to what the closest one was saying.
He was saying, "Hey! Check it out! There's a human here! And it didn't bring any food or supplies! It must be a total moron! Hahaha!"
Ugh.
I looked up, shielding my eyes from the rain with one hand. It was a macaw with blue and yellow feathers. Another similarly-colored macaw was flying over to join him in gawking at me. "Hi!" I said to him, with all the politeness I could muster. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to land in your territory! I'm afraid I'm a little bit lost."
"Oh, wow!" he said. "She can talk! That's a talking human! Did you hear that?"
"You're right!" said the other one—a female. (I couldn't tell by looking, but I could hear it in the verb forms. A lot of bird languages are heavily gendered. I assume it's because they use their birdsong very extensively in their mating rituals, but I've never asked.) "I heard her!" she continued. "That's incredible! I've never met a talking human before! Is this a trick? Are we being pranked?"
"Not a trick," I said. "My name is Grace. Do you have names?" (Most animals don't have names for themselves in their own languages; it's more common for them to rely on pronouns and prepositions, or to identify individuals in terms of smells rather than words. Songbirds are usually an exception, though—they're all about verbal communication, especially the smarter bird species, like corvids and parrots, who are clever as hell, and can carry a conversation as well as any human. Macaws, of course, are a type of parrot, as I'm sure you were aware.)
"I'm Fweet-Fweet-Toowee, and this is my mate, Fweeoot-Feeree'eet," said the female macaw. "How did you learn how to speak? All the other humans only ever make meaningless wa-wa-wa noises." (Bird names can be hard to transliterate. Their languages are always tonal, and involve a lot of whistling, trilling, and other noises that humans have trouble pronouncing. These are the best written forms I can manage for them. Wa-wa-wa, on the other hand, was pretty much exactly how she said it.)
(Is this too many parentheticals? I feel like it's more parentheticals than Kate usually uses. And now I'm breaking the fourth wall again. I'm sorry. I swear, I don't mean to be meta. I'm not Deadpool or Gwenpool or She-Hulk or Squirrel Girl. I mean, I can talk to squirrels, so in that sense, I'm a little bit Squirrel Girl. It's just that I'm new to narration, and I'm a little bit insecure about it. It's too many parentheticals, isn't it? I'll tone them down.)
"Oh, we humans can all talk, it's just that we speak our own languages, so we normally only communicate with each other. I just happen to also know your language," I explained. (Not technically correct, but close enough. To be clear, when I talk to animals, I don't really speak their language. I speak English, and they understand it somehow. Kind of like the universal translators in Star Trek, but for animals. Aaand this was another parenthetical after I just said I'd tone them down. Sorry.)
"Wow! That's amazing!" said Fweet-Fweet-Toowee.
"We've always thought humans were fascinating creatures, even if they are mostly ugly and stupid," added Fweeoot-Feeree'eet. "But if you can speak to us, it's a revelation! You're like a bridge between our species! Actually, there are a few things we've always wondered about humans…"
"If you can help me, I'd be glad to answer your questions. Are there any other humans near here?" I asked. If there was a settlement nearby, maybe I could find help.
"Sure. Just over that mountain, there's a group of humans, all males, I think," said Fweeoot-Feeree'eet. "If you can fly as well as you talk, we could show you the way. Although I wouldn't get too close if I were you—they have guns, and they're not very friendly."
"Even to other humans," Fweet-Fweet-Toowee added. "If you're not part of their flock, I'd stay away. Our uphill neighbor Tooweeoo-Toowee said one time she saw them attacking a group of other humans who tried to approach their camp." (The macaw word for "camp" actually could be translated more literally as "human nest"—oh, sorry again.)
"Are you part of their flock, Grace?" said Fweeoot-Feeree'eet. "I've never seen them come over the mountain. Probably because it's a very tall mountain and they can't fly."
"I can't fly either," I said. "And no, I'm not part of their flock." These other humans sounded like bad news. Wikipedia said that drug runners and human traffickers were known to hide out in some of these jungles, where there was no law enforcement presence to keep them in check. If that was true, and the only humans for miles around were a band of desperate criminals and/or gangsters, it didn't bode well for the "finding help" plan.
Maybe I could intimidate them with a few laser beams. But there's only one of me and who-knows-how-many of them, and I'm a lousy shot anyway.
Okay. Fine. Cool. No big deal. New plan. My patron probably brought me here because I asked to meet face-to-face, right? So whoever they are, they must be nearby. Maybe I just arrived a little bit off-target. They wouldn't have dropped me in a mud puddle otherwise, would they?
I really hope not.
If they could send me here, they must be able to send me back. That was my only hope of getting home in time for my date.
"I think I was brought here by a magical creature," I said. "Possibly a couatl—a winged serpent with rainbow feathers. Do you know if anything like that lives near here?"
"No idea," said Fweet-Fweet-Toowee.
"Maybe Tooweeoo-Toowee knows," said Fweeoot-Feeree'eet. "You wanna ask her?"
"Sure. HEY! TOOWEEOO-TOOWEE! WE GOT A QUESTION FOR YA!" yelled Fweet-Fweet-Toowee.
"WHAT'S THE QUESTION?" came the response from out in the jungle.
"THERE'S A TALKING HUMAN OVER HERE WHO WANTS TO KNOW IF THERE ARE ANY WINGED SERPENTS IN THE AREA!"
"YEAH, THERE'S A WINGED SERPENT! HE LIVES IN A CAVE UP THE MOUNTAINSIDE! NEAR THE PEAK!"
"OKAY, THANKS!" Fweet-Fweet-Toowee turned back to me. "She says there's one living in a cave up by the top of the mountain."
"Thank you!" I said. "I'm really grateful for your help, both of you. You and your friend might have just saved my life! I hate to ask for even more from you, but could you guide me up the mountain? I promise, I'll gladly answer all your questions about humans on the way, but like you said, I don't have any food or supplies, and that winged serpent might be my only chance to survive out here."
"What, in the rain?"
"It's only a light rain," Fweeoot-Feeree'eet said. Personally, I didn't think it felt like a light rain, but I suppose I don't live in a rainforest. It's all relative.
"Good point," said Fweet-Fweet-Toowee. "And Grace seems very nice, and she'd definitely die without our help. Okay, sure, why not?"
I thought about making a sarcastic comment here along the lines of Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence, but she probably wasn't wrong. I'm not a terrible athlete—I used to be on the soccer team, so that's something, right?—but as a child of the suburbs, my survival skills are shit, and while I have been on hikes before, it was always on an existing trail, in relatively gentle terrain, with access to bottled water and trail mix to keep me going. I've never free-climbed a goddamn jungle mountain! Barefoot! In the rain! I didn't even know how high I needed to go!
Frankly, even with the help of my new friends, I was probably fucked.