Anonymous
She!
Chapter 1
Perhaps you'd think that I was unbelievably unimaginative. I prefer to think of it as fully exploring my particular condition before moving on to another. Remember also that once I have become, I can return to my earlier forms quickly and easily. Thus the variety has always been there. Just not in this new form.
I don't know how old I am, if that's important to you. Old. I know that. But time had little meaning to me until fairly recently. Many of my days were spent only in responding to circadian cycles and not to the dials of a clock.
You might say I'm a single entity evolutionary being.
If you don't know what circadian cycles are, you can join my understanding. I didn't know the shortening and lengthening days and nights had a name until fairly recently.
What are my earliest memories? What was I? I can't tell you. First, I'm not sure my being at the time has a name and, if it does, I don't know it. After all, when you are a limited being, it is very difficult to know yourself. There are no mirrors for the tiniest of creatures and, if you see another like you, there is no way you could recognize the reflection except by the biological attraction or revulsion.
Suffice it to say that I spent my time eating and growing. If others like I was then have a reproductive cycle, I never participated in it. I doubt that it was a particularly noteworthy sexual act.
I do have memories of crawling on multiple spindly legs. I have found that size somewhat useful since and have re-used it. Here, then, a bit of explanation is useful.
When I revert to earlier forms, my mind remains intact. Since I have lived for a period in one body before moving on to something else, I know what is necessary to live as that being. However, since I carry a memory of other shapes and sizes and experiences with me, it is impossible to totally return to the feeling of being that earlier creature.
Thus, I know that I was once a spider, because I know what a spider is now. But at the time I was one with all my being, I knew nothing but eat or be eaten.
Certainly, sex as an arachnid was not the main selling point of the form. I had two opportunities to partake in reproductive activities and both times narrowly escaped being my offspring's first meal or my sexual partner's next.
I've flown through the skies on at least two separate occasions. I mean lifelong occasions.
Once I was a butterfly or moth – I'm not sure which – and, again, did little but look for food. At least that mating was a little more enjoyable in retrospect. It was just badly needed – required actually -at the time I was doing it.
The other time, I was a small bird of some sort. In comparison to the sheer joy of flying, sex as a bird was rather trivial. Again, at the time, it was necessary but no more so and little more pleasant than searching for food.
It seems my life experiences, as I call them, are more or less up to my choosing. My NEW life experiences, that is. Maybe I'm just easily bored.
What happens is that one day I am doing something completely in character with the body I'm inhabiting. I see some other life form and have a pang of jealousy, you might call it. As I think about it over some time, I lose the characteristics of my current being and edge into that new being's realities.
Now that sounds pretty foggy. I'm sorry. It's my best explanation for what happens.
What happens, in quick and easy terms, is that I think about being something else and everything shifts until I am that other thing. A strong desire and bang, there I am. The time doesn't really matter but it's always a significant period of my current body's life term.
I was once some form of bug with an entire life cycle of a few days. But I spent much of one of those days thinking about being a lizard. Similarly, at one time I was a particularly quiet form of sea turtle and, I'm relatively sure, lived for many decades. I spent most of one year thinking about being a shark before that came to pass finally.
You see what I mean?
Interestingly, I've learned two things as I've reached higher development levels. First, my new body is invariably just post-pubescent. I'm sort of born a teenager, in other words, although, of course, this has no meaning in terms of a spider that lives a single warm season. The second is that time I spend in reversionary bodies, like temporarily being a bird to feel that wonderful exhilaration of flying for a few hours, does not subtract from my current life.
From experience, I know this to be true since I was once a very short-lived bug, reverted to being a spider for several days, and came back to the bug at the same stage of development I'd left.
That's another interesting thing, by the way. I have died in my bodies. In nature, it is a natural consequence of lifestyle. I have died of simple old age a few times and found myself reverted immediately to my previous form. Once I died in several incarnations, each reverting through all the others to the last stable creature. That was unpleasant enough that I try to alternate particularly enjoyable, and long term, life spans with less enjoyable ones so my reversion is only one back.
I have died violently a few times only to find myself reverted to an earlier form and much shaken by the experience. Luckily, reversion through those suddenly terminated lives, do not revert to the point of the death. It's not like going back in time. Rather the reversion is to the age at death.
Thus, if I was a healthy but stupid teenaged mule deer shot by a hunter's arrow, my next reversion would be to a healthy, stupid teenaged mule deer with enough knowledge to keep from being shot by another hunter's arrow and far in that previously successful hunter's future.
You see why I have difficulty saying exactly how long I have lived. I suppose I could sit down and remember parts of all my lives and what part of my development I was in at the time I moved on to something else. But the exercise would be difficult and, I think, totally unnecessary.
And there is another interesting point. You might think, from this so far, that I got tired of being a turtle and became a shark, tired of a shark and became a fast swimming tuna, tired of being a tuna and became a crocodile. I did those things, of course. But I was also a wolf and when I became old and grey-necked, I became a young, virulent wolf and took over the pack I had previously left to others. I was a whale for a very very long time and then became a younger whale and continued that wonderful existence. Actually, I have no idea how many times I've a whale or a deer or a bird or some form of dog or cat. I particularly like those forms.
In all cases, I am a stranger. It's not like I go around taking over other beings' bodies like some kind of vampire. Also, I am not always born to these bodies as the strongest and most virile. Frequently, I've found myself to be among the weakest. But, as they say, breeding tells.
Since I carry the knowledge of several lifestyles and many lives, I can use my intelligence to succeed where others of my size never could.
Also, when you know you will only revert to a previous life form if you die, you can afford to be very brave when the need arises. However, I'm not stupid about that either. I told you how unpleasant it is to die violently. Perhaps it's more unpleasant for me than for most, in fact. Not that I'm going to revert back through that violent end but just that the memory of agonizing death stays with me forever.
As I don't shift around through time, I also don't shift around through space. In other words, if I decide to be a bird, I'm going to be a bird right here, not somewhere far away in the world.
Sometimes, since the transitions are often slow, crawling around as a part crocodile, part bird, is a distinctly unpleasant activity. Therefore, I often chose to shift from a long-lived animal to a short-lived one as an interim step to another form. Since the new short-lived form cannot sustain a long transition, it tends to be abbreviated in the transfer from long to short. Then, since the short-lived body cannot sustain itself for long, the transition to a longer term life is very rapid. Far more so than the other way around.