Spritely Fellow Ch 01

Hello all, this is my first posting on this site after a long time reading. This is a story that will take some time to unfold and no sex happens until later in his life fyi. This current version is a test of some of this site's features that I will rerelease most likely when I go back over it. You are welcome to read it and post any major issues you see as I welcome criticism.

Enjoy

Chapter 1

Becoming a Tree

I knew this feeling. I'd had it before just not in such a massive...quantity. This city was supposed to be a vacation. Just go looking for girls and relax. Yet here I am on my hand and knees in some alley. My right arm was getting tired from holding myself up, and my left arm was busy around my stomach keeping my insides inside. I was bleeding out. Took awhile to find the words and then it was too late. I had started to put pressure on it, but the cut started at my left and ended up halfway up my right side. It was getting hard to hear things now, but I could still see. She wouldn't let my vision fade until I was truly done.

The guy that did this was still mid-monologue and sounded like he would be wrapping up soon. I felt his footsteps and the cold, slick steel of his scythe at my neck. He pulled at my hair to get my on my knees. The change in position left my light headed and my left arm went slack. My legs felt warm as blood rushed over it. He turned my head so I could see the girl. He was going to kill her and it was my fault. He was going to torture her for information and then end her. Because she knew me. Good job Mykris, you are a fucking failure. Then he ran the scythe across my neck turning me into a pez dispenser. She looked like she was screaming. I looked like I was dying. Hell of a 21st birthday.

This whole thing started a long time ago. You have to hear it from the beginning to really get it. My name is Mykris Hale. I grew up in suburbia. It was one of those places that wanted to hold onto nature but understood that people would pay for a few more plots of the American dream. Both of my parents had a really exciting early life that let them feel content with finally settling down. When I asked about their past they would only tell stories that were "age appropriate" aka things before Woodstock. Dad was approaching 50 and looked 40 with a sort of grizzled handsome I hoped to inherit. He had a 5 o' clock shadow everywhere that he didn't have his small beard. Being an outdoors type he kept in shape with a tall muscular frame. Mom was 3 years younger and looked like someone that would be right at home with Tinkerbelle and the lost boys. She had red hair and green eyes along with a really soft smile. When I say "red" I don't mean auburn, I mean like a fire. Streaks of blonde, dark red and the occasional orange were there. It always looked awesome to me as a kid, and I was really happy when those more exciting shades snuck into my blond hair.

They would often be away, but when they were around they would teach me the "ways of the world". Dad taught me fighting, survival, courtesy, and all the outside skills he knew. Mom taught me social skills, endurance, and all the home skills I could ever need. Because they weren't around a lot, they did this training to keep me from feeling abandoned or getting all messed up in the head. "No child of mine is growing up to be helpless or rude." Is what Dad would always say. The training was never really training though. It was more fishing trips and family outings. Whenever we were all together at the house, they would occasionally ask me questions as they walked by my room about what I would do in certain situations.

Looking back, it really covered a lot of ground to keep me open minded and kept me from being the outcast I would have been otherwise. Because of my hair and the fact that my parents weren't around all the time, some kids tried picking on me. The training kept me able to either talk or fight my way out of it without falling out of the social groups all kids love to be in. It also really let me know my parents were there for me, but sometimes I wished they could have been around for more than half a year at a time.

When they weren't around, I'd have the house to myself. This would have been awesome, but I was afraid of the dark, and a completely empty two-story house in complete darkness was the scariest fucking thing I'd ever even heard of as a kid. After sitting in my room with the lights on for a week, someone knocked at the door. I was about then that I remembered that school was a thing that was supposed to happen. Before I say anything else, please understand I was about 8 at the time. I thought swat was waiting outside with my picture on the America's most wanted list. I entered full panic mode and wrote a note to my parents saying I had to run away. I put my favorite toys in a backpack and jumped out the window. I would love to say that I masterfully rolled and ran away, but the truth is I was 15 off the ground, and I chose a window with concrete below it. I still rolled, but it was more out of agony then necessity.

