Alex had a terminal Cancer diagnosis and thought she would die before she got to be the girl she always was inside. That all changes when she's in the wrong place at the right time and gets transported to another world and into the body of a girl. So what if she's not human, she's alive and a girl. Now if only she had her sister with her to navigate this new world and her new responsibilities. Wait, she's here too? The passage of their souls between worlds may have doomed the Earth to apocalypse, but Alex and Michelle won't be there to see it and they have enough problems on their hands.
 

 

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Author's Note: This is a rewrite of the original and unfinished Alex in Wonderland. I was hoping to post a chapter of Apocalypse Dawn this week, but it's not coming along as well as I hoped, so I decided to post this instead since it's sort of a prequel to AD and I intend to alternate between posting this and AD every other week going forward. Thanks to my readers and to BCTS for giving their support of Transgendered authors and fiction. ~Amethyst.
 

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Chapter 1: Down the Fishing Hole

Northern Minnesota
Ten years before the fall of the Veil…

“Alex, those things are going to kill you, you know,” my sister told me with a disapproving frown as I lit a cigarette. We were at a rest stop and despite the cold, we were sitting outside. It was clear and cold enough to see our breath, but I needed a nic fix and Michelle didn't want me smoking in the car.

She didn't seem to be all that bothered by the cold. She was even wearing a mini-skirt and I had to immediately stifle the surge of jealousy and self-loathing that clenched my heart like a vice at that thought. God damn, how I envied her for it sometimes, for being able to wear whatever clothes she wanted and having a body that wouldn’t look ridiculous doing so.

At that moment, I deeply wished that I could be wearing a skirt too, not that I could tell my sister that. I could barely keep my face impassive and hold in that sudden spike of the depression, self-loathing, and disgust at the wrongness of my body that had been with me since we hit puberty. It was a small wonder that my jealousy over her body hadn’t made me resent her, but we had been very close since we were born, two halves of a whole, and we shared everything growing up… everything but this. Michelle was my twin sister and my best friend, but I couldn't even tell her who I was inside.

I had never told anybody that I felt like a girl trapped in a guy’s body, not my sister and not my parents, and I had always kept my dressing up private and secret, ashamed of my body and fearful of how they might react. You'd probably keep it secret and private too if you were six foot three and broad-shouldered, with a square jaw. I was a huge, grotesque slab of masculinity that tortured my soul every time I caught a glance of my reflection or looked down at my body.

My body might have been heart-shatteringly masculine, but other than that I was pretty unremarkable with dull brown hair and eyes and somewhat lanky since I refused to work out, bulky muscles would have made my body feel more incongruous. I was built so very differently than my twin sister, who was gorgeous in comparison, a reflection of what I should have been with her nice hourglass figure, feminine curves, bright green eyes, and auburn hair. The only things that we had in common physically were our age and that we were both on the slender side, but I suppose at that point I was getting to be more gaunt than slender. I quickly and carefully squashed another surge of jealousy and inadequacy.

“It’s probably better that I keep it secret, for as long as I have left,” I thought bitterly. It was just one more cross I had to bear on my own. I hadn't told anyone about the Cancer either, they would just worry or waste their time and mine by looking for ways to save me. Better to just try to enjoy the time I had left; two months, maybe three, if the doctors were right. I took a long drag on my death stick and gave Michelle my best fake smile as I told her, “It'll take more than cigarettes to take me down.”

As I finished my cigarette, I briefly considered once again telling my family everything once we got to the cabin. Hiding it from them, and everyone else, for my whole life had only made me miserable. Maybe I could enjoy the time I had left if I could at least live it as something close to the girl I wanted to be. Maybe then my last few months could bring me the happiness that I couldn't find in the first twenty-eight years of my sad existence. I extinguished both my cigarette and that train of thought viciously under my boot, and then we both climbed back into Michelle's beat-up old Camry to finish the long drive out to the family cabin and my final Christmas.

Elsewhere…

Visanee kept her cloak wrapped firmly around her and her cowl up to hide her features as she slipped along the halls of the Misalet Castle with the feline grace and silence that was a benefit of being a Zenin. Behind her, the guards for the room that had been her prison for almost 18 passes lay fast asleep. “I will have to thank Trevas for smuggling me in some corrune pollen if I ever get the chance. For now, though,” she thought, “I must focus on my escape.”

