Chapter 3: On Her OwnJason rolls around, not fully asleep but not quite awake yet. He still thinks about that weird dream he had this night about being in a field of ponds and transforming into a female snow leopard hybrid.

  He gets surprised by a sudden wind chill blowing over his body. Maybe he just left the window open, wouldn’t be the first time. Without opening his eyes he tries to reach for his bnket but it’s nowhere to be found.

  “Crap, did it fall of the bed?” he grumbles, noticing some change to his voice even in his drowsy stupor, “Man, did I really catch a cold? I can’t afford more sick days, I NEED this Job.” But he makes no move to get up.

  Once he feels some cold drops falling on his nose he is suddenly wide awake, his eyes fly open and he abruptly sits up looking around. He is not at home, actually he is in some unknown forest

  He sits in a deep crater, snow falling softly around him. It would be a very picturesque scenery if he would know how he got there. As he finally looks down on himself he lets out a blood curdling scream,

  “THIS WAS NO DREAM!!” It was in fact very real and he was a fur covered woman, as he thought he dreamt.

  The freshly minted woman quickly tries to get up, but still being a bit groggy she stumbles a few times until it finally works

  “At least I’m somewhat covered up with all that fur but I still feel naked. I better should find some cloths sooner than ter. I mean I’m not cold even in all this snow so I’m fine for now,” she thinks out loud.

  Even if it is still in the middle of the night for her it is as bright as day, but there is no color, everything is just different shades of gray. “Probably because of the cat stuff” >I hope I see colors in daylight<

  After she fights the slippery slope up the crater walls she feels an all-consuming hunger. Her stomach growls louder than it has ever before.

  “I need to find some food.” In a quest to still her hunger she just starts wandering in a random direction because that’s the only way she knows.

  Still being unfamiliar to her new body she is shaky on her legs. Her center of gravity has changed, her chest and butt sway with every step but her long and bushy tail proves to be an excellent counterweigh. Although this situation is very confusing to her, her immense hunger forces her to pursue more pressing matters.

  “Food first, confusing body ter” To her luck she finds a well-used path covered in hoof prints from horses and deep gouges in the ground from something heavy being pulled along. She assumes there is some kind of logging operation going on and decides to follow this path.

  Sadly she had to abandon her pn and dive for the bushes because a hoard of people with lit torches were coming her way muttering something about a fireball. They look weird to her. They are dressed like peasants from medieval times or from some fantasy video game world.

  >they must be looking for me.< She waits motionless until all of them are a safe distance away and sneaks towards where they came from.

  A short while ter the smell of smoke from wood fires hits her, making her mouth water and her stomach growl. “The vilge must be close”

  Every step she takes the smell gets stronger and more varied. Soon she can pick out the smell of smoked meat. Almost in trance she walks towards the smell of promised sustenance.

  Cresting a soft hill an old timey vilge finally comes into view. The tantalizing smell pulls her towards one of the rger houses in the center of the vilge. She approaches the house cautiously from behind, a singur goal in mind.

  She hears the noise of a door opening, quickly she jumps behind a stack of firewood. A full bodied woman steps outside, the smell of tobacco smoke, beer and the humid smell of many people gathered in a small room clings to her.

  >Must be a tavern or something…< Said woman hangs some clothes over a line and walks back in, muttering something about people being too nosey for their own good.

  Being reminded of her own ck of clothes Jason walks over towards the undry and picks up a long grey tunic. ”Not washed, just airing out, but still better than nothing,” Jason whispers to herself as she slips into the tunic, “Definitely needs a belt.” The tunic feels like wearing a sack. Soft but no shape at all “At least it has pockets,” she murmurs as she continues to her actual goal, the smokehouse.

  As she opens the wrought iron doors a thick plume of smoke shoots in her face causing a severe coughing fit. After the smoke finally clears she sees the smokehouse is full of strips of dried meat. Not being able to contain herself she immediately stuffs her maw with several strips of meat, satiating her immediate hunger.

  Before she walks out she fills the pockets of her dress with smoked meat until none would fit and walks over to the water trough. She just dunks her head in and drinks like an animal because all that salty meat made her thirsty.

  The weird thing is that the water is somehow warm during winter. But then she notices metal pipes going form the trough to the ground and a line of molten snow towards the smokehouse. “Ingenious”

  She then sits down and leans against the trough, contempting her recent choices, the theft. She reasons that it’s just for her survival and that she’ll pay them back … eventually.

