Once surfaced, the sloth takes a very long while to ascend the tree. By now, Esa's long-gone.
Between the trees, damselflies dart. They snatch bugs in midair, and fly off. The noon sun glistens off their wings.
Esa, still less than a thousandth her normal size, has mounted one. With her new witch powers, she struggles to stay at the pilot's yoke. Being a witch isn't as easy as she would've thought a year ago...
This damselfly is SO impossible to control. He might not be a damselfly in distress...but he's certainly a bimbo. But then, big blue eyes are a trademark of the bimbo, aren't they?
The damselflies are joined in the sky...by motmots, and eaten. NOW they're damselflies in distress...
Esa will be, too, if she doesn't come up with something. A motmot's coming up on their six, and opening his beak. To Esa, the motmot's like the Hindenburg...only faster, and more colorful...
She tries to teleport...but can't. So, she does a backflip instead. She's smaller than her ex-mount; hopefully the motmot, if he's hungry enough, will be so invited by the damselfly's bigger size, that he'll overlook Esa's presence...
He does. Esa lands on the motmot's head, and continues her ministry...atop a motmot's head, rather than on a damselfly's back.
With her magic, she gets to work. A few times, she controls where the motmot flies. He sure is savage, in the way he eats those damselflies. But then, the damselfly she was riding was just as savage eating smaller flies...
Ah, boys... When will they ever learn how to refine themselves...or how to stop taking up too much room?
Esa's a very small witch. Either that, or she's too green. Sad thing; she prefers to wear red...and did, in the many months leading up to her witchy coming-of-age.
Before long, a Swainson's hawk has picked up the motmot's trail. Esa heaves a sigh; her boobs come in and out, as she does. Perfect; all levels of the local food chain in the same day. And Esa happens to be small enough to be at its bottom...
This is humiliating for her, of course. She'd RATHER be on top of everything...like this motmot's head.
Esa's pretty sure she's not ready to take on a hawk. So, she makes a command decision. She abandons ship...mere moments before the hawk swoops, and snatches up the poor motmot in his talons. He shrieks, as he flies away with the dead kingfisher-cousin in his talons.
Esa never saw many kingfishers in New York. Her mother offered to take her to see some, back when she was much younger, but... Esa just couldn't fall out of love with city life...or boys, once her puberty destroyed whatever platonic sentiments she ever had about anything.
Now, she's freefalling...just like Tom Petty. Alas, Tom Petty looks better when he does it. Esa does too, but...
She stops her own fall, by catching a petiole on the way down. She bobs up and down, while clinging to it. At long last, she's out of the black...for a while...
Alas, she inadvertently generates fire from her hands. The fire becomes more intense, and severs the petiole she grasps. Also, it becomes a little too hot for her to handle. She screams...and starts falling again.
She catches the tip of a lanceolate leaf on the way down, and hangs from it. This catches fire, too. She starts falling again.
She lands in a tanager's nest. She's surrounded by eggs that're like boulders to her. Alas, she catches fire...and burns a hole right through the floor of the nest...and starts falling again, once she's bored herself through.
As a last resort, she catches a vine, and hangs from it. She catches fire, and turns each half of the vine into a pendulum. She tries to swing from one...but can't stay clung to it when it's too hot for her to handle.
Into the flooded Orinoco, she goes. She sucks at swimming...and she starts sinking. She flails...but her body can't seem to meet traction with the water. There IS no traction between human skin and water, and that's what's so scary...
Here and there, there are fish. Some of them see her fall in, and swim towards her. They look hungry. Esa gapes, and tries to scream...
As she nears the bottom, they swim away. They are not bottom-feeders...
The river bottom is leafy. From her boobs, Esa bounces off the first floor-sized leaf she encounters.
In doing so, she spooks a stingray from hiding. He swims away, flicking his tail as he goes along. Esa has an electrified encounter with his tail, that both stuns her and pitches her across the river bottom.
Esa expects to catch fire again...until she remembers that where she is professionally resists fire in every way. Crap; this also subtly means that this place subtly resists HER, too...
She spooks several stingrays from hiding. Each time, they slap her with their tails, by accident, and electrify her. Shockingly, no pun intended, this doesn't seem to hurt Esa. Esa...actually thinks she might be ABSORBING the stings' power...
Alas, she's trapped on a river bottom with no way up. She's got a bad feeling that she's going to die soon...
From the shadows, something huge emerges. It's got whiskers. It scours the bottom, for food. To Esa, it looks like Godzilla with whiskers.
Esa's not sure what she's more terrified by; the possibility that she's sitting on this horror movie monster's food without knowing it, or the even greater possibility that this leviathan behemoth from the Orinoco deep sees her as food...
In New York, catfish were just a funny story that nobody had experience with. Esa can't believe she's about to get eaten by the biggest one there is in the world...except for the Mekong one in China, of course...
This cajaro's whiskers are prehensile. Like tentacles, they scoop up Esa, and handle her delicately.
The cajaro's monstrous eyes dim, and roll around. Whatever she is and made of, this cajaro seems to really be enjoying it.
Now Esa KNOWS she's going to drown. And that's assuming she doesn't get eaten first...
Aloft, a shadow passes overhead. It takes a while to pass. For the moment, Esa interprets it as the shadow of her doom. It may very well be...but then, she wouldn't think that, if she knew what its source was.
One fist-delivered punch later, delivered from above atop the cajaro's noggin, and the cajaro turns over, and starts floating around.
As a result, he releases Esa. Sinking back down to bottom, Esa looks around for the person or thing she owes for her salvation...
It looks like a merman. Hell, he might very well BE a merman. He's huge. And Eva thinks she might have the hots for him...
With a spell, the merman conjures a net around the cajaro, binding him. The net's got a sling. The merman swims through it, and makes his way to the surface.
As he turns, his fish tail caresses the river bottom. Esa seizes the opportunity, saves herself, and clings to the man's tail, as he inadvertently tows her to fresh air...and a refuge away from the river bottom's dangers.
Towing the catfish beneath him, the merman swims around, through the flooded jungle. Esa thinks he should be worried about a piranha swarm coming to feast upon his big catch's flesh, if it starts bleeding... As fine as he is, Esa would sure hate for any piranha swarm to mistake him for the cajaro...
At this, Esa sighs. The merman might be a big catch...but at her present size, she's nobody's big catch. Perfect; she's found a boy she likes...and a boy who can do magic, at that...and he can't even see her...let alone feel her clinging to the fringe of his tail...