Land on uninhabited shoreline.
Cold and numb were the predominant sensations, followed very quickly by lethargy and a sore ache. Daniel glided down toward the beach in what she could only describe as a gentle haze. She knew she was drugged. Was she going to pass out soon, or would her sheer size make her immune? Those men weren’t coming to face a sphinx, as was clear to see, so it wouldn’t be hard to get the doses wrong. But she was still hit by a lot of them, and most were still very painfully stuck in her skin, or fur, or feathers. Was it worth taking that gamble?
She shakes her head to clear away absent minded thoughts. If she fell asleep then she’d be helpless for who knows how long. Can’t be over the ocean for that, but almost as soon as she wanted to be over the trees she was there. The lake was big and she was fast.
And she was just as big, a clear obvious target anyone could see.
Down, sliding down to a quiet shoreline on the far end of these calm waters the wide open beach made for an excellent runway.
CRASH! And crunch, tired wings and numb feet didn’t make for the most elegant landings. Her face smashes into the soft mud, the cold dampness smears over fur that was once clean. She wobbled, but her new body was study. So much stronger, so very much hardier than the human youth she was used to for the majority of her life. There wasn’t any trouble getting back onto her feet, shaking the mud off with a yawn, and folding her wings up.
A long glance across the lake and she could just make out crowds of uniforms and parked cars next to a log building. If she wanted to spot individual faces then she’d need a looking glass, and good luck holding it with such grabby cat paws. A fair chance they could see her as clearly as she saw them, and that means if they were going to chase they’d be coming right to this spot.
Can’t fly, no flying as that’s way too obvious and she’s much rather hide until such a time when she can figure things out. Or at least make a more informed decision and choose her battles rather than get sniped from half a county away. But hide and move while finding a good place to nap was easy to figure out. Just turn into the trees.
Maybe nap, and pull the needles out. Or find someone who can tell what was happening to Angel. Maybe just call the police? And then hope to all the world that those guys weren’t the police. Sure didn’t seem like animal control, based on absurdly obvious factors.
Trees served as hard objects to maneuver around while the dense foliage in an unpopulated area proved a minor nuisance. It tickled the paws in areas she wasn’t already numb, the tips of grass and the bristling of thorny bushes washed over her belly. Unsurprisingly it didn’t hurt enough to be bothersome and she didn’t have any option but to barrel forward, leaving wide footprints and crushed vegetation the entire time.
Another yawn, a wide swipe pushing plants aside. Light filtering in from trees that seemed like saplings at her twenty foot height, but were still large enough to conceal her. She had to duck under much of the lower branches, or simply crush them in moving past. The grass would bend, and the branches would snap. Little could be done to help this.
She was leaving a trail. And she knew it.
“Gaah, great. No way I’m hiding that, maybe if I …” Daniel turned in one area to start wiping away the footprints with her paw, wincing back as she noticed the needle still waggling freely. Mud smeared, and what was once a footprint now became a wide flattened area of smoothed over sticks and dirt and puddles. It didn’t hide anything at all.
The sphinx lifted her injured paw up, but quickly realized the other was injured as well. Twitching and numb from that jolt of electricity, she could walk on it but only because her paws were still effective even as big dumb blobs of muscle she slams around.
She flops to a seat, laying on her belly and letting sheer weight crush down a large amount of ferns and bushes all vying for sunlight. The paw slides up to her maw and she puts on a good effort to snap her jaws over the colorful plume end. She feels feathers on her tongue. She tastes metal, gritting her teeth and pulling away to tear the thorn free.
Easier than removing a splinter at least. Her paw wasn’t even bleeding beneath the fur, likely as a result of thick skin.
“uugh, okay. Need to find some way to get the rest of them. And I need a way to not be followed. And I need to probably get somewhere I can nap soon if that poison is getting to me, or … or maybe I can push it and stay awake regardless. Don’t know.”
She rested in this brief respite, surrounded by trees on all sides with a very obvious trail leading right back to her. She could almost see the lake further out, but it was a some several hundred yards away by now.
“No matter what I do I’m obvious, but I think I can at least make things harder for them. If those guys are even following …” Daniel said aloud, not exactly whispering but getting depressed upon realizing there was no one else to talk with.
“Fly over the tree line, get far away from tracks here, then touch back down. Keep walking, fly up, then walk again until I find somewhere that doesn’t have so much foliage. Aaarggh, and my actual goal is to get back to the city, if I didn’t have to worry about insane gun toting ninja officers I’d just fly strait home and be done with all this.”
A pout, followed up only the flick of her ears. As she hears water very close by. Moving, flowing water.
Written by Arbon on 02 April 2017
