4 The Art of Flight

Laying on the ground and bored out of his mind, Jasper dove into his memories again. He'd just awoken, and even though he nearly beat himself unconscious to eat a fruit, he wasn't tired. On the contrary, he felt strangely energized.

As he tried to recall his thoughts he descended into a weird gray space. Inside which his consciousness materialized as a glowing white ball. Taking in the blank expanse around him he was floored. First some fantasy mumbo-jumbo about being able to fly, and now there was a empty space inside his head.

Even as he took the whole being reborn as a snake thing in stride, wrapping his head around all this new fantasy style stuff was different. It was getting harder and harder not to just write everything off as a really intense seasickness induced hallucination.

Sighing he continued to float in the gray nothingness. He wanted to just shrug the complicated thoughts off like he normally did, however the longer he stayed in the gray space he discovered he couldn't. His thoughts were becoming more clear the more he lingered.

Floating there, as a simple ball, he entered a strange form of enlightenment. As the enlightenment took over more and more of the questions he'd pushed to the side in his mind began to be answered.

To start with, everything that had happened to him in the last 24 hours was very, very, real. He was a snake, but not just any type of snake. He was, what this world called, a Cloud Dwelling Illusion Serpent. Not that he would ever say that out loud in front of others.

He also came to know that the large glowing fruits that fell from the sky and drew him in like water in a desert calls to a dying man, were so darn attractive to him because they were infused with the power of lightning. Which, amazingly, seemed to be a form of power up for Cloud Dwelling Illusion Serpents.

The more he ate the fruits, the quicker he would 'power up'. They were to him like the super mushrooms where to Mario. Which was why he grew a bit longer after he ate the first one.

However, those tidbits weren't the greatest harvest of this enlightenment. His biggest gain came in the form of a breathing technique. One that his body began to enact subconsciously as soon as the thought appeared in his mind.

Deep, slow breaths, one after another entered his form. The air circulated through him like an infinity symbol, his scales began to shudder and shake along with each breath. The large fruit that was just sitting in his stomach suddenly began to shrink at a visible pace.

With each passing breath, his scales shook more violently as the air began to form a substantial stream inside himself. Ever so slightly, from his shaking scales, a faint fog started to expand. It was noticeable at first, but as the seconds ticked by the fog thickened and grew.

Yet once it reached a certain point it stopped, as if hitting an invisible barrier. Jolted awake from the experience, Jasper opened his eyes to a thick sea of fog surrounding his entire being.

Drawing in the fog, he continued to do the breathing technique as naturally as blinking. The fog he breathed in cycled through his body before being expelled through his scales thicker than before. Though the total amount seemed to lessen each time, the thickness only continued to deepen.

As he paid attention to the flow of fog around him he nearly screamed in delight as his body began to effortlessly lift from the ground. Unadulterated joy filled him and he couldn't help but giggle, though it came out as more of a stuttering hissing noise.

His previous facade of a being unaffected by the whims of life completely shattered as he began to wiggle around in the air completely unhindered. Like a fish in water, he zipped around in the fog. Doing tricks that would make a stunt pilot green with envy.

His play time was brought to an untimely halt though as he slammed face first into a blackened rock wall. The days earlier stars refilling his vision. With a plop he dropped dizzily to the ground, his tail twitching the whole time.

The fog that had formed around him immediately collapsed, revealing the wall he so gracefully rammed and the imprint he left behind. The near-perfect reverse print of his face seemed to be scolding him as he sheepishly blinked the stars from his eyes.

Up in the treetop, beyond the reach of Jasper's hearing, a loud laughter shook the tree limbs. The old tree demon Humil sat in the canopy gripping his sides as his chuckles shook his body. Watching how the little snake below spent its day was a priceless experience. One moment the little guy was staring off into space and the next he was zooming around like one of those drunk forest monkeys.

Back on ground level Jasper slowly raised his body while wincing. He was lucky that he was hardheaded. He was pretty sure that the force he hit that wall with would have killed any normal person or snake. However he was only just momentarily dizzy, and he actually left an imprint on the solid rock.

As he looked at the imprint he was struck by a thought, couldn't he just smash the devilish fruits into pieces first next time before eating them? The more he thought about it the more he felt like patting himself on the back. The next time one of those fruits fell before him he would smash it into a pulp, to save himself from banging his head on the ground like a loon.

Chuckling at his own intelligence, he failed to consider that one- the fruit was round and likely to just bounce off when hit, and two- the fruits weren't damaged at all after falling from an unmeasurable height, or by his 'I need to breath' headbanging.

Up above, as Humil watch the little snake begin to nod at the wall and chuckled to itself, he grew worried, 'Did the collision with the wall damage the poor little one's head?' Fearing that he might need to go down and scan over the little one, he sighed. He would watch and wait for now, if it turned out that the little snake really did damage his brain he could always force feed him some extra fruits to heal him up.