Quiet night, nothing but clear skies and a bright moon above, sparkled gingerly with countless little specs of light that had taken unfathomable amount of time to reach this Sophia, and sure wasn't going to keep them waiting. Granted it was dark, Sophia's usual contents were packed in to her car and she was safely unloading them one after another. Extra large blanket to sit on, check! Blanket to cover up in, check! Snacks and assorted drinks, check! Proper eyewear and warm clothes, check! New tablet cell phone for notes, checking websites, and playing music, double check! Ball of glass for her own personal protection, very check! So last thing Sophia needed was her telescope. But this wasn't just any telescope, this was an experimental telescope Sophia developed in college, super long magnification, special corrective lenses that weren't available to anyone other than Sophia, and ocular focuses for maximum view with minimal work. This thing was a powerhouse compared to any sophisticated telescope you could buy, not as powerful as things in laboratories and big institutions, but with enough refinement, it got the job done more than enough.

Everything was set, the night was right, and all Sophia now needed were her last notes. New Cell phone was nice, but getting the last step of her notes was even more tricky. Thankfully she uploaded all her notes to a website for easy access, but it was all just taking time now to download them. This park was convenient though: open walkways, but not so busy that people were regularly out here at 1am. It wasn't off the main road, still relatively quiet though with few houses nearby and plenty of sprawling area with open tree lines. It was probably place lots of picnics were held during the day, a grocery store just down the way even made it easy to get supplies and Sophia was just one person, so any surrounding houses probably wouldn't have noticed her. Plus it was just a few miles from the mansion, an easy ten minute drive for Sophia, and easy sport for viewing. The only thing this placed lacked was good wifi signals and cellular coverage, meaning Sophia's notes were taking a long time to download, but she wasn't about to continue without them.

For now there was music, earphones in, Sophia went about just random gazing, a note book in hand to write stuff down until she could transcribe it, but still, the pictures were more or less just basic pictures of constellations, some of the more traditional ones, and ones she and her best friend made up to pass the time. In the mean time, maybe she'd get lucky and with the right coordinates, she'd get a good look at the moon until then. Latitude, longitude, vector and angle all set, time to gaze; too bad for Sophia, she was so in tune with her own music and her own project that if someone startled upon her, she'd be quite shocked.

Amber was enjoying a rare night alone and away from the city. It wasn't so much the alone that was rare; she was alone more of then than she really cared for, but the away from the city part. To connect to her predatory side, of course, was of essential important, but all too often she did so within the confines of the city and while that suited the needs of maintaining the balance of her nature, it wasn't nearly so fulfilling as actually going into the woods and becoming one with nature in a more true sense.

Amber had left the safety of Sanctuary shortly after dusk and been dropped at the edge of a nearby park. She did't actually know how to drive but who needed to drive when you had a rich adopted parent like Abyss funding your every desire? Besides, even if she couldn't drive, as a shifter she technically had other ways to get from point A to point B if it really came down to it.

Once Amber made it to a memorable nook in the forest, she stripped naked, stashed her robes behind a large rock and proceeded to shift. It was time to assume a form she didn't use quite so often, her Mecistotrachelos apeoros form, which was essentially a small prehistoric gliding lizard. It was important to assume all her forms with some degree of regularity lest she become rusty in their use. As per usual, the shift itself was painful but relatively quick. Once completed, little lizard claws dug into a tree in front of her and within moments she was high in the branches.

It was always a thrill to be in her gliding lizard form; jumping from branch to branch was an adrenaline rush that not even true flight could compare too. Anticipating an exciting night of treetop acrobatics and preying upon flying moths and mayflies, she took a running start to the edge of a nearby branch and jumped, arms spread so her wide wing-like flaps of skin could catch the air and propel her to the next branch.

Dark as it was, unfortunately, and out of practice as she was, Amber mistimed her leap and instead of gliding safely to the next branch, her glide brought her spiraling slowly downward. Only to land in what she could only surmise was hair.

It wasn't too long before Sophia had lost herself in looking at the stars. If anything, looking up at them only made her want to visit them even more. Experiments, tests, postulates, and even equations were all in an effort to get up there, to float endlessly in space and experience what it was that she could only relatively imagine as feeling like. Granted she'd done a great deal of those tests that would normally be included for an astronaut, but despite her best hopes, she'd probably never get there in a normal way, so other methods were necessary.

