Drakewood is still very dark. A night has passed, since Ashely's encounter with the A widow.
Now, she's a thousandth her normal size. Around her, the forest undergrowth towers over her, like a forest of its own. These aren't the woods she's used to. Alas, she'd be lying, if she said she didn't know anything about this place...
Down here, the field mice are as big as elephants. Ashley is no mammoth hunter...although she does admire the profession.
Ah, if only Sheriff Wilden could see her now... She'll likely be better off if he never does. Her dress size was already too small for him.
Through the forest canopy, bats fly. They scream, as they do. They use it like sonar. If their screams bounce off something solid, they know to swerve to avoid it.
Ashley's heart freezes in her chest. For her sake, she sure hopes that bats don't ground-feed...
Alas, one strays away from the swarm. He's got a hog-like nose. He smells something. He's got big ears; he HEARS something. It sounds tempting. He swings around, and swoops down...
Ashley sprawls out against a stalk of grass, and hides. She clenches her eyelids, as she senses the incoming of a bat's wing-flaps...
He skids across the ground, and builds a furrow in the undergrowth. Ashely screams, as she's hurled over several square meters of the forest-within-a-forest.
She falls on her bum, in an alley within the undergrowth. She's quick to stand. She's even quicker to look around, for a sign of her attacker...
From overhead, he's coming back. And he's coming on fast.
He can't see her. Ashley takes advantage of that. She finds a bunch of something, and conceals herself inside its fronds.
Outside, the bat lands in the alley, and skids to a stop. Ashley hiccups when he does this.
The bat stops, and raises his head. Ashley gapes, and covers her mouth.
Now, like a hound dog, the enormous bat sniffs around, for his quarry. Bats aren't known for their sense of smell...but they might as well be, since their eyesight is already poor.
Ashley backs away, and sprawls against a blade of what this is, desperate to avoid detection. Her heart thunders. She knows the bat can hear it. She knows it's only a matter of time...
She's being watched. She can feel it. She looks to her left and right. She looks ahead. Only the bunch surrounds her...
She dreads to do this...but she must. She looks in the only other direction she hasn't looked: up.
On one hand, it's just a moth. OTOH, those huge eyes and writhing mandibles sure look scary, when you're as small as Ashley...
She screams, and runs out of the bunch. She's so terrified, she's forgotten why she's run in here in the first place.
In his talons, the bat collects her. Ashley has no choice but to scream, and go with it.
Below, the ground gets farther and farther away from Ashley. Above, her carrier won't stop screaming. But then, that makes two of them.
At one point, Ashley gets free. Alas, the bat only hooks one of his talents to her panties, and leaves her hanging upside down.
He rises back into the canopy and flies around. He sends screaming signals through the treetops...both to know where he's going, and to relocate his swarm.
For Ashely, being trapped at a high height is bad enough. She hates heights, and she hates flying. Except not only is she upside-down, but only a bat's talon separates her from the worst of gravity's threat.
The bat's got her hooked. She dreads where he'll land...or what he'll do to her, once he has...