This girl comes running out to my backyard and asks me if I'm okay. Why do people ask this question? It's the stupidest thing you could ask. 'No I'm rolling around on the ground for posterity's sake.' Anyway, she comes running to me and sits next to me while looking over my legs. I knew her as the girl next door. No connotations there; she was literally my next door neighbor and nothing more. She ran off and got her mom and to make an already short story shorter, I ended up staying with them for the nights.

I found out about 3 days later that her name was Aurora Bell. It took me that long because between the hospital and the embarrassment I didn't do a whole lot of talking. She was the epitome of normal. I'm talking the kind of person you see in those clothing commercials only with glasses and messy hair. She was a pasty white girl whose only really redeeming quality was her eyes. They were like a damn ocean with no less than three separate shades of blue in them. Even her pupil refused to be black and only relented a really dark blue. I wouldn't have even noticed her otherwise. She was a year ahead of me at school so I never really saw her except at the other side of the cafeteria. My time at school was occupied with dealing with bullies and hanging out with friends. After we started pseudo living together, we started hanging out at school. She sort of became like a sister to me and always helped me out when she could. I found out then that she was also on the lacrosse team and was quite capable of fighting of bullies.

Life went on and things were good. She met my parents later that year and we all meshed pretty well. This continued until when I was ten. School had just finished and we were having a school wide hide and seek game. I took out the dark green beanie I use for these games. Flame hair is cool, up until you need to hide. I head out deep into the woods behind the school. The dark had become comforting with the help of my family and Aurora. I picked a nice spot behind a bush at the edge of a ravine. No one wants to go near it for fear of falling but I am very comfortable with heights. Side note: This story doesn't end with me falling in.

I set up shop behind a bush that had a small little step in the stone. A tree on my right meant that I had about a 2 foot wide little balcony on the cliff edge. I could still be seen if someone stepped to either side, but that would mean getting close to the edge and it was a loooong way down. It wasn't fool proof, but I was pretty sure they would look for everyone else first. I could wait. I brought snacks.

It had been about 2 hours. I figured that all the other kids had been found by then and I was now out of butterfingers. It was getting close to night time and the light started to fade. It wouldn't be long now until they checked here. That's when I found out just who it was that would find me.

"The only one left is the flame headed faggot. Come on out Micro!" Don't call me micro. That's not my name. Chad Evergreen the biggest sack of shit in Kent, Connecticut. He was that one kid with mommy issues and a drunken father that resented having a kid. Chad probably needed an outlet for all that aggression he bottled up which wouldn't be a problem if I wasn't it. So now I'm in a predicament. Chad is not stupid. Most bullies are idiots and easy to outwit, but Chad was intelligent. He was one of the only bullies who I couldn't get to give me a break. He was able to fight me pretty evenly too. I had nowhere to go and he would figure that out soon. I realized I couldn't fight on the edge of a ravine either. When he figured that out he was going to use it against me. I was going to take a beating and no one would be around to stop it. I was about to step out onto better ground when I noticed something.

"Come on out you little shit. No one around here but you and me. I know you're there dumbass. I looked everywhere else but this part of the woods. Only you would hide here." Holy shit he had a bat. I was convinced that my life was going to end then. He must have been trying to end school with a bang along with other noises of stuff breaking. Normally I could fight him 1 on 1, but not on a cliff edge and not against a goddamn baseball bat.

He was about 50 feet away. My heart was beating really hard right then. I could make a mad dash, but he was at the only exit. This Part of the cliff edge was thick with trees and the only clear path was where I came. Chad was at 40 feet by then. I started to hyper ventilate and sweat like crazy. I shifted position to get more air into my lungs. He heard the bush rustle and started walking slow and steady towards my spot. I start to grab blindly for a weapon only to find that there wasn't even a stick big enough to poke him. When he got about 30 feet away he started practicing his swing. This was when things got weird.