But all the sudden, it wasn't a matter of getting to space, when it was more or less time to duck out of the rain. Her attention briefly distracted from the telescope and imagining the weightless feeling had been lost on what might normally have been weightless falling from the sky. What felt like a droplet of water falling on to the top of her head only meant that rain was about come down on to Sophia, but that made little to no sense as her head tilted upward to see utterly empty sky above her. Not a cloud in sight, so what was it that dropped on to her head.

First her attention shifted to someone else being around, her eyes and head darting in all direction before realizing that it was merely her alone in the park this early in the morning. Then it was time to feel what it was that had dropped on to her hair, and see if it was really water or perhaps something else. Initially, her fingers glided over where she felt the water drop on to her hair, but discovered no such moister imbedded in her hair at all. Rather, as she felt around, her fingers gently grazed the side of what felt like something leathery… and there weren't any hair clips in her hair at all, so that meant… "AHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"Get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off!" something was in her hair, and on her head, it was small, probably a large bug or a small lizard, what ever it was, it didn't belong and had to go. Her head shock to either direction first, her hands shaking her hair in conjunction to get it out. And when that didn't work, she shot upward from her rested position and continued again, until she lost all sense of location and alignment, toppling over on to the grass very curiously. Once she was up to her knees, she continue to shake her head back and forth, throwing her glasses to the side and out of her otherwise now blind view. This stupid bug, or lizard, or whatever it was, had to get out of her hair now!

Hair was usually a bad thing when one was not much larger than a mouse. It wasn't that hair was uncomfortable to land upon or that there was much risk in getting tangled in it, but rather it was the fact that normally hair meant a head and a head meant something living below her. Most people just didn't react very well to strange lizards falling on them from treetops and, as a scream of terror reached her ears and her hair perch began shaking violently from side to side, it seemed this particular person didn't take such unexpected events any better than most.

Amber wrapped her tiny clawed feet around the hair wavering around her, holding on for dear life. At the size she was presently, smashing into a wayward tree or the ground would not be a pleasant experience and she didn't want that reality confirmed. She chittered her own terror at being flung to her almost certain doom as she felt her claw grips slowly being loosened free. If only the person would stop shaking so violently she could climb down safely and gladly. If only she could actually speak, maybe she could impart the fact that she was a mutant and nothing to fear.

Alas, neither of these things seemed likely to happen and Amber felt a shudder of dread as her last claw grip loosened and another wave of the head sent her flying. It was pure instinct that caused her to open her arms wide and pure luck that the wind caught upon the outstretched flaps of skin and propelled her to a tree a few feet away. Little clawed feet dug into the bark and she clung there, panting and trying to catch her breath and slow her hammering heart.

Now blindness, how could it get worse, but the only way out of this situation was to get a comb or something and comb it out of her hair physically, whatever it was that had landed in her hair. Opening her eyes was difficult, she might as well been looking through an unmagnified telescope, all she could see was the blur of what could have otherwise once had been objects, but weren’t, and her glasses had been flung too far away for her to successful see them. But she didn’t her glasses for what she wanted.

Deep in her picnic basket was a ball of glass that she brought with her for safe keeping. Normally such a ball was meant to keep her safe, a quick projectile that would scare anyone stupid enough to normally come around her and threaten violent against her. But she was going to use it for that this time; sensing it just off the small distance from her, she reached out to it and lifted it up in to the air toward her with her usual impeccable control. It hovered just before her as she continued to shiver and squirm ever so slightly now, her eyes and mouth plucked down tightly just incase such a creature got bored and decided to take a short trip around her face some. The ball was in front of her, she could sense it, but she was going to split it in to three, three relatively equal parts, smaller pieces of the whole, but cracked off pieces none the less. With some forward concentration, each of the slices of glass slowly began to take shape, until they were transformed in to combs. Three identical straight edged combs with fine teeth for coming the shortest of hair.

But Sophia had other purposes for it, with haste and quick speed, the brushes combed her hair, one after another starting from the top of her hair and brushing down the back of her mane until they had passed through her hair almost a three or four dozen times in succession. What ever might have been in her hair wasn’t there anymore and she sight a bit of relief, but quickly started looking for her glasses since she needed them most of all. They were just a short distance away, flung off because of her constant head shaking, and with her mutation, she could hear them, sitting just a short distance away. She was able to lift them in to the air and have them float back to her with relative ease, a small feat for Sophia, but with out them, she was practically blind. A need, not a desire, but the glasses safely back in front of her eyes meant she could see once again, and after glance around to see if she noticed anything in the darkness of night, she cursed herself for even coming out here, “Well we’re never doing this here again….”

