White one transformation 06
It first became aware of heat and damp. Humidity. As first sensory experiences of a place go, it would later reflect, these were not terrible ones.
Not great ones, but not terrible, either.
Next came sound. A barrage, a battery, a bombardment of a hundred, a thousand different sounds, all overlapping and competing with one another, out of time and lacking rhythm, an unholy cacophony of screeches, chirps, snaps, thumps, rumbles, shrieks and howls. It cringed back from the violent clamor for a moment and shifted. Clearly its ears didn’t need to be so sensitive, here in an atmosphere. The scent was thick, warm and earthy, with almost too much information to catalogue, and very little that The White One understood, aside from a basic impression of pheromones, earth, water, and animal musk. Nothing of worry; it would learn, with time.
Looking around, it took the time to adjust sight next, pale eyes shifting and changing to adjust to the wavelengths planetside, so different from The Black. Green. Overwhelmingly, the planet seemed to be green—and gray, brown, shadowed here at the foot of probably-vegetation (possibly extremely large, extremely still fauna) with thin, watery patches of light filtering down from the dense greenery above. Though the forest was loud, little was moving about down on the ground; much of it sounded from above. The White One tilted its head and flowed up the trunks of the large (probably) flora, keen to see what fauna of this planet looked like.
The treetops brought increased heat with the sunlight, and, impossibly, even louder sounds. Now there was movement everywhere—small flighted creatures in an impossible array of colors (and not a one similar to itself); there were quadrupedal creatures with opposable thumbs on all four limbs and clever grasping tails; it observed tiny creatures moving nearly too fast to see, some with colorful wings, a few with cruel stinging or biting parts, and more. The White One was given a wide berth, and after observing for a time, felt that it was warranted. It did not belong here. The heat of the sun was becoming brutal, and soon, retaining water would become problematic. No, this would not do.
Observing one of the flighted creatures, it shifted and became more, appendages becoming akin to the appendages of those quick, clever flighted creatures, with sleek white feathers gleaming in the sun, and departed with a few quick wingbeats.
Elsewhere. Later.
The White One fled the heat-humid-loud-bright place and fled for water, finding it crashing along a shoreline with more winged-feathered creatures sweeping across the sky overhead in long, effortless glides, their cries long and high and certainly not melodious. Gray and white and black; closer, their bodies not such violently colored things as to make The White One’s eyes ache. It landed with a splash and busied itself with absorbing water, though found the salt content to be displeasing. It made the process of osmotic absorbtion significantly more difficult, but it was necessary. The White One surfaced near to large boulders surfacing near the beach, where large, brown creatures with flippers but no gills lounged, eyeing it warily and making alarmed bark-noises as it neared. When it drew too close, they awkwardly flopped their bodies to the water and slipped in, disappearing quicker than it would have thought possible for such ungainly creatures on land. It followed, watching at a distance as these things darted through the water, catching and consuming smaller scaled water-dwelling creatures. This was not unappealing to it, in the cool wet away from the brutal sun, quiet. Quiet until clicking began to filter through the water, clicks and squeals and chirps, and quite suddenly much more massive black-and-white forms began to appear out of the darkness. The smaller brown things reacted with fear-smell and fled, and, as it watched, hunted.
For a time more, The White One lingered, watching creatures larger still than the black-and-white predators come, consuming impossible tons of tiny-tiny-tiny exoskeleton-creatures in giant bites. It followed these, towards colder and colder waters, and finally left the water when it began encountering ice chunks large enough to climb upon, and observed small black-and-white-feathered things appearing to fly underwater leaping onto and off of the ice, apparently completely comfortable with the cold.
Thick fat, perhaps, was effective for these creatures, but even The White One was not comfortable in such chill water for so long. Besides, here, the salt content had grown stronger, and it was becoming challenging to maintain homeostasis. It left, took to the sky, and flew towards distant white-capped mountains, bypassing green-land dotted with fluffy white creatures with what appeared to be thick, wiry hair all over their bodies like a cloud below. These things appeared fully comfortable in the cold, and, as The White One realized when it landed for a better look, also utterly stupid. The things all but fell over each other fleeing, and a black-and-white creature, also hairy, also bipedal, but smaller than the white things, ran at The White One creating a loud, staccato sound and snapping jaws at it until, finally, The White One left. Too noisy. (But they looked more right.)
Further. Onward.
The ground rose in steep, jagged mountains on all sides, falling away on the other side in slopes so steep it was a wonder anything could exist there, but exist they did. Similar to the white-cloud-things, but thicker-bodied. Shorter-furred. With hard, curling protrusions of skull on either side of their heads, these things leapt nimbly among the cliffs with sure-footed ease, never slipping, never fearing a fall to certain death, though they had no wings. These, it thought, were the masters of this place. They were the lords at the top of the world, fearless, unfettered and laughing at gravity.