  “I still need some camping gear.” So she continues to investigate the vilge for something useful. On a porch she finds a small knife and something she only knows from historic documentaries, a tinderbox, so she takes them both with her.

  Her search leads her to a workshop filled with carts and wagons in various states of assembly. She finds a coil of rope, cuts a length of it to make a makeshift belt around her waist and loops the rest over her shoulder. She also takes some canvas sheets with her.

  “Maybe I can make something from this”. She then hears a commotion coming and sees torchlight. “Aw crap, they are coming back. Gotta go now,” she mumbles and sneaks back to the only pce she knows, her crater.

  As she reaches the point she arrived, she sees the bright colors of a rising sun on the horizon and a wave of fatigue washes over her.

  “Have to make a camp … but if they come back? … A hammock … Yes!” she mumbles.

  She unfolds the canvas sheets and sees there are brass rings embedded around the edge of the sheets. She cuts off some more rope and threads it through the rings on opposing sides of the sheet, climbs up high on two close together trees and fixes her hammock she then hangs the st piece of rope above the hammock and pulls it tight to hang the second canvas sheet over the hammock to protect her bed from the elements. Being exhausted from her adventures she climbs into her cot and falls asleep still in her tunic.

  After just a short nap she gets rudely woken up by the noises of investigative children beneath her. Witch her heart drumming anxiously in her chest she looks over the brim of her hammock and sees some children pying in the crater.

  >please don’t look up, please don’t look up, please don’t look up< To her luck an infuriated looking man comes from the settlement and shoos them back home, warning them about the dangers of wandering around alone when a thief is on the loose.

  Heat flushes her face as she gets reminded of her misdeeds this night. She also notices the vibrant colors of the forest. >So the grays were just a night vision thing<

  After a time of helplessly trying to fall back asleep she munches on some of the smoked meat. As he runs out of them she decides to face the conundrum of her changed body.

  Everything is like she remembers from the field of ponds. ”I mean I am in better shape and much fitter than before but why a woman? I’m very attractive and all and I could have ended up much worse, I mean I’d love to meet another person looking like this, but on me? I’m not so sure.”

  Letting her hands glide down her perky body she expects her arousal to fre up again but it’s nothing more than a subdued tingle, nothing like the ravenous heat she remembers. Maybe the stress is distracting her now or it was just in the heat of the transformation.

  The feeling of hunger returns and makes her restless, she tries to remember some of the survival shows she used to watch so she climbs down and decides to make a fire. She brushes her feet through the snow hoping to unearth some fallen twigs but everything she finds is either frozen, wet or rotting. So she tries her luck my braking off some branches of the trees around her, squats down over them and opens the tinderbox.

  “The lid … It’s stuck,” she groans under bored breaths. Finally the lid opens and the contents of the kit spread out in a wide arc.

  “NOOO,” she screams frustrated and punts the box into the snow. “I can’t go back into the vilge to get more food. It’s daytime and they are on guard because of st night…” she contemptes her situation and decides to pack up. She rolls up her hammock into a bindle, slings it over her shoulder and with a compining stomach starts walking deeper into the forest.

  During her hike she deliberates over choosing a new name, at least for as long she is stuck here and tries out how they sound to her “Amy, Catherine, Cat, Suzie …” but none of them stick.

  She marvels at her new found physical fitness, it is impossible for her to tell the actual time but she reckons she never walked so far without falling into an asthmatic coughing fit. Also there is no pain anywhere. Her chronic neck and back pain caused by years of bad posture were a constant companion, but now? Nowhere to be found. “Maybe I can get used to this body.”

  Soon the short winter day turns to dusk but spurred on by her gnawing hunger and heightened senses she continues. The forest is truly coming to life at night, she notices, “Maybe I can hunt something.”

  She pricks up her ears as she spots a hare hopping by and quickly but silently hides in a bush, her tail flicks from side to side in anticipation. But as, a twig snaps under her paws as she shifts her body and alerts her pray. She grumbles as she watches her evening dinner run away.

  She tries the same tactic several times but the results never change. She finds herself in front of a sharp incline covered in thorny brush, forward being the only way she knows she attacks the hill. She extends the cws and uses them as a makeshift machete to clear a path uphill, eliciting a few childlike giggles at the absurdity from her.

