You look up at the cliff. Where did it come from, anyway? You must have come down it somehow without noticing it. Either that, or it just appeared while you're
back was turned. And that hardly seems very likely.
You poke around for a bit, trying to figure out where you might have come down, but still can't find any hidden trails or steps.
"Oh well", you think to yourself, "Guess I'll have to do it the hard way".
You begin to climb up cautiously. You are only about 15 feet up though, when a bush you were hanging on to suddenly comes loose. OOOF. You land on your
back in the sand, hard enough to knock the wind out of you for a moment.
Trying again, you manage to make it up almost 20 feet, before some rocks crumble benieth your weight. Again, you slide down and land in the sand with a jaring
"thud".
In annoyance, you sit, looking up at the cliff that is thwarting you.
A small voice from behind you suddenly intrudes on your conciousness.
"You'll never get up THAT way. Why don't you take the easy way up?"
Turning around, you see young man, sitting on a rock nearby. It looks like he's been watching your antics for a while.
"What do you mean?" you ask. "What's the easy way up?"
He grins sidelong at you.
After a moment, he asks "You mean you really don't know?" He seems genuinely surprised.
He shrugs.
"I thought everyone knew that that cliff was too steep to climb. You have to fly up to the top."
You sigh, and roll your eyes. "That's not a lot of help." you say. "If I COULD fly up to the top, I would."
He grins at you again. "Well... THAT's easily fixed." he says.
The world seems to jump, and suddenly you find yourself looking UP at the young man...? You try to put your hand to your head to steady yourself, but your arm
doesn't seem to want to do that. You start to say something to the young man, but all that comes out is a sea gull's cry.
That's when you notice the beak. Protruding from your face. Where your nose should be.
The young man, watching in amusement, finally rises to his feet. "Well, glad I could be of help." he says with a chuckle. "Call me if you need anything else, I'll be...
around." He then begins laughing, as he slowly fades into sea mist. Eventually he is entirely gone, only the echo of his laugh remains.
And you are stuck as a gull.
Well, even though the cliff looks quite a bit bigger to you now, (as does everything else in the world, at this point), the young man (or whatever he really was) was
probably right.
Flying up will almost certainly beat walking.