The White One, finally, felt a kinship. It took on their form, modified to suit itself; quadrupedal, although it kept the feathered wings it had chosen, simply repositioned them to rest behind the powerful shoulders it modeled after these creatures. Its legs it kept moderately long—longer than the beasts it was borrowing form from—slender, ending in those clever two-toed, hardened feet the creatures leapt upon. Nearly instantly, its balance felt better, its footing surer. Much better. It considered the things, and decided that it liked the way the beasts carried their crowns—yes, The White One wanted a crown, too, and so grew one—two, in fact, on either side of its head, large and curling and pale, pale gray. Heavy, but then, crowns were supposed to be heavy.
The White One moved on, partially aground, partially winging by air. It saw smaller creatures, now, almost always white or gray, fur thick, bodies often compact and low to the ground. The thick fur looked warm—the White One adopted this, too, and found that it was indeed so, when the fur was dense and moderately long, with a dense undercoat of hollow, fine hair, and a water-resistant upper coat of slicker hairs that lay over the fine under-coat and trapped air and heat against its skin.
More distant still. Following the cold.
Much later, much further away. It had traveled further, had seen more places; vast planes of foliage growing from the ground to brush at its belly in soft, flexible stalks, ranging in color from brilliant emerald to warm gold and populated with more furred-quadrupedal-hooved creatures and furred-quadrupedal-predators to hunt them; even sandy deserts so hot and dry that it had to leave almost immediately; and of course forests, with definitely-flora rooted firmly to the ground and stretching branches high, high overhead to take in the light of the sun, populated by all manner of animals. So many places, so many environments.
Still.
Still, none called to it the way the mountains did. These mountains were, somehow, even taller. Steeper. More grand, although The White One could not imagine how. These were capped, one and all, with snow. Frozen water in soft, fluffy form—The White One liked it. Here, the sounds were the wind’s low, relentless howl, the shift of snow, the soft crunch of it as it moved. Occasionally, the distant Rreeeee of a feathered-flighted-predator would cut the air, but mostly, there was nothing. It observed more animals similar to the Lords it had observed before, but these were hunted by what was, if not the Lord of the Sky, then certainly some kind of ruler. This was also a furred-quadrupedal-predator, but it moved like liquid, smooth and steady and intent, floating over the harsh landscape as though sharp rocks and frigid winds meant nothing to it. It was a ghost in the clouds, only visible even to The White One’s keen eyesight when moving—and even then, only when The White One was lucky.
Captivated, it stayed to watch, and learn, and felt a kinship. Again, it adopted parts of the creature that it wanted for itself; it lengthened its spine to be long and liquid and flexible, and lengthened it further into a tail as long as its own body-and-a-half over, furring it in longer, thick fur to act as rudder, balance, as it moved. Though The White One could not change its coloration, it was pleased to note that its coloration was already similar to this creature—they shared the whites, the soft silvers, that made this predator so skilled at hiding in this environment. Satisfied, with a switch of its now much-longer tail, The White One left again, seeking more places where the land met the sky.
Further yet. On into the darkness at the top of the world.
Rugged. This land, at its heart, was a rugged place. Even soaring above almost in the clouds, where the only sound at all was that of the wind and the rustle of its feathers, all it could see was white-blanketed mountains and forest and frozen rivers and ponds. Nothing was spared of winter’s might, and here, the day was short, quickly fading even now into darkness. As it landed in the soft, deep snow, the sky became lit again by a new light—green, blue, purple, dancing together in a crazed spectacle. This went on for long minutes, and for a time, The White One was green, and blue, and purple, matching the snowy landscape around it, until as suddenly as it came the lights danced away over the horizon. In the sudden gloom, The White One was startled by movement near it—a small quadrupedal-white-furred creature with long ears leapt into motion and fled almost faster than it could see.
It did not flee fast enough, for another white flash, also white-furred-quadurped, and not much larger than the first, seemed to appear from nowhere and take the first out in a flash. The snow was stained red, and the second creature had a meal. Still now, it was a quick, clever thing, with paws rather than hooves, a long bushy tail that wasn’t nearly as flexible as the one The White One had, small and nimble with a neat dished face, long narrow muzzle, and relatively large ears.
It flashed a golden-eyed glance at The White One and then turned, carrying its prize with it. It vanished near-instantly into the white, leaving behind only an area of trampled and bloodied snow.
The White One spent days trying to find it again, and when it did, watched the creature in fascination as it eked out a solitary, hard life in the frozen wilderness. Connection. Rightness. The White One thought hard, and settled—its face shifted, muzzle narrowing, elongating, forehead broadening slightly, eyes moving forward rather than to either side of its head and shifting shape into wide, slanted almond-shaped. It left its ears as they were, long and able to switch and move and swivel in all directions, but perhaps in acknowledgement of this new creature widened their base a bit.
It stretched its long, flexible spine, resettled its wings across its back, and set off, nimble hooves never slipping on the ice-slick rocks under the snow, making barely any noise in the deep, deep quiet of the mountains, and soon vanished into the landscape, white and silver fur and feathers nearly indistinguishable from the white, white snow.
Home. Where the land meets sky.