Making her way to the stables was easier than she first expected. It was very late after all, and the darkened halls, with only very few of the kida lamps lit, helped a lot. There were not many guards to be seen either, and what few there were seemed focused on what or who may try to enter rather than who might try to leave since no alarms had been tripped yet.

The Zenin’s ears twitched, and her fur stood on end at a distant sound as she approached the entrance hall. She swiftly and silently slipped into an alcove that would let her see her surroundings, and hopefully remain somewhat hidden in the shadows. Her feline nose wrinkled as she cautiously sniffed the air and smelled sweat, steel, and wine. The guard who turned the corner and entered the hall, sniffing suspiciously at the air, was large with brown fur and bear-like in appearance. If bears walked upright on their hind legs and had four arms.

“Just great,” she thought as her heart fluttered nervously in her chest, “a Jiquar, and he's close to 8 tayr tall. Oh well, at least his sensitive nose should work to my advantage.” Covering her nose with one hand, she slipped the other into her pouch and withdrew a handful of pollen. The Jiquar sniffed his way toward her and once he was almost at her alcove, she jumped out and blew the pollen up into his still sniffing nose.

“Surprise,” she whispered as the guard breathed in the pollen. Before he even had a chance to react with more than a shocked expression, he staggered, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell to the floor, fast asleep with Visanee only narrowly avoiding being pinned beneath him. A little corrune pollen just makes a person drowsy, but with as much as the guard just inhaled, even races with less sensitive noses like Humans and Cinoles would be knocked out for a few hours.

By the time Visanee arrived at the stables, she was almost out of pollen. She quickly saddled a machul and mounted it. There were plenty of horses available but she wanted speed and stamina in a mount and the large black equines were easily faster and stronger than their smaller cousin, the horse. The only thing on land faster than a machul was its other cousin, the baynard, but those were often too wild to be safely tamed, especially with their long, curved, and very sharp blade-like horns. Still, this was only one of three machuls in the stable so, with a head start, she figured that she should be able to make it deep into the city long before any pursuit was mobilized.

She rode through the courtyard to the castle gates where a lone Human stood guard. “Lower the drawbridge and raise the gates,” she said, trying to give it the air of an order while her heart raced. She was so close to escaping, she could not let herself be stopped here.

“I'm going to need to see your gate pass,” the guard replied, sounding bored.

“Oh yes, my gate pass, silly me.” Visanee barely managed to get the words free of her suddenly parched mouth as she opened her pouch, dumping the contents into her open hand.

At this point, the guard started looking intently at her cowled face then gasped in realization, “It's the pri...” was all he managed to call out before he started coughing from the handful of pollen she threw in his face. Moments later, he was on the ground fast asleep as she strained her muscles turning the wheel to raise the black portcullis. It took her longer than she wanted, but the massive gate was made of yalk wood, and that made it heavy and she was not used to such exertion.

She had not yet finished the task when the sound of the alarm rang out, signaling that she was running out of time and needed to hurry. Someone had either discovered that she was missing or found one of the guards she had knocked out. Once she finally had the portcullis raised high enough to ride through, she hit the lever to lower the drawbridge and tiredly climbed back on the machul's back to ride through the gates, across the great bridge, and into the capital city of Velheim with the sounds of the castle being roused behind her spurring her on.

It had taken almost an entire sun for Visanee to find an Enchanter who could do what she wanted, and she had been waiting for him to finish the enchantment in question for several candlemarks. She was beginning to get nervous, and rightly so. She had only narrowly evaded pursuit, and each moment that she spent in the city increased her chances of getting caught by the guards roaming the streets in search of her.

Her ears twitched and her tail swished nervously as she risked a glance out the window of the shop into the street. Her ears swiveled toward a noise behind her, and she adjusted her cowl and turned to see the shop's proprietor stepping out through the curtains that separated the storefront from his workshop. “Is it finished?” she asked.

The elderly Enchanter nodded, placing a rather plain-looking dagger on the counter as he replied, “It is. Use this to trace a circle where the veil between worlds is the thinnest, and it will allow you to change places with a compatible soul on the other side.”

Visanee nodded as she took up the dagger, her attention now laser-focused on what the Enchanter had to tell her. “And the back door that you mentioned?”