I was scared. I was completely terrified of him and his bat. I always scared easy but this was another level. I started grabbing for something, anything to help me. I grabbed with my hands then just started throwing out my...senses. Imagine being paralyzed in your arm or something but still trying to reach. That feeling was coming out of me to everything. I was just reaching like a child for his blanket. I was scared and was reaching for comfort. Then I caught something and pulled it to me. My entire body went rigid immediately. I froze in my crouched stance as it quickly became impossible to move. I tried standing but unfurled about 2 inches before it slowed to a halt. My stunned panic came back in full force and I tried to scream. A howling wind is what came out of my mouth. Like wind and leaves and sounds that belong in a forest and not in my throat. That panic I mentioned became terror and despair. My hand and legs started to fall asleep and I strained my eyes to move them down to my hand.

At first I didn't recognize the problem on my whit hand. Then I noticed bits of brown growing from my forearm. Bark, all over my arms. My legs began to stretch as I felt it stretch beyond its normal limits into the ground. Thin red leaves began to grow past my eyes and my shirt was slowly covered in bark as it melded to my chest. I put every bit of effort in my body to move but only got a few twitches out causing my new leaves to shake. I couldn't even look around freely and was stuck staring at my branch-hand.

Chad jumped over the bush and looked at my new form. "Where the fuck are you Micro," He said as he started looking around, "Not here huh, where else would that little bitch hide?" I had completely forgotten about him given my state and shifted my attention to him. "The fatass was eating here. Probably ran home to that whore of his." He walked away laughing to himself as rage began to fill me up. Calling me micro was one thing that meant a fight, but no one insults Aurora with me around. I reached out to beat his ass only to be reminded of my predicament. Of course I couldn't move like a normal person being that I was a tree, so I tried doing what I did before and reached out again. This time I had the clear goal of just hitting Chad. Responding to my will, a branch swept down from a tree he was walking under and hit him square on the nose. I was able to watch it but not from my eyes. I could...see from the trees. It was like a bunch of eyes all looking at Chad. Once Chad had been knocked out I stopped focusing on beating him and the rage subsided. I instantly wished it hadn't.

I could see everything in a full 360 degrees around the tree. Not just one tree either, all the trees around him were giving me way too much sight. It felt like I was being assaulted by the view. I immediately recoiled into myself and cut my sight off. To get rid of the shock from the event, I opened my actual eyes to look at my arm-branch in an attempt to stop freaking out. After a few minutes, I finally began to somewhat calm down. I was down to that sort of panicked where you can still pretend to be calm if you needed to act tough, but were still a mess inside. Then everything started to speed up, or more precisely I began to slow down. The shadows started sprinting until sunset came and it got too dark for them. Night started to enter the scene and just as the complete darkness kicked in, I faded out of consciousness. The last bit of the day passed in about a minute.

I awoke again at sunrise and everything remained sped up. I was still scared by the forced sleep and the sun and clouds racing across the sky didn't help at all. As the day ran its course in 5 minutes, I finally found some calm. The visions and the tree thing still scared me, but I recognized, even as a kid, that the fear didn't do anything to help me get out of this. I started to just think about it and got nowhere. As a ten year old my analytical skills weren't that great. So instead I spent 2 days, or 10 minutes depending on perspective, just looking around.

After a few days of examining my branch arm I decided to try that eye thing I did. I reached out slowly to where Chad was knocked out a few day/minutes ago. I heard him leave but now wanted to see. My hand isn't THAT interesting. I reached out my senses to the area nearby and used my tree vision. I immediately saw everything around the trees there and shrunk into myself. I reeled from all the information pouring in and started freaking out again.

It took three more days before I was willing to try again. I was a bit testier this time around. I reached out a single arm of feeling. Only a single little bit of my senses. I touched a tree and was able to fill a sort of empty space I found within its energy. It wasn't completely empty, but the tree had a small pocket in its being that I could fill up. When I did, I felt a second set of eyes appear. I focused on only opening one eye, and after some time I was able only open the ones on one side. I could see, but the outside of each eye was hazy with a brown color and some of the eyes had shards of bark blocking some of the view. I practiced opening other sets of eyes on this tree before jumping to another tree.