It took Amber some time to regain her senses and calm herself down from what very probably had just been a near death experience. Slowly, ever so slowly, her heart slowed and she was once again able to think rationally. She adjusted her grip and turned her head so as to better look at whoever it was she had fallen on. Blond haired human, unfamiliar but nothing unusual there. A moment later, however, what was unusual were what appeared to be glass combs working their way through the woman's hair. Perspective was always a little strange at the size and from the perspective Amber was presently, but it was hard to deny the probability that the woman was a mutant.

Skittering down her perch and back onto the ground, Amber made a flash decision to meet the mutant woman she had so unexpectedly fallen upon. Perhaps there was some meaning in these chance encounters and if so she intended to find that meaning. Of course shifting meant she'd end up naked but nakedness wasn't a concern for her. The cold was another matter entirely but she'd find a way to deal with that. Perhaps the woman would allow her to borrow her blanket or perhaps she'd have the opportunity to gather her robes stashed not so far away.

Shifting took less than a minute, bones growing and expanding and skin stretching around them in turn. As per usual it was a painful process but one which she was, by now, used to and she didn't utter so much as a whimper. While acute, the pain was short lived and she had been through worse. Once fully human once again, Amber stood and stretched, shivering slightly with the cold.

Amber wasn't in direct line of sight of the stranger and, not wanting to startle her, she spoke without moving any closer. "My apologies for frightening you. I hadn't meant to land on your head."

“Huh?” a sudden voice coming out of nowhere was rather strange, granted Sophia knew this happened before, but who ever this was talking was not a voice of her own head, for her ego was too great to let another in. No this voice came from a tree no too far away from her, speaking rather gently, as though trying to Sophia’s attention. And thusly, Sophia turned around the sudden voice, but more or less surprised when she didn’t see anything. Sophia moved a bit, looking around for the voice when she turned to the tree and didn’t see it, moving to either side of it to see who was there.

“Who’s ther…. Oh my…” turning her face away in shame. This was really not something wanted to see, another otherwise naked person which shouldn’t have been in a park like this so nakedly. Why was she dressed like that, but it didn’t matter, “Can’t… can’t you put on some clothes, please…”

While the nature of a person appearing out of nowhere naked, Sophia was not too keen on wanting to see that. Despite the human body, hers more so, being a usually masterful piece of work, she had little interest in seeing that of other people’s. Especially when bits of it that shouldn’t have normally been exposed were like this was. Sophia’s own shame was enough to make her turn around and unable to look at this woman, though one thing remained in her mind after seeing her. Though it was dark, not a great wealth of light, the moon still showed brightly, and even in the shade of the trees, Sophia couldn’t get over the though out of her head. Did the woman not have any eyes? She was almost certain she saw what she saw, where the sockets of a person’s eyes would normally be, they looked black, as though missing and gone entirely, replaced with some sort of black orbs instead. Sophia was certain if she looked back at Sophia, but it weird, the thought, the impression; it was not something she could forget so easily.

Part of Sophia’s own shame in the human body was simply not her expecting to see it either. She didn’t like this, and felt a need to do something, using her combs from earlier, she had them start back toward her camp, using the glass as a pair of makeshift hands, they gathered up the spare blanket she kept for cold nights and rushed it toward the tree, holding it up as a makeshift sheet to hide the girl behind. Sophia was partly confused to turn around, certain she hadn’t see what she saw, but she was curious and certainly interested, “There… take that, it’s too cold out her to be running around like that!”

Amber smiled in soft amusement at the other girl's discomfort at her own nakedness. Humans were often very strange about that sort of thing as were, it turned out, most mutants who didn't have creatures of nature inside them. In terms of actual time, it wasn't that long ago that she would have reacted in much the same way but while the time might have been relatively short, it felt like a lifetime ago. She was a different person now, cleansed and reborn through her time in the Brazilian rain forests and if she had re-discovered her human side, it would forever now be shaped by the predatory creature within.

"I'm afraid my cloths are not easily accessible at the moment," Amber answered, although her lack of clothing was soon fixed with the offer of a warm blanket. She gratefully accepted it, wrapping it around her slight frame. Nakedness might not have been much of a concern but the elements were a much more pressing issue. "My thanks. I'm afraid clothes do not shift along with flesh." Her voice held a hint of humour.

Amber took a moment to luxuriate in the warmth of the blanket before speaking again. The darkness winter offered was a blessing but the cold was far less welcome. "I'm sorry, I was the lizard that accidentally landed on you. I couldn't help but notice you being a mutant yourself, otherwise I would have simply left after escaping the confines of your hair."