“The kida from the enchantment will linger in that spot until the passing of the full moon on the other side. The back door must be used by then, and it can only be used once. Gifts are not common in that world, if magic exists there at all, and you cannot take physical objects with you, so you must memorize the prayer that I taught you to use the back door. Only those words can trigger the kida for a trip back. Just like when you get to the other world, I cannot guarantee whose body you would inhabit upon your return...” He paused, his blind eyes turning in the direction of her breathing and his face a mask of concern. “Are you certain that you wish to do this, Miss?”

She placed three gold coins on the counter as she muttered, “Whatever happens cannot be worse than things are now.”

With a resigned sigh, the old man offered her a piece of parchment. “When you are ready, thrust the dagger through this parchment, it will take you to where the veil between worlds is the thinnest.”

Without another word, Visanee took the parchment and thrust the dagger through. Almost immediately, a blue mist began to rise from the parchment and encompassed the Zenin. Soon, all that she could see, feel or taste was the mist. It felt like the tingling sensation one feels when feeling returns to a limb after being numb and it tasted like old parchment. And then it was all gone, and she was surrounded by snow and ice. “Just wonderful,” she thought bitterly as she realized that she was in the Frozen Wastes.

Back in Minnesota…

We pulled up in front of the cabin in the early afternoon on Christmas Eve. Mom and Dad's car was already there and covered in several inches of snow. The snow had been really coming down on the last leg of our drive and a harsh wind bit into me as we stepped out of my sister’s car. I cursed as I tried to light a cigarette in the wind and snow, “Shit! It looks like we might be in for a snowstorm, Sis. A hell of a way to be spending Christmas Eve.” A shiver tore through my body as the cold wind whipped at me and I finally managed to take a drag of my cigarette.

Michelle chuckled good-naturedly. “I guess we'll save the snowball fight for another day then, and spend tonight in front of a warm fire sipping hot cocoa and talking. It could be worse.”

“True, hot cocoa does sound good, and I'm sure we can find something to talk about.” My mind wandered back to the thought of telling them everything as I absently puffed away. No, I couldn’t. I morosely finished my smoke, grabbed our bags from the trunk of the car, and Michelle and I left the snow and wind for the warm comfort of the cabin.

The Frozen Wastes…

Visanee shivered, despite her fur, as she used the dagger to draw a circle about one tayr in diameter in the ice at her feet. Once finished, she set the dagger aside and the light blue glow that had clung to the blade left it, and the dagger was just a dagger once more. The circle though took on an ethereal blue glow and, peering through it, she could see falling snow and a dark sky lit with a half-moon peeking between clouds. The deed was done. Now she just needed to wait.

She wondered whether someone compatible would arrive soon. If the area on the other side was as desolate as the wastes seemed to be, she could be waiting quite a while. She hoped not, she didn't have that kind of time. As she huddled in her cloak and tried to keep warm, the Zenin held on to hope that it would happen before she froze to death, or she was found by her pursuers or one of the waste's predators.

Her ears and nose twitched, and she carefully watched her surroundings. The howling wind was making it hard to hear anything else and since she'd never been in the wastes before the distant scents that she could pick up, other than snow, were unfamiliar. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched and it was making her tail bristle. She risked a glance back at the circle and offered a silent prayer to the Selune, the Goddess of Gifts, that something would happen soon.

Minnesota…

“The snow outside is getting worse,” I thought as I looked out the window after dinner. The wind was whipping furiously and shrieking like a banshee, and it seemed like a wall of white powder slammed into the side of the cabin with every howling gust. Inside though, the cabin was fairly warm thanks to the fire in the fireplace. The hot cocoa helped too, as did the fact that I was wearing wool socks under a comfortable pair of old sneakers and a warm sweater.

Mom had set out a platter of Christmas treats to go with the hot cocoa. There were sugar cookies, fudge, nanaimo bars, chocolate snowballs, and gingerbread. All this conspired to make me very relaxed, probably too relaxed. Or maybe I just wanted to have the truth out and get it over with. Maybe I was just tired of living the lie at long last. Either way, it doesn't matter as it all led up to me being in the wrong place at the wrong time that night, or perhaps the right place at the right time. I'm still not quite sure yet.

So, as I sat there staring out the window, comfortably full of hot cocoa and sweets, I came to a decision that would change my life. With a sigh, I turned from the window and faced my family. Michelle took after our Mom. She was a bit taller than Mom, but had those same green eyes and auburn hair, though Mom's hair was starting to go gray, and she had been granted a visit or two from the wrinkle fairy.

