You own nothing but your damaged sword and cellphone, and the opportunity to trade for something more useful sounds nice, and it might be interesting to get to know her a little better. You agree to help her, and she explains that the building she’s trying to get into is a few hundred yards away – it is one a group of crash survivors tried to get into earlier but couldn’t at the time, as the entrance was blocked. But, going over the rooftops, it might be possible to get inside through a door, hole, or window in the roof.
She leads the way, making sure she stays out of sight from your fellow survivors. It doesn’t take long to get to the other building; most buildings in the area are built side to side, the only difficulty lies in climbing onto roofs that aren’t the same height. For some reason the vines and other plants here are not as dense as elsewhere, making it a bit harder, but also safer to get up. For Velara it’s obviously much easier to get up; she glides down when she can, and easily climbs up with her talons. Those talons… eagle claws scaled up to match a human body - even a petite one - are huge, she definitely has little to fear from you and your busted sword. A few minutes later you reach a door similar to the one you reached the roof through. You wonder why she didn’t just break the door down, you were able to force your way through easily. You shrug and kick the door, immediately regretting it as it doesn’t budge even a fraction of an inch. It’s like kicking concrete, and now your ankle hurts. Velara shakes her head. “If that were possible I would have gotten in already. The door is magically protected, you need to pick the lock.” She pauses and looks concerned as you hop on one foot to a place to sit. “Are you okay?” she asks. You tell her your ankle is a bit sore, and she nods, handing you a purple.

You tell her you’re not especially hungry right now, causing her to smile. “That’s… not what it’s for. Just eat it, you’ll feel better. That part works on humans too.” You shrug and eat the fruit, peeling it first to reveal that even the flesh is purple. It looks a bit odd, but the taste is the same as that of an orange. Immediately your ankle feels better. In fact, you don’t have an ache anywhere in your body, it’s remarkable. Using her wing-hands, Velara takes a small leather purse out of her pouch and opens it to reveal a collection of small metal tools, like eating utensils ending in narrow pins with tips of various shapes. “My fingers aren’t nimble enough to use them effectively but yours might be.” You take one of the tools from the pouch and insert it into the door’s keyhole, trying to turn it like a key. No luck. You try another one, but it doesn’t fit either. “No no, it doesn’t work like a key. You have to find the thing inside the hole and grab it with the other thing, then turn it.” Velara interjects. You simply nod and get back to work, trying again and again. Eventually, you are able to unlock the door.

The air coming out of the building is stale, but also cool and humid. It’s not unpleasant in the jungle heat. Velara goes in first, you follow close by and close the door behind you before going down the stairs. There are windows, but they are small and high in the walls, letting in enough light to find your way around, but not much more than that. Velara isn’t able to see more than you, her bird eyes are probably more suited for bright light. “I… hadn’t really thought this far ahead.” She says. ”Wish I was an owl, about now.” You take out your cellphone and turn on its flashlight mode, shining some light into the room. This appears to be a storage area, with crates and wooden boxes stacked all the way to the ceiling. You provide light while Velara pulls crates off the stacks and searches them. Most of the crates contain parts of varying shapes, sizes, and materials, that presumably were used to build things at one point. The bird woman is not interested in them and shoves those crates to the side. After searching a number of random crates with no results, the two of you try to go into the next room, but find the door locked. You get to work fidgeting with the lock while Velara shines the phone at it. “Where did you find this?” She asks. “It doesn’t look like any magic I’ve seen before.” You tell her that you brought it with you on the plane, and that it isn’t magical.

Once you open the lock, the two of you advance to the next room, which turns out to be a small, cramped workspace. A work bench has a half-finished crossbow on it, a small box full of purple glowing crystal fragments. The shelf case on the other side of the room holds more boxes, but also a collection of various objects such as rings, necklaces, and another crossbow – finished, but missing the string. “These are magic items. We should take everything and sell it.” Velara starts taking boxes off the shelves but very quickly it becomes clear there is far more than the two of you can carry. You tell her you will need to prioritize and ask her what is most valuable. “The rings, probably.” She says. “They cost a lot to buy and they’re easy to carry. If you’re human anyway, they won’t stay put on my claws.” She demonstrated by sliding a dusty golden ring with a ruby over one of her nails, but the tip of her finger is too thick to allow the ring further. “The crossbow might be useful for you to hang on to, assuming we can find a string and some arrows…” You notice that as she speaks, her voice changes. There is a flash of light and you’re worried for a moment something is wrong with your phone – when you turn to look you see Velara is now human. Her body is still the same, while her extremities and face have changed to match it. “Oh. Well, that’s… useful, I guess?” She says. “Would let me blend in with your people if need be.” She touches her nose, makes a confused face as she moves her hand back and forth in front of her face. “Gosh this feels weird.” She turns to you, amused and confused expression on her face. She is unsteady on her feet, obviously not used to being plantigrade. “Did you know most harpies have human heads? Who ever thought that was a good idea. They have sharp teeth but it’s not as good in a fight as a beak. My mother was like that too, even, and my father was a human, so I’m not sure where I got my beak from.” She adds: “What do harpies look like where you’re from?“

You explain to her that there are no harpies on Earth, and that until you met her, you had never seen one, or any other non-human sentients for that matter. “Ah. That’s… certainly odd. A world with only humans. Sounds… boring, to be perfectly honest.” She goes on asking more about Earth, and she tells you what she knows about the jungle, while the two of you go through the valuables. Velara tells you about how the jungle had always been there, but suddenly expanded and overwhelmed the cities and villages of the old empire at the time.

