Ann, face smothered against the cave floor, stretched her arm down the hole her keys had fallen into. Her other hand held her flashlight.

"Come on..." The hole had practically swallowed her shoulder, but all she could feel was rock. She pushed further, crawling with her fingers to extend an extra inch, but she couldn't get to the bottom. "Okay, fine." She took her time pulling her arm out so it wouldn't be scraped.

Her keys were in clear view, shining about as bright as the sun. So much good that did. She didn't have anything to scrape it out with, and, knowing her luck, she would probably get whatever she used stuck down there too.

Ann stood up, brushed the pebbles off her elbows and knees, and headed for the exit. A lion walked by, holding a flashlight in his mouth, but didn't say anything. These caves were called the Wild Caves. Explore your wild side -- literally! was their tagline. Before going in, people had the choice to turn into any animal they wished, so long as they wouldn't be too big for the cave walls. Not bad for twenty dollars, even for just exploring as a human. If she wanted to, she could spend days, maybe over a week, going down each branch and tunnel, checking out all the scenery. While the caves didn't provide food, they were warm, and a pillow and blanket would solve the issue of sleep.

The way out was straightforward. The Wild Caves were structured like a tree; if someone trying to leave got turned around, all they had to do was turn around once more if they saw the tunnel split. Ann passed by a giraffe, a monkey, and two tigers on the way, but none of them would have been able to reach down the hole. Oh well. Maybe next time she could go through here staying human.

The cave exited in a dimly lit room, brighter than the light her flashlight provided. Ann squinted and went up to the front desk.

"Did you have a good time?" asked the man on the other side. He had a lanyard around his neck that gave his name as Mark.

"Would I be able to change species even though I was already in the caves?"

"Sure thing! As long as you don't leave, you can change as many times as you'd like. What animal?"

What would be good at getting her keys? Something with a long tail, probably. Maybe a lemur or a ferret. She wasn't sure if their tails were prehensile, though. Long legs would be nice, but they wouldn't help if her paws would be too clumsy to grab anything.

"Miss?"

"Uhh..." Pick something. "A snake?"

"Alright! Just go through that door over there."

"Thanks."

The changing room was bright, not helped by the white walls, ceiling, and floor. In the center was what looked like an altar from a thousand years ago -- a chunk of stone, about one and a half times her size. There weren't any buttons, displays, levers, or any sign of how to use it. It wasn't even bolted to the floor, and there were no cords connecting it to anything. If this was her first time here and she hadn't seen other people walking around as animals, she would have darted out of here without stopping to ask for a refund.

Ann climbed onto the rough top and rolled onto the slight, human-shaped depression. Nothing happened. She closed her eyes, hummed to herself, and drummed on the stone with her fingers. She imagined being a snake, her arms and legs numb, but when she opened her eyes, she was still Ann. She could never figure out how this thing decided when it would transform her.

Mark opened the door. "Oh, I forgot to mention: you might want to take your clothes off first."

"But snakes are small."

"It's a good idea, no matter what. Don't worry, there's no cameras or anything." The door closed. He didn't know she had been here before.

Ann undressed and folded her clothes in a pile at the edge of the stone. It was cold on her skin. She lied back down. After about a minute of waiting, there was a tingling all over her body. It wasn't goosebumps. The whole front side of her body was turning yellow, outlined in green; a twist of her arm showed that the green extended over her back. A faint pattern of a sideways grid formed on her skin, then began to shine in the light. Thankfully, it didn't glare like her keys did.

She wiggled her toes and fingers before they fused into stumps. However, instead of pulling together, her arms and legs seemed to be getting dragged away from her. "Uhh, I don't think this ith thupothed to be happeningthhh," she announced, tongue lengthening mid-sentence. "Ihth theelhhss like--"

Pop! The tugging stopped on her right arm. Her shoulder was gone, and her arm was wriggling on its own a few inches away, fluid, wavelike. It turned around and faced her with black eyes. A small tongue poked out at her. Did this mean the rest of her would disappear, and she would 'become' her arm?

Pop! Her left arm detached, becoming another snake. It felt like her arm was still there, and when she tried to move it, the snake flopped. Pop! went her left leg, then her right leg. She tried to shout and ask if this was supposed to happen, but all that came out of her mouth was a hiss. She was being squeezed, and she shrank until she was the size of the other snakes.

The other snakes stopped moving. Ann's vision blurred, and her head began to ache; if only she could close her eyes! She was looking at the room from five different angles, all overlayed on top of each other. The more she tried to move her arms and legs -- which moved the snakes they had become -- the more the feeling faded, until she couldn't control them at all. All she did was wiggle.

Ann stared at the ceiling. Well, one of herselves did, the 'main' Ann. Focusing on the image made it clearer, causing the others to disappear.

The door reopened. "Uhh," said Mark, "you were the only person in here, right?"

She flexed her head up and down. Her neck had fused with the rest of her body, and her head felt bare without hair.

