"How is this possible?" She thought worriedly. It
must be an enchantment of some sort, there must be a way to reverse it she
thought. "The words were on the bottom of the woman statue, that must be
it", she mused, so she grabbed the wall and made her way up until she was
in a standing position and made her way behind the now dragon statue and the
wall, then while keeping her back to the wall she brought her knees up until
she was in a horizontal crouch position with her feet up against the statue and
pushed with all her strength. The statue flew across the room in an instant and
hit the opposite wall far away as she fell to the floor. She grumbled to
herself, this just gets better and better and I tire from this cruel joke.
After a long crawl along the floor to close the huge distance to the statue she
paused to catch her breath. The statue, like before, remained upright despite
the flight it just took, growling lowly to herself she realized that she was
going to have to learn how to stand in order to lift the statue up to have a
look at the bottom to see the words etched on it to change her back, it had to
change her back she thought, it just had to.
The next few days she spent practicing standing, at first
she would stand and then fall over and over again. Then she had the idea of
using the wall to help hold her up which kind of worked except that she found
herself clawing at the wall whenever she lost balance and sometimes she lost
her grip anyway and fell on her face. She found herself getting very frustrated
with her inability to do what should be so easy but so difficult without her
tail. Her stomach growled, the water from the pool sustained her but didn't
have any nourishment and she felt herself getting weaker by the day, if she
didn't get food soon she would die like this. "No!" she thought
"I will not die like this and in this form." She sat against the wall
and thought about the humans, "They stand erect, like the statue, not with
their head out in front of their body like a dragon, which is what I am doing,
it is obvious that without the tail there is no balance and no equilibrium
which is why I fall on my face. Even being a dragon and standing on my hind
legs I used my tail to not fall backwards, I have seen humans move even at a
trot without falling, it cannot be as hard as I am making this out to be."
And with that she stood up, with her head held high not forward like she had
been doing and found balance.
She
still fell occasionally but she was a quick learner and kept herself upright
more times than not. She walked around the cave thinking to herself that this
was much better than crawling around on all fours and she didn't have the
strands of eternal fire that flowed from her head in her eyes as much and could
actually see clearer. Even though she could see a little better, the cave was
still dark and it was hard to see, she tripped more than once on rock outcrops
from being partially blinded by her hair rather than from being unbalanced. Maybe she could still......YES! She dilated her pupils until her vision adjusted to the darkness in the room, it was difficult at first and she had to do it manually but it finally worked "At least there is still that." she thought, "Funny how I always took that for granted." She looked over to where the dragon statue stood in the cave, she knew she wasn't ready for that yet, besides, she needed to eat, so she set herself towards the cave entrance. As she neared the opening of the cave the brightness overwhelmed her and she had to manually dilate her pupils again, "That will take some getting used to." she thought to herself as she pushed aside vines and moved further towards the opening. My eyes just reacted naturally as a dragon but now I have to actually think about how much light or darkness to let in. Her thoughts continued to haunt her as she continued on and eventually stepped outside.