I practiced for a week more, learning to view from multiple trees at once. I found that the more I put into multiple trees, the weaker my original sight became and the less I felt like me. It almost got really bad when I was in about a quarter of the forest and forgot where my body was put. That wasn't the bad part though; the problem was that I didn't immediately see it as MY body. I was the trees because more of me was in them then was in me. After that I kept measure of how much of me was still in...me. It was easy to lose track of if I wasn't careful.

After about a month of becoming at one with nature, I stumbled back upon the school. Man, I had completely forgotten about school, even though it was only about 2 hours ago for me. I did some quick math and figured about a month had passed. I couldn't really tell because of everything moving so fast, but the school was swarming with people. It took me a minute to realize it was probably people searching for me. I watched for a few seconds before I saw them.

On the swings at the playground, Aurora was sitting at the swings. She must have been sitting there for hours for me to see her. Her eyes were beautiful and unmoving as people blurred past. Then my mom came into view, the wind whipping her hair around in a frenzy of blurred fire. They stood there for nearly a minute before they flew out of my view.

I immediately warped back to my body and started trying to move. I was not letting them cry over me. Not while I could still move or think or fight or SOMETHING. I pulled and tugged but couldn't budge an inch. Panic no longer motivated me, just sheer determination. I needed to be smart about this though. I figured that if my extra senses got me into this they could get me out. I reached out into my own body and tried moving, but still got nothing. Frustrated I yelled mentally, as my mouth wouldn't do it for me. A voice responded and that as not supposed to happen. It hadn't happened for the entirety of my time in the forest. It came from inside the wood. From the body that wasn't mine.

"You have to fill yourself. You have emptied your body and allowed the woods in and I cannot remove it. Somehow you have anchored down the essence you pulled in, but you overwrote your own body in the process. It took root in your soul, so to speak. You MUST assert your soul to take it back." The voice sounded distinctly feminine and young. The voice as also came in and out as a wisp of noise, but remained crystal clear in between, more clear than anything you could ever hear with your ears.

"Who are you? Where are you? Why did this happen? Why am I a tree?" I started looking frantically around me via the trees to find who was speaking. The woods were just as abandoned as they had been. When I closed my eyes and used and used my extra senses to feel around I could sense an entity floating next to me. It seemed to be waiting for me to feel it there before it spoke.

"I am the sprite of these woods and have been watching you for the time you have spent here. As for what happened, I've never seen it happen before which is why I left you alone. I have witnessed a forest's essence get tapped by a magic user before, but it was never pulled directly into a soul or augmented before. To pull in the essence of a sprite like that and alter it is unprecedented. Thus I waited to be sure this wasn't a trap to speak with you."

I sat and listened to her speak obediently; the school system is quite good at conditioning young minds to sit and listen. When she finished, it seemed like she was waiting for something, then I remembered she wanted me to "assert my soul". It sounded like it had something to do with my recent out-of-body manipulations, but I had never used any of the extra senses on myself. I tried pouring my energy into myself using my extra tendrils. I felt a spherical wall around my soul that was acting as a one way filter for energy. I wasn't able to retract the tendrils into myself or force the tip through. My energy isn't going into the wood but around it. It was effectively dispersing the energy when it clashed against the wall.

When I thought about it, pushing on the walls of the space inside the trees had the same effect and the sprite had called that energy I used my soul. So I pieced together what had happened originally: when I had my body taken over, my soul receded out of fear deep inside me. I had essentially given up my body, and the wood took it over forming the barrier using my soul for energy. Now the wood wouldn't budge when I pushed my energy against it. Maybe I was approaching it wrong. Brute strength didn't do it, but maybe I could whittle it down. These may have sounded like incredible leaps and bounds, but it took easily another 20 minutes of just thinking to figure it out. The sprite was observing me patiently the whole time.