52nd of Spring, 495 AV
Afternoon
Abase kicked with his legs, pushing himself through the water at a leisurely, floating pace as he flipped so that he faced the surface where the sun's light rained through. He smiled up at the light, kicking his feet as he pushed with his hands toward out in a stroke that kept him moving through the waves. Closing his eyes, Abase felt the flow of his energies as he focused on the djed in his legs. After two days worth of practice the Akontak was beginning to feel much more confident in this particular morph, and so it was almost with a sense of ease that he called forth the djed strings from each leg and, without using his hands this time, knitted them together with the mental hands he held in his mind. He pulled the strings tight, filling in the seam that appeared from his thighs all the way down to his heels, knowing to expect the pinching and itching that followed as his two legs fused into one. This time, however, Abase lengthened the tail as the seams closed, stretching out and streamlining the longer it stretched.
Bending at the waste, Abase felt his feet with his hands and pressed into the flesh, molding the djed with his mental hands as he did so. The tissue flattened, widened and flowed with Abase's caresses, tapering to a point as a translucent hue covered the still thinning fin. Abase took a moment to press each toe individually, molding each until they became a part of the fin and rounded out the edges as each side of the bifurcation streamlined into a point. Finally, with the structure work finished, Abase drew forth the beads of djed to course and overlap down the structure of the tail, stopping at the base of the fin. Each of these beads he pressed and thinned, overlapped and rounded until they took on the appearance of one of his own personal scales.
Finished at last, Abase opend his eyes, flipping is tail over his head so that he could look at it in the reflected light. A smile crossed his lips as he righted himself, mental fingers holding onto the djed and keeping the transformation in place as he tested and turned, testing out the movements available to him. When he had first tried this new transformation, Abase had found it to be odd to be unable to move his legs separately, and he caught himself as he realized he no longer hand separate 'legs" at all. With some effort, Abase learned to move the tail in an up and down motion, instead of the alternating front to back motion that is used by legs.
Now Abase flicked this tail, pressing against the ground to float up higher where there were fewer obstructions. Turning in a random direction, Abase angled himself like he normally would while swimming, arms over head and feat back. Now, instead of kicking motions Abase tried to simply move the fin up and dow, but he quickly found that this seemed to do little good. He would move some in one direction, but it was by no means graceful or easy. Flipping over to look at the appendage, Abase thought of how other fish moved, how they darted through the water so effortlessly. They almost seemed to ungulate, using their entire bodies to move and not just the tails. Furrowing is brow, Abase flicked his tail, sending himself moving slowly through the kelp reeds. It seemed it took very little effort to get minimal motion, but then this was no faster his usual pace, and was far clumsier and awkward.
Turning to face forward, Abase pulled with his arms, cupping his hands to drag at the water and pull himself, aiding this process with a flick or two of his tail. After nearly a chime the Akontak finally found a rhythm that seemed to work. He would push his hands forward, pulling back water in a breast stroke as he kicked out with his tail. One kick would propel him forward, and as he moved forward he would bring his arms up toward his head to prepare for the next stroke. It was not the most graceful action, but it allowed him more freedom of motion than he had by simply kicking his legs. He soon found that if he undulated his body, moving in wave motiosn, he could continue in one direction at a steady speed, though once he began to move in such a way his arms were nearly useless, and in fact slowed him down, so he kept them at his side. This meant that, while he could pick up some speed in one direction he had little or no control over his movements as he did so. It was a complicated puzzle, and as the chimes ticked by Abase felt the strain of keeping the morph drawing on him more and more until he finally decided to end the practice for the day.
Releasing his hold on the Djed the scales along his talk began to withdraw, fading in a wave from the end of his tail to his thigh even as a seam split from the middle of his tail fin all the way up to his though. His feet resolved themselves once more, forming from the flattened fins even as his legs reestablished themselves in all their awkwardness. Stretching and wiggling his toes, Abase set out for home, kicking his feet in the familiar, yet much slower, method of swimming. |
|
