She could hardly feel the sun on her face.
It was blinding, white hot over the Arizona desert. Her skin crackled and reddened under it but she could still hardly feel it. If she could, maybe she would feel more alive.
She had been Down for too long. She took small, tender steps. Her long legs stretched forward tentatively. She was naked, unless you counted the black choker around her neck. She lifted her hand to it every now and then to make sure it was still there. She was surprised by the way her limbs moved gracefully. She had watched Humans before and they had always seemed like such clumsy creatures, too large for their own skin.
Sometimes, she stopped moving. She stood still in the middle of the desert and kept her feet on the ground firmly. She could not believe how the gravity pulled and held everything without any effort. She closed her eyes and marveled over the way the earth hummed beneath her, full of energy. The atmosphere around her was heavy and charged. This was something she hadn't expected. She knew about the way the Humans lived, mostly reckless and naive, but still loudly, always clumsy, always doing what was bad for them. She knew all about the Animals who depended upon instinct more than anything - eat, sleep, hunt, breathe, reproduce. But she could have never predicted the way the Earth lived. The ground moved and the seas roared and the sky crinkled and burned from the Sun's rays.
It was overwhelming. She would have to stop moving and pull in a ragged breath, her lungs tight from walking so far and from breathing in the August heat. She would have to dig her toes into the sand and count to ten to convince herself that she wouldn't fall away into the space around her.
She had never known fear before either.
This place was thick with it. She had known about fear before the Change, but she hadn't known of the weight of it. She could see how the Humans could become paralyzed with it. How they could spend their only living days locked in an apartment because of it.
It wasn't just the Humans either. The animals were all prey in one way or the other. They hunted and intimidated and chased - but the fear was still always there.
Even the sun knew that living meant dying.
But the Human's fear was heavier. Tangible. She felt like she could reach out and touch it.
She could only imagine how much heavier it would be once people realized she was there.
She walked again. She was getting close to the road and she was glad because her body was tired. It had been through a lot and the Human's bodies weren't designed to go for very long anyway. Her dehydrated muscles cramped and her stomach burned for water. The thirst was easy to deal with, though. She had become accustomed to desire in the past. This was no different.
Desert gave way to pavement. It was blistering hot and burned the soles of her feet so she chose to stay in the sand, a few feet away from the road. She followed it, knowing it wouldn't be much longer.
She could feel the shift in the energy before she heard it. A car coming down the road. She stopped walking and breathed a steady sigh of relief. It was a gray, beat-up car ; definitely not a car that the Humans would desire. But material objects meant nothing to her so she stepped onto the shoulder of the road and held her thumb and index finger up in the way that she had practiced.
The car slowed and then stopped. An older man rolled his window down. He was overweight with red cheeks and light tufts of hair over his ears. His eyes widened and he swallowed hard, allowing himself one good look at her body before meeting her gaze. She almost laughed. Humans and their foolish ways. She found it amusing what a woman's exposed body could do to a man. But she forced her laugh down and shuddered hard, wrapping her arms around herself. The man's face went from interested to concerned and he pushed his door open.
"Ma'am? Are you okay?" he asked, pulling himself out of his car.
"I'm lost." The words scratched her throat and she realized she had not spent enough time practicing talking. How thoughtless of her. She cleared her throat. "I've been walking forever and I'm lost."
The man neared her and reached an arm out. She realized in an instant that even if this wasn't technically her body it suddenly felt like hers, and she did not want this man touching her. She shuddered again, a real shudder, and pulled away from him. "No. Please. Just, please. Can you give me a ride?"
The man hesitated. She could see the doubt in his eyes and she forced herself to drop her arms to her sides. His eyes slid down to the body's breasts - no, her breasts, she reminded herself. He pressed his eyes shut as if he had just realized what he was doing and nodded. "Okay. Okay, I guess. Where do you need to go?"
She touched her choker again, trying to ignore the knot of anxiety in her stomach. She had picked a nervous body; a careless mistake, but she would have to make it work.