Dad was a big guy with black hair and brown eyes and he stood six feet four inches tall. Unlike me though, he was a wall of muscle, and he had played hockey semi-professionally before he blew out his knee and became a contractor for a construction company. In my heart, I knew that my father was going to be trouble, but I needed to get this out, it wasn’t like I would have to live long with his disapproval anyway.

“So...” I began, taking a deep breath before continuing, “I really need to talk to all of you about something.”

Mom smiled and reached across the table taking my hand. “What do you need to talk about, Alex?”

Dad looked at me sternly, his arms crossed, and his disapproval already evident. “Men don't hesitate, son. Say what ya gotta say and be done with it, otherwise you sound like a woman.” This earned him a dirty look from both my mother and Michelle.

I laughed nervously, but there was no mirth in my heart, only fear of what was to come. “Funny you should say that, Dad. I was going to ask how you and Mom would feel about having another daughter.”

Mom and Michelle looked a bit confused while Dad, as usual, heard it the way that he wanted to. “Why didn't you tell us you've found a girl, Alex? How long have you been seeing her? Why didn't you bring her for the holidays? It's about time you decided to man up and carry on the family name.”

I groaned, shaking my head at his excitement, my hands trembling and my heart tight as I cut in to say, “Dad, stop! That is not what I meant, there's no girl. I've been thinking about this a long time, and I've never been comfortable in my body.” I blushed as I looked towards my twin sister. “Michelle, I've always been jealous of you; the way you look, the way you dress.” Looking at her reaction, I was a bit taken aback by the look in her eyes. She already knew. “Sis?”

Michelle shrugged, giving me an encouraging smile. “I figured it out when we were in high school. I figured that you'd tell me when you were ready.”

Dad was not quite so understanding. “Mary! I told you we shouldn't have named him Alex! We should have named him Gordon like I wanted to, never heard of a faggot named Gordon!”

“Louis, I don't think his name is what...” my mother began before he cut her off.

“Alex, you're going to come to work with me, no more of this working with computers and hiding behind a desk all day. No son of mine is going to be a fairy. A man's work will make a real man out of you!” I looked from him to my mother and there was a cold ache in my heart as I knew there would be no convincing them. My father was never going to accept the idea, and my mother wouldn't go against him, I should have expected as much.

I stood up and glared at them. “I'm old enough to decide how I want to live the rest of my life! I wasn't asking for your fucking permission! I was telling you that this is what I've decided on!”

The arguing went back and forth for quite a while. Dad refused to give up his position while Mom silently sided with him, and I refused to give up my identity any longer while Michelle would try to get a word in edgewise to defuse the situation. Finally, things became too much when Dad shouted, “If you go through with this you are dead to me!”

I turned and stormed out of the cabin, but not before throwing back at him, “I already am dead, you just didn't know yet!”

I stomped through the snow, the wind behind me half pushing me along. The snow was close to a foot deep and even higher in some places where the wind had formed it into dunes. I was beginning to regret not getting a jacket or proper boots on before storming out of the cabin. My hands and feet were frozen, my sweater wasn't much protection from the elements, and my sneakers kept slipping on the lake ice beneath the snow. I seriously thought about turning back until something caught my attention.

Not far away, there was a circle in the snow and ice, and it seemed to be glowing. I made my way closer, thinking that maybe someone had been ice fishing and dropped their flashlight in the hole. There wasn’t any fishing equipment, but the circle was about the right size, being around a foot in diameter. I could hear Michelle's voice in the distance, calling my name, but at that moment the strange circle had my attention. I slowly reached out my hand to touch it and then everything went black.

I awoke freezing, and uncertain as to why I had fallen asleep in the first place and just what had woken me up. Maybe it was the sound of crunching snow or that strange smell, sort of like a mix between wet dog and nutmeg. I opened my eyes to see shifting movement, white on white. Something large was moving toward me and it took a moment before I could clearly make it out At first glance, I couldn't believe what I was seeing, so I shook my head to clear my vision. Sadly, this did not change the fact that approaching me was what appeared to be a large weasel-like creature roughly thirty feet in length with thick white fur.

The creature stalked forward slowly, each of its six legs moving with deliberate purpose as it watched me. I looked around and saw a knife close by, but everything was so surreal that I thought I must be dreaming. It was almost right on top of me by the time I thought of moving, on the off chance that I wasn't losing my mind, and in case the thing might think I was dinner.

