Immediately after becoming aware of my newfound mobility, I thought to test it out.

Caught up in my excitement, which for some odd reason wasn’t suppressed, I attempted to take a step forward…only for my taut muscles to relax and my face crashing down into the petal below me.

Oh, right…forgot I was a snake. How embarrassing. Good thing there's no one here to see it. Well other than the tormented souls, but for some reason, I doubt they had much time to pay attention to me. Even if they did, it's not like they're going anywhere.

Musings aside, it was time for attempt number two. Now hmm. How do I do this?

During my previous life, I did a lot of things in an attempt to obtain the happiness that I had lost. One of these attempts was indulging in nature documentaries. At the time, it did little to help my mood, so it seemed rather pointless. Who would’ve thought they’d help me after death? 

 I’m sure that one of those documentaries was about snakes. Now, If I could just remember what they said about movement. 

Hmm. Umhm. 

Ah! I remember… it had something to do with their abs? Because every gym day is core day when you don't have arms or legs right?

Abs….so the muscles on my underbelly? As I asked myself that, I mentally reached towards the muscles, compelling them to contract.

Compiling to my command, I found that the muscles had a much wider range of motion than I had as a human. I could move them forward, backward, inwards, and outwards. I was totally a muscle helicopter.

I'm pretty sure snakes generally move by slithering? So that would probably be using the muscles outward and forward…swinging from side to side?

Worth a shot, I guess. 

I contract the muscles, pushing forward and outwards on my left, and my body responded. As I felt the muscles on the left side reach their maximum, I switched to the right and my body cascaded forwards. 

Not bad, I think I could use some practice, but I have all the time in the world to do so.

—⁕🎕⁕—

Whew. That was exhausting. Mentally at least. My physical body seems to not be fatigued at all. Which is pretty awesome.

Anyways, I feel confident enough with my slither to leave the tree. I kind of remember some other ways that snakes move, but I think that this is good enough for right now. The ice shouldn’t be that difficult to traverse. 

Mind resolute, I began my journey down myself. Wow, that sounds really weird but whatever.

 I slithered my way over to the edge of the nearest petal. Allowing my weight and gravity to do their job. As the pedal bent downwards, I reached out and sunk my fangs into the closet branch I could reach, ignoring the pain that followed.  I then coiled around that branch, once again allowing gravity to pull me down further. I repeated that process until I got to the part of the trunk with no more branches.

Out of options, I decided to take a leap of faith for the trunk. Which…failed miserably. I succeeded in reaching the base of the tree…a bit too well. I overshot and hit it headfirst, then plummeted to the frozen lake dozens of feet below.

I landed with a thud as my body ungracefully embraced the ice. This is the part where I’d usually act tough and say it didn’t hurt, even though everyone knows it did. This time however, I’m not lying when I say I felt nothing. My new serpent body seemed to be surprisingly resilient.

Quickly regathering myself, I took in my surroundings again, from a height similar to that of the one I had as a flower. Interestingly enough, I could see a lot more then than I could now. I’d trade some of my eyesight for mobility anyways, so no complaints.  

In order to appease my curiosity, I slither towards one of the people encased in ice, who happened to be relatively near the surface. 

The person that I chose seemed to be a humanoid jellyfish woman. She had long tendrils in the place of her hair and her body was semi-transparent. Almost like a ghost.

Upon further inspection of the slimy substance that seemed to be taken from the poor souls, I noticed something interesting. That was the coloring of it. The jellyfish woman had a deep purple substance. 

It seemed that diverse color slime was prevalent. Some people even seemed to have several different colors or a mix of some.   

Also, the slime stinks. Really really really badly.

I surveyed several more of the living dead people, with a few sticking out to me. Other than the jellyfish lady, there was what I assume to be a starfish woman, a whale lady, and a turtle man. 

The starfish lady felt like the exact opposite of the jellyfish but at the same time, they felt identical. Her slimy substance was a bright yellow. 

The whale lady and the turtle man caught my fancy for another reason. Both of their goo gave me a sense of unfinishedness. Like they were only partially there.

I found it odd that all the beings that caught my attention were of aquatic origin. It almost felt like foreshadowing, but that only happens in literature. This is real life, even if everything that has happened thus far totally seems straight out of a fantasy novel. 

A small sliver of my curiosity sated, I once again shoved the lingering thoughts into the background. I wanted to leave more than I wanted my questions answered, and so I increased my slithering pace, quickly gaining distance between my tree self.

After several minutes of sliding along the icy lake, I arrived at what seemed to be the end of the Juddeca circle. The only real indicators of the change in circles was the feeling in my gut, the slight change in elevation, and the ending of the lake. Eager to take my first true step towards leaving Hell, I barreled right toward the sloped hill. Only to crash headfirst into a force field. 

Ouch.

I found myself at a loss, not able to understand why I was being held back, when I felt in my gut, I should be able to leave. Thankfully, I was once again grace by the presence of the Cute Ex Machina.

Go back to the tree. You missed something.

I missed something? Why didn’t you tell me before I left?

…

No answer? Well, whatever. I should just go check it out.

I quickly headed back to the tree me. Upon arrival, I felt the urge to facepalm, and would have done so if I had hands,

Under the frozen surface, tangled between my roots were three figures. I have no clue how I missed that.

But I still couldn’t comprehend why this was holding me back? 

Wait, are those three…