Chapter Text
Cassie didn't realize how much information her brain was filtering out until she had died and suddenly her bones were hollow. Being able to fly was an adjustment that she was having trouble with. Even more was that fact Cassie was currently falling from a cloud. "AHHH," she belted as the wind came speeding all by her.
She'd always been afraid of heights, more specifically the falling part, and this was her worst nightmare. There were a bunch of other bird things surrounding her that had seemed to get the hang of flying easily. They didn't seem to care to help her though. The wind did feel nice throughout the feathers and Cassie finally spread her wings.
It wasn't flying like the others were doing but it was better than hurtling towards an incoming ocean and the descent was noticeably slower. There was a nice rainbow nearby that was pointing to a close cliff. She'd tried just turning her wings to head towards the cliff but that didn't do anything. Eventually Cassie looked up at the flying birds, those are bird-women she noticed, and watched them dive and fly by turning at the waist.
Copying the other bird-women, Cassie managed to turn towards the cliff edge. She now had a different problem. It had taken her too long to figure out turning that she'd dipped to low and would have to climb up the cliffside. How do birds fly? The information was slow to slink into her head but slink it did.
Using her arms like she was mimicking waves Cassie soon found herself rising slowly, and painfully. Her joints had never been good before she'd gotten to her and apparently the change from human to bird-woman didn't magically fix them. Thankfully she hadn't fall to far and within a few minutes Cassie's feat had touched the soft grass.
"Thank fuck," she muttered to herself. Looking at her arms revealed that there were long, pale-yellow feathers that were at least four feet long covering where her arms should be. Turning around to look at the water was when she noticed her eyes were way sharper than they used to be considering she was normally basically blind without glasses. The water, despite being a good distance away, allowed Cassie to see what she looked like.
She had resembled the other bird-women in the sky but had kept most of her human features. Where they had dark grey to black feathers hers were lighter, they had dense, thick hair while Cassie's was still thin and sparse. She looked like a half plucked chicken,
Disgusted Cassie turned away and started making her way towards the dense forest. There wasn't much around that she could see in the sky, not that she was paying any attention for most of it. But she figured she could find her way to people if she could find a river since that's where people normally were. Thanks random YouTube videos she used to watch.
Figuring out what country she was in was gonna me next to impossible since she had only left her house to go to work and hated being in the wilderness. Cassie was going to miss her phone if this took more than a few hours to find a town. Whap!! Something hit her with a tree branch.
Far up a nearby tree was one of the other bird-woman. Seeing another closer than a cliff face or in freefall made it easier for Cassie to notice how much they looked like drawings of harpies she'd seen after binging Greek Mythology videos one night. But they were fictional. Not that it seemed to mean much considering Cassie had just flown without any vehicle and had feathers suddenly all up and down her arms.
"Hi?" Cassie waved at the other.
The other harpy stared at Cassie, "Food? Hunt?"
She must think Cassie is either hungry, hunting, or is food. Frankly Cassie knew which one she didn't want to be. She tried to introduce herself, "My names Cassandra, Cassie for short. What's yours?"
It didn't appear to cross Cassie's mind that maybe the other harpy didn't speak English until now.
The harpy in the tree just made a weird sound before taking off in a more graceful flight than Cassie could ever hope to manage. She'd been left alone in the dense forest. Could she even eat meat now was a fleeting thought and the thought of going full vegan made a full shiver go down her spine.
Cassie suddenly smacked her hand against her head. "Why doing you just fly you numbskull," Cassie said to herself. Climbing up the same tree the speckled harpy had just flown from was somehow both easier and harder than she'd ever remembered it being. Not that Cassie had been any good at climbing trees in the first place.
Her hands were a lot thinner and more boney. She didn't have five fingers instead just four that could reach around her wrist multiple times. Thankfully it appeared that one of the fingers was similar to a thumb.
Climbing up farther than her fleeting friend had been allowed Cassie to get above a decent amount of the tree leaves. Either the branch was sturdier or she weighted a lot less considering it wasn't buckling at all. Bracing herself, Cassie have a few hesitant shakes off her arms, she couldn't bring herself to call them wings even in her own mind, and was surprised to find herself float a few inches off the branch.