I only narrowly avoided its leaping lunge as I rolled to the side and grabbed the knife, and the creature slammed into the snow and ice where I had been lying only seconds before. It recovered quickly, turning to snap at me with a muzzle full of really large and sharp-looking fangs. Delusion or not, I took off running.

I was running fast enough to keep ahead of the thing following me, just barely, but I knew that couldn't last long. My eyes darted around, and I caught sight of an ice cave not far away. It looked small, probably too small for my pursuer, but I might be able to get inside if I crouched. Once again, the creature's teeth snapped behind me and I could feel its hot breath upon me. Thirty feet... twenty feet... ten feet. I dove toward the little cave, hitting the ground in a slide that carried me inside just as the monster's jaws snapped shut behind me.

My slide carried me well into the entrance of the cave and I could see that it got bigger once further in. In fact, I could see surprisingly well in the dark cavern, though everything seemed to be in shades of grey. I crawled further inside until the ceiling was high enough for me to stand, and placed both the knife and a pouch I was wearing with some sort of coins inside on a small ice shelf. Then, worried about both my exposure to the cold and my close encounter with the strange beast, I set about going over a mental checklist.

“Okay, head? Check. Arms and hands? Check. Legs and feet? Check.” At this point, I felt something swishing against the back of my legs and saw something long, furry, and white with black stripes and tip. “Tail? Check.... wait, what the hell?!”

It was some time before I calmed down enough to think somewhat rationally. “Okay Alex, I don't think we're in Minnesota anymore,” I muttered. My hand flew to my mouth at the sound of my voice, it had a musical quality to it and was unmistakably soft and feminine.

“No, this has got to be a dream; I'm probably dying and having some sort of delusion,” I told myself firmly as I turned my head and gave my tail a good hard tug. “Ouch! Okay, that hurt too much for me to be dreaming and now I know that that tail is definitely attached, but how did I get it, and what else has changed?”

Using my hands and what reflection I could get from the knife I began to take another mental inventory, this one of a more exploratory nature. I was wearing a black hooded cloak and some sort of black bodysuit and, since that was all that I seemed to be wearing, I wasn't about to take it all off to get a better look at my body. I was cold enough already, despite seeming to have a full-body fur coat. Any further looking would have to wait until I was warmer, but my hands and the knife would do for now. “Right, on to the checklist,” I thought, taking a deep breath.

I was most definitely female, as some casual poking and touching in the right spots quickly confirmed, and I appeared to be humanoid in shape but had a lot of feline features. The fur on the exposed parts of my body seemed to match that of my tail, being predominately white with black stripes. White furred triangular cat ears rested atop my head, poking out from waist-length jet-black hair. I had a kitty nose and lips with a slight muzzle and fangs, and big green eyes with slit pupils which overall made me think of myself as pretty, if one has a taste for cat-girls. I was slim and muscular, and both my fingers and toes seemed to have claws. For some reason, I was more comfortable walking on the balls of my feet, though I would have been even more comfortable wearing some warm footwear.

With my self-discovery inventory done I turned my mind to how this could have happened and where I was. Did I die out there in that snowstorm and get Isekai’d? Could that kind of thing actually happen? I wasn't going to complain about my current situation, as going from a dying male body to the body of an apparently healthy female was a definite step up for me. I would have cried tears of joy if I wasn’t afraid of freezing to death right then. Still, it would be nice to know the where, how, and why of the matter.

As for the where, all that I knew was that I was someplace cold and most certainly no longer on Earth. That wasn’t too hard to suss out given my new body and the creature that had nearly eaten me. Well, I supposed that I could be on Earth, but it certainly wasn't my Earth. The how and why proved to be equally elusive.

With no answers forthcoming, I decided to take a good look around the small cave. The cave was just high enough that I wasn't bumping my head, and it got to about half my height at the entrance, though that didn’t really tell me much since I had no idea how tall this new body actually was. The room itself was vaguely round and about four times the height in diameter with a slight depression in the middle of the floor. I briefly considered trying to go back outside to look for some sort of civilization, or at the very least some firewood, but my newly heightened senses could still pick up my large friend prowling around outside the mouth of the cave. With a sigh, I lay down in the depression on the cavern floor and attempted to sleep.