"Okay, then..." He shook himself out. "Would you like some more flashlights, then?" He smiled, but confusion bled through his voice. "Come out and I'll hand them to you." He left the door open.

Snakes looked like they had eaten too much sugar when they slithered. Ann shot her head to the left, then the right, then the left, keeping focus on the door so the other images didn't come back. Was she doing this right? She stopped thinking about the door and focused on the image of herself, coming from what used to be her right arm. It looked like she had the pattern down, even though she wasn't going anywhere. Waves traveled from her head to the tip of her tail.

The only thing was, she wasn't wiggling right now! In this body, she was relaxed, just staring behind. Do they all keep doing what I was doing? she wondered. She flicked her tongue repeatedly, tasting the air, and shifted to another snake. Her first body kept slithering in-place, and her former arm was still breathing. She could smell the air from over there in this body.

Ann shifted her focus to the waving snake and pushed with her tail, sending herself forward and off the rock. She shifted into a different body to follow herself, but had to shift back so she didn't ram into the door head-first.

One-by-one, she slithered all five of herselves into the lobby room. The desk was a skyscraper, the ceiling was a mile high, and the mouth of the cave was huge... and warm? Of course it was warm -- the Wild Caves were always warm -- but it was like she could... sense it. When she turned around, she could tell the window on the door to the outside was chilly but not the cave mouth being warm. She wasn't smelling the temperature, but she wasn't seeing it either.

Mark walked around the desk and into view. His skin was hot. "Here you go," he said, throwing five flashlights on the floor. Ann moved herselves out of the way. "You left yours out here, so it's in the pile too. We'll also keep your clothes safe." I've already been here! thought Ann.

How was she going to use a flashlight as a snake? She made a loop in the middle of her current self, shifted to another to feed the flashlight through, somewhat disoriented by the sudden change in perception, and tightened her grip. However, her waves were small when she slithered, and she didn't go anywhere.

"Oh, whoops," said Mark, "I'll go find something better-sized for you." He opened something behind the desk and shuffled through it. "Here we go." In his hand were velcro strips with tiny lights glued to them. Mark wrapped one around the head of her farthest-back self -- Ann was aware of those scales being touched -- and pressed a button. Ann expected the light to be weak and focused like a laser, but it illuminated the walls of the cave, strong enough to make out the cracks and discolorations. The flashlight itself warmed her head.

"Flex that one's jaw for me."

She couldn't. It was blocked by the strip.

The man undid the velcro and re-tightened it farther down her body. She tried yawning, and her jaw stretched open, forcing her head up from the floor. "Sorry about that; we rarely ever get people who want to explore the caves as snakes, so I forgot the little lights were a thing. Hope you enjoy your time the right way: the wild way!"

Ann commanded all of her bodies to spread out and go forward. When she reached the actual cave, all of herselves sped up from being able to push against the uneven and rocky floor. The pebbles she slithered over didn't cut into her; her scales brushed them off, like a glove she could feel through. Five beams of light shot ahead, brightening where they overlapped. The longer she stared at one spot, the hotter the wall got.

At the first branch, Ann stopped -- not just the body she focused on, but all five of her. Which way had she come from? She had backtracked through several branches on her way out, and her keys could be anywhere! Except... she could split up.

She sent one snake down the leftmost corridor, two down the middle, and the last two down the right. Then, she stopped focusing on one snake's vision. All her eyes overlapped, but she could point out which layer came from which snake. She still had depth perception on each image, unlike with crossed eyes. It hurt her head thinking about it. Maybe this is what people meant by seeing things in four dimensions.

Cool water dripped from the right tunnel's ceiling. Ann stopped to drink, lapping up the forming puddle with two tongues while she continued down the other tunnels. A penguin came up the left tunnel, flashlight strapped to their flipper, so Ann focused on that snake and moved out of the penguin's way. Her sense of their heat went away as they passed out of sight. The middle tunnel soon split into four. Ann sent herselves down the left two, keeping a mental map of the place.

The right tunnel ended in a dead-end. A proposal had been written in chalk on the wall and enclosed in a heart. Ann flicked her tongue at it, tasting the stale cave air. She hoped whoever they had asked out had said yes, then turned herselves around. When she returned to the first branch, she went down the left tunnel.

The left tunnel hit its own branch, splitting into two. She sent one snake down the right, which continued straight, and two down the left, which quickly split into two more.

Some of the tunnels went up. Others went down. The ground and walls turned from brown to red in one before they did in the others. A stream cut through one tunnel, passed into the wall, and came out in another tunnel. The Wild Caves didn't feel smaller with more eyes; they were larger, grander, as she was able to experience the scale at which they were connected.

A crack in the ground came into view. Ann focused on it, ignoring the rest of herselves' vision. She looked down, but it was small enough that her light shined directly at the ground above it, so she had to crane up and stiffen part of her body into a pillar to support her head on. High enough up, she saw what was down there: not her keys.