With more confidence that she actually felt, Cassie pushed herself off the tree limb. She them immediately plummeted to the ground with a harsh thud.
Groaning, Cassie pushed herself onto her knees. She'd managed to fly a little back at the cliff so why didn't that work. "Fuck!" she yelled, as it just crossed her mind that there had been a bad storm that was carrying her most of the way towards the land.
She reclimbed the tree and, sitting on the same branch, held her right arm straight out watching the peachy feathers. There was a light breeze almost parallel to the tree as apposed to the perpendicular Cassie had gone just a few moments before. Another flap of the arms, and Cassie fell sideways, catching the small breeze.
With harsh rotating of the shoulders, Cassie slowly rose higher and higher. Her eyes looking all around for any sign of life. She saw a bunch of streams that merged into a big river to her left and with a slow turn made her way above the water. The sun was shining almost directly over her but she seemed not to feel any of the painful heat from before her transformation.
"There!" Cassie cried out, spotting a humanoid looking thing sitting on a rock near the river. Slowly descending down next to the woman, Cassie noticed her uncanny resemblance to the water at her feet. "Erm, I don't mean to bother you," Cassie started to say. The slippery woman jumped, leaving behind a soft bit of mud. "What do you want? You can't eat me you bird-brain." The woman scowled.
"I don't want to eat you, I'm just lost. Could you tell me where I am."
"Your alongside my river you stupid monster," the rude stranger huffed.
Rolling her eyes, Cassie asked exasperated, "And what is the name of your river?"
"Amphrysus"
Cassie just nodded. A net zero of information. The name sounded vaguely Mediterranean. Maybe Cassie had somehow found herself in the sky around Greece for all she knew. Unless this was this persons name.
"Thanks," Cassie told Amphrysus before walking away.
"A harpy walking and soon the sun will turn blue," Thyamis mumbled behind Cassie
Continuing alongside the Amphrysus river, Cassie could hear the sounds of wolves howling. The sun was still up so she hoped that she wouldn't have to try fighting them any time soon. Her feat were slowly getting more and more sore however and the flight had left her shoulder joints feeling like they were on fire.
Knowing however if she stopped then Cassie wouldn't want to get back up and so on she went. Eventually she made it to a lake and found another person. This man looked more like a human than Amphrysus did so Cassie walked up to him. The closer she got over the more Cassie could see what looked like a golden mist surrounding him.
"I hope your nicer than the woman a few miles away was," Cassie said.
The man ignored her to play with some clay in the river banks. Cassie huffed before watching him work. It looked like he was making a doll except it seemed more realistic than any barbie doll that Cassie had seen before.
Quicker than Cassie thought it would take, the doll was complete and resembled a naked man that wouldn't be out of place at a art museum. Before she could ask what the doll was for however, the strange man blew on the doll and it seemed to grow and grow and grow until it was slightly taller than Cassie was.
She jumped when the dolls eyes opened and there was a pair of brown eyes staring at Cassie in confusing. The dolls mouth suddenly let out a shriek and it bolted into the forest to their left, leaving Cassie alone with the magic man. "How?" Cassie asked.
The man shrugged, "Life is a given to anything resembling the gods." He then seemed to actually look at Cassie, "Why does a harpy care so much about what Kronos wishes?"
"I didn't I just tried to figure out where I am."
He seemed to just stare at Cassie in a bemused bewilderment. "Your at the base of mount Othyrs." He paused as if looking for some recognition. Cassie just stared blankly, as she had somehow actually ended up in Greece. "The home of the king of the titans, Kronos."
Well fuck me sideways. Cassie was a huge mythology nerd and if Kronos was currently ruling than she was going to be skedaddling as far away form here as possible until Zeus showed up. Maybe even a few years later since Cassie had heard second hand that it was a few years of war until Zeus and all of them actually won the war.
"Well thanks for that. I'm gonna head off..." Cassie trailed off
"Prometheus."
Cassie gave a sharp nod to the future vulture food and ran away from the river. In the same direction the naked man had ran just a few moments ago