Visanee was cold, so very cold. Her hands and feet were numb with it, in fact, this entire unfamiliar body was. She had been told that she could end up in a body very different from her own, and she had prepared herself to feel out any differences, but at the moment she was too cold to feel much of anything at all except for the shivers which seemed to wrack her body on a nearly continual basis. Someone beside her spoke to her, and her eyes briefly opened to take in the visage of a very concerned-looking Human woman with green eyes auburn hair, and a pretty face flushed from the cold. “Alex, try to stay awake, I've called search and rescue, and they’ve got a medivac on the way.”

The woman kept talking to her and occasionally shook her to keep her from falling asleep. She was so tired, why wouldn't this person just let her rest? It continued like this for some time, Visanee couldn't be sure how long, but after a time she heard something. The unfamiliar roaring sound kept getting closer, it sounded like some great beast, and the *whup whup* sound, like the rapid beating of some great wings, that accompanied it kept getting louder. Her blurry vision tried to focus as a large red blur emerged from the snowy skies, landing nearby where the deafening sound and the snow being whipped about by the beast's landing made what senses she had kept about her practically useless.

More humans approached, she could make out their outlines and they spoke strange words with many syllables that she could not understand. One opened her eye, shining a light of some sort in it as he spoke to the others. She was picked up and placed on something and then she felt herself being moved closer to the strange red beast and its odd noises. “Perhaps it is some sort of Drakan,” she thought. The last conscious thought she had as the Humans fed her to the beast was, “Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.”

I awoke on what I assumed to be Christmas Day comfortably warm, so warm in fact that I didn't want to move but just languish in the experience of not being frozen. It was with great reluctance that I finally opened my eyes to see that I was not sleeping alone. There were white-furred creatures all around me, all snuggled together sharing body heat in the cold of the cave. I wondered if perhaps this was some sort of communal den, as there were well over a dozen of the creatures ranging in size from one foot to four feet long snoozing contentedly around and on top of me.

The animals seemed to be similar to the big one that chased me in here and I pondered the possibility that they may be its children. I quickly dismissed that idea though for two reasons. Firstly, there was no way the larger creature could have made it into the small cave entrance to nest, and secondly, if they all were babies they likely would have been here when I entered the cave. I felt that it was far more likely that my idea that this was a communal den was more accurate and that these were some sort of smaller cousin to the creature from before.

I lay there comfortably for a time, feeling warm and secure as I pondered what I should be doing. My first priority would probably have to be finding some sort of food. I know that I probably could have eaten some of the creatures in the cave with me if I could have found a way to cook them but they were just too cute, it would be like eating a kitten.

Also, they had kept me warm when I would have otherwise frozen to death, so it only made sense not to since I may need that warmth again. Basically, to me, it was the same concept as not pissing in your drinking water. I probably needed them for survival and I couldn't risk screwing that up.

Honestly, they really were cute though, especially when they started to yawn and stretch as they awoke. They weren't nearly as fearsome as the larger model. As they awoke the smaller ones began to play, chasing and nipping at one another and I assumed that these must be kits. One, in particular, seemed to have taken a great interest in stalking my tail, which I was swishing about to get used to having it as an extension of my body. Okay, I admit it, I might have been playing a little, but there was nothing else to do. As I played, I considered looking for food or perhaps some trace of civilization since surely, I couldn't possibly be the only intelligent being here, wherever here was.

After a somewhat lazy morning, the creatures began to leave the cave. Trusting them to know whether it was safe to do so, I followed, hoping that they could lead me to food and water. Taking the knife and pouch, I crawled out of the entrance, where I was greeted by a beautiful day. The sky was a beautiful blue and the air, though cold, was fresh and clean.

I spent a moment taking it all in before my stomach decided to remind me of just why I was out there. With a sigh, I took a look around to find out where my little friends took off to, only to find that one of them seemed to be waiting for me. It just stood there watching me, balanced on its four rear legs until I began to make my way toward it, and then it took off, pausing only once more to make sure I was following.

My little friend, who I was almost certain was the same one I had been playing with earlier, led me to a valley that wasn't quite as barren as the rest of the landscape. The valley boasted some pine trees, shrubs, and a small glacier-fed lake. The water was cold and clear and I quickly drank my fill before sitting down to consider food. Watching the snow ferrets, I saw that they were standing on their four rear legs while using their forepaws to grab at the shrubs. Both curious and hungry, I made my way over to one of the bushes.