You spend a bit of time figuring out what the various items do, though many don’t have an immediately obvious effect, and most of them are bulky items such as suits of armor or moving paintings. The crossbow, it turns out, doesn’t actually need a string or arrows, it fires lances of some kind of energy whenever the trigger is pulled. Why it is even shaped like a crossbow you have no idea as the whole physical structure appears to have no purpose. One of the items, a set of bracers, turns out to be a ‘cursed’ item, or at least an item not meant to benefit the wearer. When Velara puts them on, they lock together like cuffs and you spend twenty minutes figuring out how to unlock them, bodies pressed together in the narrow space between the workbench and the shelf case while your phone battery rapidly drains. She takes it in good stride, giggling, more embarrassed that she let herself get ‘caught’ so easily, and confident that you’ll be able to free her. Eventually you succeed, and you both agree it’s time to get going.

After putting the valuables into a number of crates and stack them by the exit, you realize you can only take a fraction with you. Once outside, Velara takes the ring off again and puts it in her pocket; resulting in her changing back to her normal form. You ask her what the next move is, and she pauses for a moment. “There is a way… I dunno.” She looks at you, a bit sadly, as she sits down by the door, and you sit beside her. “I’m so conflicted, you see. I never liked being small, but to get into our village, you need to be small enough to fit through a doorway. Of course the ring changes all that.” She again pauses, and idly scrapes a talon across the stone. “And then you meet someone, you know, and you don’t want to become something they won’t like.” She looks at you again, smiling. “But you have to understand, I really need this money. I need to buy something to remove a curse, or a good friend of mine may die.”

You stammer a moment, not sure what she’s talking about. Clearly she has taken a liking to you this afternoon, and you can understand that she needs the money, but the rest makes little sense. You tell her that you understand (which isn’t true), and you’ll support whatever decision she makes (which is true), and you’ll help her bring the crates back to her village so she can save her friend. She smiles and leans into you, putting a wing around you and giving you a fleeting peck on the cheek. “Thank you.” She says softly.

The two of you make your way down separately. You will go back inside and down the stairs, while she will fly down and meet you in a clearing behind the building. At least this time you are properly equipped with a sword that isn’t made of rust and a suit of leather armor Velara helped you put on. It is warm and uncomfortable, but after seeing a beetle the size of a car tire, you’re glad to have it. The jungle floor feels more alive and dangerous than the roof of the building, and you’re glad when you reach the clearing and see the bird woman perched on a tree trunk. You do not want to face the jungle alone, even with your new armor and the magic crossbow. When she sees you, Velara smiles and sits down on a rock, next to a worn statue of an old man or woman. She sighs. “Okay. I guess it’s time to start.” You take a few steps closer, and ask her what she means. “Er, well, you know. Time to make that step.” When you stand there, still puzzled, she continues, blushing. “Just give me some of that fruit.” She gestures behind you, where some of the same fruit you gathered earlier grows. There are some others too, including things like bizarrely large potatoes protruding from the ground, and a cucumber you’re pretty sure moved a little. You shrug and pluck a few of each, sit down, and give them to her. She grins and digs in…

Velara swallows the fruit whole, not bothering to chew. It seems like a bit of a shame. You taste a few and they taste quite nice. The bird woman, it seems, is not particularly concerned with enjoying the meal, but rather getting as much of it inside her as possible, as quickly as possible. You pull a bush of some red melon-like fruit and hand it to her, it grows back rapidly. She scarfs it down as fast as you give it to her. Already you notice she is starting to swell. Her lithe form starts gaining curves as all the fruit and vegetables you’re feeding her are added to her mass, small creaks and squeeks audible every time her flesh briefly expands. It’s peculiar, what is obviously a bird of prey, feeding on vegetable matter. Velara adjusts her stance slightly, her form rapidly swelling both higher and wider, her legs and lower abdomen becoming thicker. You hand her a potato the size of a small pillow and about as heavy as a sixpack of big soda bottles, and she picks it up easily, raises her head, and lets it slide down her throat. Her throat distends hugely, and then her chest does the same, wet noises accompanying the food down. You hear a gurgle when the monster potato hits her stomach and dissolves, causing Velara to expand again. She moans softly, briefly touching a breast with a wing hand, but when she realizes you are watching her, she blushes and nods towards the fruit growing behind you. “Ehm, we should keep going, we don’t want to be here longer than necessary.”

You oblige, giving her more and more of the weird fruit. Entire bunches of fruit you had never seen until today, potatoes the size of melons, melons the size of several melons, it all vanishes into her at an incredible speed. The bird woman keeps growing, and her proportions start to shift as well. Her body expands faster than her head, and a second pair of breasts develops under the first, both pairs quickly swelling to a large size. More red melons go down her throat, she grows larger again, her thighs swelling to monstrous proportions, the whole of her growing taller. Velara moans again, deeper and throatier now, lost in a moment of bliss before she remembers where she is, and grinning down at you, blushing. You give her a few more handfuls, some of the fruit grows together in a mixed bunch, somehow part of the same plant. You feed that to her as well, she throws her head back, swallows the mass of fruit, and yet again she grows larger…

Next part:
https://aryion.com/g4/view/427667
back to previous chapter:
https://aryion.com/g4/view/427659
back to start:
https://aryion.com/g4/view/427656
If you want to support this and other works, join my Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/Meanybeany

Please login to post a comment.

No comments yet, make a comment please