22. N #6
After much shifting and squirming, she was finally able to free her chest and pull back until her head was past the outcropping, and she could wipe her eyes with her equally grimy hand.
She used her mage-light to study her path.
She guessed the outcropping formed the lip of the cave, and once past that things opened up a bit. This looked to be her last obstacle.
Attempting to pass it facedown had failed. That left face up.
She was able to shift and twist to roll over onto her back, and then to turn her face to the side to try and shift through.
She raised her arms above her head and used her heels to move a fingernail’s distance with each effort.
Bit by bit she wormed her way under the outcropping.
The stone scraped her breastbone, and she was able to exhale, drawing her lungs in and flattening out her chest as much as possible, and then a bit more.
She calmed herself, taking tiny gasps of air and timing those with her movements.
She tried to exhale more, and moved a finger’s length closer to the exit.
Another panic built as her chest wouldn’t expand …
she limited herself to quick sips of air, panting as she couldn’t inhale deeply.
She fought to control her fear. Her ribcage caught and scraped along the rocks, and she knew she would be deeply bruised by one knob of rock that she had come to hate.
She worked to time her breaths, to exhale and shrink her chest as much as possible, then shift a finger’s width, and inhale a constricted breath with not enough air.
The air around her head grew hot and moist, and she felt herself panting for more.
Her lungs hungered desperately for a deep, clean breath; the need grew exponentially, and each small movement became its own particular torture.
A dozen small shifts, then twenty, and she had moved far enough for the knob to pass her sternum.
After that, it became easier. She only had to draw in her stomach and flatten her ribs.
The surgery that had taken her lowest two ribs, surgery undertaken for vanity, now made it possible for her to deform herself enough to get her chest past the cursed stone that hung down, almost, but not quite, blocking her way out to safety.
Once past, she felt a whiff of fresh breeze that blew across her face, bringing sweet air and the smell of fresh pine.
She cried with relief, tears running down the sides of her face and into her ears, but she kept going.
Her hands could just reach the lip of the exit, though turned as she was it was hard to find a grip solid enough to help pull her along.
Then, she got stuck again, this time her hips.
Her slim-as-a-boy hips, far too narrow for babies, or any of that foolishness, were still too wide for the passage that her chest had navigated.
She screamed in frustration, and swore with every bit of profanity she could muster.
She first tried finesse, shifting her bottom back and forth to try and buy even the tiniest progress.
When that failed, she attempted brute force, but other than giving herself scrapes and gouges, she managed nothing.
This time she was good and firmly stuck, and unyielding hipbone met unforgiving stone, and there would be no passing. She gave vent to her frustration, swearing and kicking, then settled in to think it through. At least now she could breathe. And the wretched abomination couldn’t reach her.
She stopped, holding very still, concentrating on breathing.
With more air came clearer thoughts. Her hips would simply not fit through, which left two options …
narrowing her body or finding a way to widen the passage.
Though she didn’t doubt that Haldeen’s pet would be willing to break her hips, she doubted it would be accommodating enough to do so in a way that would let her escape.
Then there was little matter of walking once she got out the other side.
So, she needed to widen the passage. The outcropping was certainly as solid as it looked …
she had the scrapes and bruises to prove it, and the sides pressed in too tightly for her hips to pass.
She turned her head to look at the last bit of distance to the outside.
She heard the wind blowing through the pines, and smelled the sweet, sweet scent of home.
She cast her light around, looking for something she could reach that might help her get some leverage.
She could stretch one hand just far enough to reach outside.
She grabbed the lip, then drew her hand back with the hiss.
Embedded in the flesh was another sharp edge piece of copper.
She pulled it out and flicked her hand back and forth trying to ease the sting.
A few drops of blood spattered on the rocks.
One drop ran a tiny bit. She looked at that, and then at the copper shard.
“Can I melt it?” At first blush, the idea was breathtakingly bad.
Molten rock was very bad for the skin, not to mention the muscle and bone beneath.
She looked at the copper shard again, remembering how she had made the fibber-keys she’d used to pick the locks to escape her various confinements.
She’d reshaped the metal there, and it hadn’t been molten.
She gathered up what copper she could find, tilting her palm so that she could see the shards.
A memory rose up unbidden … the supervisor teaching her food-making, and the use of a seed.
What did she call it? Yes, the Principle of Contagion.
Where the properties of one thing might be translated to another through proximity …
turning almost food into food. The same principle might work here.
She began to work the metal shards she’d gathered in her hands.
She had to work mostly by feel, with her hands awkwardly over her head.
She worked by touch, softening the metal, making it behave as though it were soft clay, giving it the properties of being nearly melted, but without the heat.
She had made the fibber-keys the same way.
Those magics were tiny, and required no particular spell or incantation.
Once she had the bits of metal soft enough to work them in her hand, she pressed them to the stone and worked to try and impose the nature of the softened metal onto the unyielding rock.
She did add a bit of an incantation then, adapting an incantation she’d heard others use when they were making the ration bricks.
She closed her eyes and focused, attempting to change the nature of the stone as she had attempted to change the nature of that awful paste and make the ration bricks.
She felt her breathing steady and the pain of her scrapes and bruises fade.
In that moment, she did feel a calm wash over her.
The tiny warm spot in her mind roused itself as well, and as she opened her eyes, she found she was able to sink her fingers a knuckle’s depth into the rock, which now had the consistency of clay.
She scraped that away, and repeated the process, opening up a channel in the roof that let her bring her hand from overhead, and closer to her face, and then past, to her chest.
She opened a bit of space with every pass.
Several passes wore away the outcropping, and a dozen more let her slide her hand down along waist to the stone that pinioned her hip.
With practice, she was able to work the stone by touch alone, freeing a finger’s width at a time.
She had no idea how long it took, but the moon had gone well down by the time she had widened the passage enough to shift her hips past the narrows.
Once past that, the rest of the passage went smoothly. She was able to scrabble her way to the end of the hole and then to pull herself out of the tunnel, filthy, exhausted, scraped, and bleeding.
But home. She was home.
She took a deep breath. Rock had sent her back, and given her knowledge, if not wisdom.
A new beginning. Now, let’s see what I can make of it.
She made her way quickly down the outside of the debris pile from the cave collapse, and into the moon-dappled forest.