The shrubs had small, almost triangular-shaped leaves and some sort of pale blue, almost white, berries. Remembering my survival training from my scout days, I took one of the leaves and licked it experimentally. It wasn't bitter so I took one of the berries and popped it in my mouth. The berry had a slightly sweet taste to it and I smiled as I began to pick and eat more of them. Before long, my hunger was sated and I began putting as many of the berries as I could fit into the coin pouch.

I spent three days like that with my furry little companions; sleeping with them snuggled around me and leaving the cave whenever they did to forage food and water. Besides the berries, I also managed to catch some fish and some white creatures similar in size and appearance to a crab from the shallow parts of the lake. They tasted pretty good too, once I managed to start a small fire and cook them. Most of my furry friends preferred them raw, though the one I had taken to calling Chrissy would mostly eat whatever I did. She, yes I did manage to check her gender, seemed to have taken quite a liking to me and had become my constant companion, even while the others were off doing something else.

On the fourth day, Chrissy and I were sitting in the valley enjoying the heat of a fire and sharing a meal of berries, fish, and crab when it happened. My nose twitched as a familiar scent caught my attention, my ears twitched under my hood, and my fur stood on end at the sound of something large moving through the small valley. Chrissy seemed to sense it too, and her head swung around to the direction that both sound and smell were coming from as she hissed. Her large cousin had found us, and it was between us and the path back to the cave.

I quickly took my knife in one hand, and I used the other to grab a branch from the fire. The remnant of the branch was only maybe a foot and a half long but the end was aflame and I felt better with it between me and the approaching monster. As the beast came closer, I tried to make sure to keep the fire between it and myself. It tried to move around the fire to get to me but I quickly swung my torch at it, catching it with a glancing blow to the side of the head, and it recoiled with a squeal as it was burned. Chrissy scurried up my leg and back and hissed at the creature as she wrapped herself protectively around my neck.

We stood faced off like that for a while, the creature becoming bolder as time passed and my fire began to go out. I kept swinging my knife and torch at it whenever it would lunge at me but with the flames starting to flicker out and me starting to tire, I knew it wouldn't be long before I made a mistake and went from eating dinner to becoming it. A large shadow passed over us but I ignored it except to curse under my breath about another monster, being far more concerned with staying alive against the one I was fighting now.

Suddenly, a brown and white blur dropped from the sky and landed on my opponent's back. Then everything kicked into high gear as the creature screamed and bucked, whatever was on its back stabbed at it, and its blood flew all over the place. I had to dive to the side to avoid being crushed beneath it as it spasmed and rolled, trying to dislodge the new threat.

I crouched in the snow, ready to move again as the beast finally breathed its last, and I made out a creature resembling a cross between a four-armed man and a grizzly bear wearing a pair of fur-lined boots and a white bodysuit that seemed to be made of something scaly. He watched me for a moment as he sat atop the dead predator, brandishing a bloody sword, then gave me what I hoped was meant to be a smile. “Trying to take on a Kythir alone, face to face, with little more than a dagger? You are either the bravest or the stupidest person that I have ever met.”

I merely shrugged under my cloak as I admitted, “Maybe I'm both. Thanks for the help.”

He laughed at my response as a large white creature landed behind him and the corpse. “The Drakan landing behind me is Runne, I'm Patar, his Chosen.” I took in both Patar and the creature he referred to as a Drakan and tried not to show my surprise and wonder.

The Drakan was covered in pearlescent white scales and stood on its hind legs, looking to be over twenty-five feet tall. It had a long tail stretching out behind it and I'd say that from nose to tail tip it would be over forty feet. Its forelegs resembled arms more than legs, which made sense since it stood upright, it had large wings with a wingspan of over thirty feet, and a slightly elongated neck was topped with a proud draconian head with jagged looking blue-white ridges atop the head which resembled an icy crown.

I felt that I was doing quite well at not showing my shock until the Drakan opened its carnivorous mouth and spoke in a gravelly and distinctly male voice, “You are fortunate that we saw your plight as we flew overhead. We are looking for someone, perhaps you could help us.”

I stood up, giving Chrissy an affectionate scratch as we both began to calm down and then approached the pair, lowering my hood as I shrugged. “I haven't seen anyone since I've been out here, wherever here is.”

Patar stared at me for a long moment before grinning and striding toward me. “We've found you.”