  But the thick undergrowth doesn’t give up without a fight, leaving her with several deep and painful scratches all over her arms. As she finally crests that treacherous hill she has arrived at a serene looking clearing with a river flowing through it.

  Feeling all dirty from the st stretch of her hike she walks over to the river to clean herself. Because the cold hasn’t bothered her so far she decides do undress and stick her arms in the water. After the frigid river water has worked itself through her Protective fur she lets out a sharp yelp, ”BAD IDEA! BAD IDEA!” and immediately pulls them back out.

  Stinging pain envelops her forearms, pulsing in rhythm to her heartbeat. She uses her tunic to dry her forearms and cradles them close to her body, in an effort to warm them back up.

  Once she regains sensation in her arms she decides to set up camp here on that clearing and mounts her Hammock in a simir style as before, right above some soft looking vegetation, “In case fall out” she says jokingly.

  In the forefront of her mind is now her gnawing hunger. She can’t light a fire, so there is no point in continuing to try hunting and she doesn’t trust herself enough to know what pnts and mushrooms are edible and If, nothing would be in season with it being winter now “I mean, am I even still on earth?”

  After lots of pondering exhaustion, caused by her ck and food and exertions during the night, finally catches up with her. Exhausted she climbs up the tree and slumps down into her safe haven, the hammock.

  She doesn’t sleep well. It is more a series of quick naps interrupted by loud noises she can’t interpret and the severe discomfort of her empty stomach. That irregur sleeping pattern persists through the rest of the night and most of the following day.

  It is hard for her to force herself to get up because she feels severely weakened by the ck of nutrition, but in ck of a better idea she tries to forage for … something.

  Her previous stance towards edible vegetation has evaporated and has been repced by the btant need to survive. “I’ll take the chance with poisoning myself, at least then I have a chance of survival.” At first she digs around in the snow to look for fallen seeds and finds some acorns, they taste terrible but aren’t moldy and beggars can’t be choosers.

  She also finds some Beechnuts and low hanging pinecones where she picks the nuts out of. Sadly no berries or other fruits to supplement her measly diet.

  Her spirit seems broken. She wishes herself back to her previous life as Jason Cooper. Back to the tiny apartment without the need to forage for food, many small convenience stores and cafes in walking distance.

  Tears start to well in her eyes, she tries to blink them away but to no avail, they keep flowing. She sits down and leans back onto a tree trunk, her body quivers from the sobs. The mountain of stress that has built up since she arrived here comes crashing down in a torrent of tears and sobs. She curses herself, her new body, her health and new found physical abilities. It’s no use to her, what point is there to be in peak fitness when you can’t feed yourself.

  She wants her old life back with all the drawbacks it had but at least she knew how to manage those, how to walk through life without acute fear of dying. She lets the teas flow and the sobs continue to rock her body, there is no point in holding back. Maybe she can think clearer after having a good cry but suddenly she hears voices coming her way.

  She quickly jumps up, wipes the tears from her face and climbs up the tree into her cot and hides, holding her breath. She can distinguish two separate voices, one male and one female talking in a familiar way. As the voices come closer she hears them talking about a drifter, whatever that may mean here. The male voice compins about being exhausted and wants to make camp on that clearing.

  >Oh shit, they are closer than I thought. I hope they don’t look up< With her pulse drumming loudly in her ears the scared feline gazes over the edge of her hammock to find out more about her pursuers.

  The owner of the compining male voice is a thin and tall man wearing long gray robes, like a stereotypical wizard but no staff or wand in sight. Then his accomplice walks into view. A striking looking wolf woman wearing quilted textile armor and a longsword. She has wide shoulders and a dense, muscur build that would fit in a strongman contest.

  >Someone like me. Finally<

  “I’m gd I left the Brigandine with the sled,” the lupine fighter says with a chuckle and paces around.

  It’s hard for Jason to keep track the conversation over her heavy heartbeat, she has to concentrate to keep her breaths quiet so they don’t find her. She never hears their names as they keep talking between themselves. The way they talk is too friendly for them just to be colleagues but not enough to be lovers.

  >Maybe siblings? But no, can’t be. One is a human and one’s not< She decides that it is better for her to just lie down and let the situation pass.

  She might have done that a bit too forcefully, jostling the hammock around and causing the trees to rustle. The conversation beneath her stops immediately, followed by hushed whispers. After a moment of holding her breath she hears from the wolf, “You can come out now. We mean you no harm. Come down so we can talk”