Chapter three
The cave where four still bodies lay was dark and damp, moisture seeping in through tiny crevices in the rock and settling here and there on the ground in small, shallow puddles. Nothing grew here except for slugs and worms and beetles, and other scavengers that preferred the darkness to light, and the place stank from rot and decay. An emaciated, starving human figure walked bent over among the still-warm bodies, but it wasn't hungry for food. What it craved was companionship, the sound of a human voice, a kind smile. What it found was a silence and immobility as profound as death.
Carefully, with a long, skinny, gnarled finger, the filthy creature reached out and touched the golden locks of the female body. Long forgotten emotions assaulted her tortured mind, as she recalled her former life, her once beautiful body, her husband, her children, her lover, everything that had made life worthwhile. She gasped at the soft feel of the gleaming tendril between her dirty fingers. She hadn't touched anything so soft or clean for a long, long time….not since before the all powerful vengeance demon, Anyanka, had sentenced her to spend the rest of her life here in this cave.
"You are very pretty, my dear. It's such a waste to leave your lovely body here to rot," she said in a high-pitched voice that was gravelly from disuse. Then she breathed out a long remorseful sigh. She knew this was all her fault. She had been wrong to take a lover. Doing so had been dishonest and selfish, and her husband had had every right to be upset. But she still didn't think that anyone should have the right to punish her in this extreme manner.
"And what about these poor people? They certainly didn't deserve to come to this end." All the four strangers had done was stumble into her prison. "If they had known that nothing good or pure or beautiful could ever come out of this place, they would have stayed away." But they hadn't known, and so they had fell victim to the curse, their conscious minds having been placed inside the revolting bodies of rodents. It was only then that they were allowed to leave the cave.
"I wish they had stayed here with me, instead of running outside," the old lady said aloud, overcome by her loneliness. "It would have been nice to have their company."
In Janet's office one of the rodents sat by a leg of the large, metal desk, waiting for the two who had crawled on top to the computer. The fourth one, a sturdy looking, dark-haired male, stood on the floor just outside the doorway, keeping watch. When the two on the floor heard the sound of feet skittering across the surface of the tall desk, they stood on their hind legs and looked up, noses sniffing the air, while offering their teammates an encouraging squeak. From their perspective it looked like a long way up, and likewise a long way down.
Their leader slid quickly down an electric cord, falling off where it turned toward the wall. He landed with a Ithump!/I, bouncing once on the concrete floor. "Oomph!"
"Crap!" he cried out, as he righted himself. Jack gave his recently acquired body a shake that ruffled his furry coat, causing it to stick straight out on the top of his head and down the center of his back. Then he turned his head around and looked at his behind. He had landed hard, and now his butt hurt.
The female slid down the electric cord after him, landing daintily on her tiny feet as though it was something she'd done every day of her life. Then she hurried over to the male and sniffed his behind, before licking it repeatedly with her warm, wet tongue. Part of her knew it was an odd thing to do, but the animal part was just doing what came naturally. He was her mate, and it was her job to see to his needs, no matter what they were.
"Mmmmm, that feels better. Maybe I should land on my ass more often?" Jack joked, as he enjoyed the special attention he was receiving from the female. His furry scruff rippled in a display of male superiority, as the young male glared at him disdainfully.
"Maybe you two should think about something other than sex? Like getting us out of this mess," Daniel complained.
"Indeed," Teal'c agreed, not one to waste his breath on long-winded remarks.
"What d'ya think we've been doing?" the big male replied, feeling insulted. "While you two were down here twiddling your thumbs, we were busy finding….er…eh…. Tell 'em what we found, Carter," he ordered, looking back at the female, who was now busy cleaning her tail by running it between her tiny, sharp teeth. She stopped and stared at him reproachfully.
"Why do I always have to explain everything to you? What are you, twelve?!" she cried, obviously upset with him.
"You know I don't understand stuff like you do," he replied, his feelings hurting even more than his butt.
"Sorry, Sir. Actually, the only thing we found that might explain what happened to us was something in your files, Daniel. It's a story about a woman who was punished for being unfaithful to her husband. The only reason I noticed it was because the story is one you heard from Jalen, the man on P2X-414, which is in the same solar system as the planet where we were ah….changed." She didn't know how else to put it. One second she was taking readings from the cave, and the next second she was pint-sized and furry.
"Oh, I know which fable you mean! It's the story about the vengeance demon, Anyaka!" Daniel cried triumphantly.
"Yes, that's the one."
"Let's see, how did it go?" Daniel asked, using his hind foot to scratch his chin. "Oh! I remember now. The man asked that his wife be punished for her infidelity. So Anyanka cast a spell on her. She was forced to live the rest of her life in a cave, with no companionship and nothing more to eat than the bugs, frogs and the other things that lived there. And her lover, who entered the cave to try and free the woman, was never seen again. It was assumed that he too was trapped inside, 'for nothing good or pure or beautiful could ever come out of the place where the woman dwelled,' Daniel quoted from memory.
"It would seem that we are innocent victims of Anyaka's spell," Teal'c stated.
"Yah, it sure sounds like it. So how do we reverse this spell or whatever, Carter?" the big male asked impatiently, as he stared at the female with his black, beady eyes. All Jack wanted to do, since their earlier coupling, was hurry up and change back, so he could get Carter between the sheets…or up against a wall, or over a desk, or any place where he could nail her like a real man. The tiny little dick he was currently sporting wasn't exactly something a guy could be proud of, that was for certain.
"I don't know, Sir." Sam answered readily. Then she went back to preening herself, as though the condition of her coat, and not the solution to their problem, was first and foremost on her agenda.
Jack almost blew a gasket. b"You don't know?!"/b he asked incredulously.
"Sorry. It's a spell, Sir, not science," she replied, and then she went on cleaning herself.
TBC
