I am Azon

Azon was blinded by the sunlight when he opened his eyes. He closed his eyes again. He had this feeling, like he had been flying, or rather floating, ceaselessly for a long time, he supposed. He really could not remember. The last thing he remembered was a world too unstable to hold still. It had kept revolving around him faster and faster and he had been tracking it until he thought his eyes where looking back into his head. Unable to bear any more, Azon had closed his eyes, just for a minute; or so he thought. Now, seeing the sunlight, Azon assumed the world had finally stopped spinning. He began gathering his senses. He again opened his eyes, the sunlight hit him again. It was while attempting to shield his eyes that Azon made that horrible discovery.

Hovering above his eyes, where his hand was supposed to be, were four bony, ugly and sticky things, which Azon realized were his fingers. Immediately, he jumped with a start, which was a mistake. In a moment, he was thrown high up in the air. Though struck with terror, he took the opportunity to survey his surroundings, and the first thought he had was that the whole world had suffered a massive flood attack in his absence. He had been floating in an omnipresent body of water! It was a pity, he thought; him not having enjoyed many of the earthly pleasures. He had wasted his whole life in magic and research.

However, his belief that the world had been destroyed was itself destroyed as he saw a faint outline of very thickly populated trees to both his right and left very far away from where he was.This meant that he had been floating in a large and deep river, which was bad, for Azon was never good at swimming. As soon as he made this disturbing discovery, he began his descent. To his horror, as he looked down, all that was between him and the deep waters was a flimsy leaf! Azon screamed in terror,"CRROAKKK!!!".

Unable to defy gravity, Azon braced himself for the contact with the hungry water, which seemed impatient with his slow motion descent. It did not come. Miraculously, the leaf held. Water poured into the leaf from all directions as the leaf submerged into the river, but it looked as though the leaf was made of wax so that water was just skating around unable to hold still and eventually, most of what came in, went out. Cute spherical crystals of water rolled here and there on the leaf. When one such sphere finally stopped, Azon took a look into the sphere wanting to see his reflection but expecting to see what he feared. What he saw was definitely what he feared and absolutely not what he wanted. Staring at him was a handsome, ugly frog; handsome because it was him and ugly because it was a frog. Then everything came back to him.

Azon was had been an exceptionally brilliant student in Sastra University of Magic and Technology. He had been currently working on his ARSE (Artificial Resurrection for Simple Existence, his final year project). Azon had developed a theory to resurrect dead animals, involving the use of honey due, mosquito excreta... never mind. The problem was that he had to provide a working demonstration in order to graduate. The hunt for animals began. After some very trying experiences, Azon had come home to the frogs. Frog had seemed to be the ideal animal for his project due to three reasons. They were
    1. Easily spottable
    2. Easily catchable
    3. Easily killable

Catching a frog is as simple as holding your hand out to the frog and staying still. Eventually the frog would sit on  it. Then all that remained was casting a Grim Reaper spell on it. If only there was an Almighty spell! Well, no use worrying now. However, the only precaution to be taken was that, never go near a colourful frog if you wanna live any longer.

So, Azon had been in search of the most dumb looking frog and had finally found it on a tree near the Amazon River. After killing the frog, he had checked his checklist.
    One dead, dumb frog - Check
    One vial of resurrecting potion - Check
    One protective goggle - Check
    One Azon to perform resurrection - Check

When everything had been ready, Azon had held the frog in one hand and the potion in the other. Praying all Gods to make the project a success, he had  poured the potion over the frog and had been eagerly awaiting the result when it had happened. The world had started spinning and at the same time his feet had felt as though suddenly the earth had cracked open,lava seeped out and he had been standing on it. That was when he had passed out.

Now that Azon the tree frog mulled over the events of some recent past, one thing became crystal clear; his experiment had gone wrong. Utterly and dangerously wrong. If he was in the frog now, then who was in his body? no-one, Azon realized. It was dangerous, leaving a body in a forest unattended. He had to hurry up and enter his body in someway or other before it became a part of the forest. First, he had to find a way out of the river.

Almost surreal, a tree floated in the river, with one end attached to the shore. Must have fallen in the recent rains, Azon assumed. Azon figured what he had to do. Though never put himself in a frog's shoe before, Azon realised he had to use its legs to take him to the tree. Even if he missed, he would fall in the river, which was fine now since he was a frog and even if he could not swim, he could climb on the leaf again. This gave him the courage needed for the jump. Azon stood poised and when the tree came close enough (he had to judge the distance approximately from his first jump), He transferred all his strength to his hind leg and launched himself into the air. He had misjudged the distance. Even as he reached the tree, he knew that he was going to jump past the tree and again into the water. He misjudged again. He landed on a thin branch of the tree hovering just above the water surface and immediately gave a loud croak of joy and success.

On reaching the shore, a sudden panic gripped Azon. What if he were in the wrong shore? Well, he had to take that risk. Shore was certainly better than the river. Even if he was in the wrong shore, he would somehow think of a way to cross the river. So, Azon started hopping upstream. After a thousand hops, still nothing familiar, Azon was on the verge of giving up when something glinted in the sunlight. Hopes resurrected, Azon hopped eagerly to the shiny object and was awarded for his decision. There lay on earth, dirty but not broken, with some of its contents still in it, the vial of resurrection! Now all he needed was his body. If the vial was here, the body had to be somewhere nearby. Azon started started searching and came to a standstill when he saw what made his hope crumble into dust.

Near the tree where he had first found the frog, lay a mound of small but ferocious creatures which he horrifically identified as bullet ants. However, the mound seemed too large to consist only of bullet ants. So he looked closer and recoiled in horror. Lying among the ants, was Azon's body, or what was left of it. So that was where the burning sensation of his legs came from, just before he had passed out. In his zeal for his work, he had stood on the bullet ants' nest and hadn't even noticed.

Now Azon had two choices. Either stand on the body and pour the contents of the vial on the body so that he was resurrected, or gracefully accept his life as a frog and forget everything about graduation, love, marriage and a succesful profession. Azon might have looked dumb in his new frog outfit, but was still as smart as he had been in the human form. He had heard and read about bullet ant stings and wished he never were in the receiving end. Now, entering his body swarmed by atleast a million bullet ants, he would surely die as soon as he did that.

Azon took the second choice. His thousands of hops all day had made him ravenously hungry. He saw a fly close by, waiting for the ants to leave the remains of their latest food. He wondered how to flick his tongue at the fly.

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