She continued on.

---

As Ann slithered farther down the caves, her heads began to ache and her thoughts became sticky. Her short-term memory wasn't big enough to keep track of where she had been, which of herselves were backtracking, and where each of those were going, all while staying alert for cracks in the ground and people passing by, such as the bat that just flew above her. They didn't have a flashlight but instead a blue ribbon tied around their ankle to mark them as a human.

Her mental exhaustion led to physical exhaustion. She stopped all her bodies when coming across a hole, not just the one that found it. Her eyes were locked on the ground, and she ignored the footsteps and heat of people coming by. Thankfully, nobody had tripped or stepped on her.

Ann wasn't sure how much time had passed. Hours? She slumped down next to another hole. It was closer in shape to a proper hole than any other crack here, and it was large enough that she could tilt her head and see without having to bend her sore body yet another time.

Light glared back. Her keys! But, the tunnel was too small to slither through. She would try anyway.

Ann stuck her head into the hole and held it against the wall; banging her brains around wouldn't do any good. Digging into the rocky texture with her scales, she pulled the rest of her body in as far as she could, then braced the back of her tail against the ground -- still on the cave floor proper -- and stretched her body out. She shoved her head to the other side of the crack, having a better time reeling herself in now that she didn't have to push against the very lip of the hole.

Finally, she was in reach. She bit the keys between her teeth and worked herself out of the hole, using her tail as an anchor and pulling her head back. All she could taste and smell was metal, but she was too tired to flick her other tongues. Ann purged her map from her mind and turned herselves around to slither back to the entrance. Each snake's vision faded in and out as her focus sputtered. She couldn't sleep, though. She wouldn't. All she had to do was get out and turn human; then she could maybe sleep in the back of her car.

Just when she was about to doze off, a huge brown paw stepped in front of her, followed by the rest of the bear. They continued on, not noticing her. The bear had to be dying under all that fur. Ann forced herself to keep all of her eyes up. Getting stomped probably didn't feel good, even if it meant one of herselves could get a free ride back to the front.

One-by-one, Ann reached the light of the exit and waited for her other bodies to catch up. The one carrying the keys was the slowest to arrive. When she got there, she dropped them on the ground, glad to be free of them.

"Welcome back!" said Mark. He undid each of her headlights, then dangled herselves over his arm like she were towels. She flicked to get his attention, then pointed a head at the keys on the floor. "I'll bring those in the changing room with your clothes."

After Ann was wiped off on the table, Mark brought in her keys and clothes. It was nice of him to fold them. "You should start changing back any second." He left and shut the door. Again, she already knew that.

Ann straightened herself out, then switched between the other four snakes, lining them up to where her arms and legs used to be. She stared at the walls and ceiling. She could see now how snakes could sleep without closing their eyes: they probably collapsed from exhaustion.

Her center body tingled, like her muscles were going numb before entering a dream. The green and yellow scales became smoother and faded to her original skin tone, and she felt gravity pull harder as she grew. She blinked her eyes, then let out an unsatisfyingly small yawn. Her hair grew back in and cushioned her head.

There was a sensation at the left and right sides of her body, then two more at the end of her tail. Her body wanted to explode outwards, be free. Gritting her teeth, she tensed, shaking as the pressure built. Her blood flowed faster, fighting against its confines.

Pop! Two arms and legs came out, complete with fingers and toes. She wiggled them and moved them around, bending and extending, glad to have her limbs back. However, the other snakes were still on the table, and she still saw through their eyes. She got up with her human body and dressed herself. The snakes didn't fizzle away or shrivel up; they were still as much a part of her as before. She wrapped them around her arm, shivering at the feeling of picking herself up.

She left the room. Mark was surprised. "Are... are you still able to control them?"

"Yep." Ann couldn't keep the sleepiness from her voice.

"Have some complimentary gifts from the Wild Caves, I guess? That shouldn't be possible. I mean, turning people into animals shouldn't be possible on its own, but now the table's creating animals..." He massaged his temples. "Uh, have a great day?"

She yawned. "You too." She would rather stretch her jaw out further than be able to close her eyes while yawning.

Ann left the building, breeze blowing on her skin, and unlocked her car. She wanted to go to sleep, but she forced herself to turn on the engine. Sleep could wait until she was home. She laid her snake-selves in the back and backed out of the parking lot.

Thud. She held down the brake. Something soft had flown into her. Not her human self, but her snake-selves, which were on the floor after having hit the back of her seat.

Seat belts wouldn't exactly work for snakes -- they would just slide under or through them -- so she opened the center console and slithered one of herselves in, then one more, and closed the lid, sealing them in darkness. The other two had to go in the glove compartment. Ann's vision darkened, as if she was wearing four pairs of sunglasses. It took all of her energy to focus on her human self, filtering the other visions out, and put her foot on the pedal.

She drove home, staying as slow as possible, feeling each bump in the road five times.