Antea snapped her eyes open, still lost in that warm fog of dreamless sleep.

  She was lying on her side, her ass pressed against something big, hard, and pulsing.

  Mark’s arm, strong but lean, was wrapped around her waist like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  And she… liked it.

  A warm, liquid heat spread between her legs.

  She rubbed herself lightly, instinctively, seeking more contact, more warmth, more—

  Until her brain fully powered on.

  That’s his dick, dumbass.

  She jumped up so fast it was like she’d been jabbed with a hot iron.

  Mark woke up screaming, “WHAT HAPPENED?!”

  “N-nothing,” she stammered, face blazing, turning her back to hide her red cheeks and the hard nipples pushing against the shirt.

  Mark ran a hand over his face, confused, then gave a weak smile.

  “Did you sleep okay? Nightmares?”

  “No. I mean… I slept. Whatever. No nightmares.”

  Pause.

  “You, on the other hand, slept like a fucking king, huh? Even though you swore you’d stay awake all night on watch.”

  Mark blushed to the roots of his hair.

  “Sorry… I was dead tired, I passed out.”

  Antea crossed her arms under her chest (which only pushed those damn breasts up more, fucking hell) and glared at him challengingly.

  “And you thought it was a great idea to cling to me like a barnacle while you were at it. But sure, yeah, totally nothing for me to worry about.”

  “I didn’t do anything!” he protested. “You’re the one who wanted us to sleep close!”

  “Mpf.”

  Mark sneezed loudly, a wet pathetic sound.

  Antea raised an eyebrow.

  “So you caught that cold anyway.”

  “It’s nothing, I’m fine.”

  Another sneeze.

  “Anyway… you seem a bit better. More lively.”

  Antea shot him a killing look.

  “Shut up. And stop using the feminine with me.”

  Her voice came out suddenly low, almost a growl.

  Fucking idiot, she thought.

  You think someone in panic can’t have mood swings? Should I sit here sobbing on command to make things easier for you?

  Mark opened his mouth, closed it, looked like a boiled fish.

  Antea sighed, ran a hand through her black hair.

  “I’d say we can leave right now.”

  Mark looked at her, surprised.

  “Taking the initiative? You’re… tough. I mean—”

  Antea stared at him for two silent seconds. Then turned around

  “Shut that mouth, will you? It’s hard to talk to someone who woke me up with his dick jammed against my ass.”

  Mark turned purple.

  Antea headed toward the stream to wash her face, hips swaying without meaning to.

  And inside her, for the first time since she’d opened her eyes in that body, something moved that wasn’t only fear.

  It was anger.

  *

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Antea walked two steps behind Mark, her eyes fixed on his back.

  Not because she wanted to stare at his ass.

  No.

  It was just that when she looked ahead, she saw trees; when she looked to the sides, she saw more trees; and when she looked down, she saw her tits bouncing with every step and it made her want to vomit.

  So Mark’s back was the least disgusting option.

  After half an hour of silence broken only by rustling leaves, they passed a bush full of swollen, shiny red berries that basically screamed “eat me, assholes.”

  Antea’s stomach made a noise like a cat being run over.

  “Funny you didn’t find anything to eat yesterday,” she said, acid.

  Mark stopped and turned.

  “Oh yeah? And you’d like us to stuff ourselves with random berries and fruits? Maybe the kind that make you shit blood for three days or make your tongue swell like a balloon? No thanks.”

  Antea shut up.

  He was right.

  And that pissed her off even more.

  They walked.

  Her stomach growled.

  Her feet were starting to hurt.

  The sun was rising, but the forest stayed cold and damp.

  “So we’re just walking around like idiots and hoping we stumble on something,” she muttered.

  “Got a better idea?”

  “No.”

  “You’re talkative today.”

  “Talking distracts.”

  Distracts from what?

  From the fact that every step made her breasts bounce like stress balls.

  From the fact that her underwear was damp and it wasn’t sweat.

  From the fact that hunger, fear, and hormones were punching each other in her skull like three junkies in a subway car.

  Mark kept walking, then said softly:

  “Do you still like video games?”

  Antea froze.

  “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”

  “You said talking distracts. And… since you got into the ‘popular crowd,’ you kinda drifted away from me and we stopped playing together. I was wondering if you still liked them or if you really became one of them.”

  A sharp ache stabbed her right under the sternum.

  So that’s what you think.

  That he—Anton—chose clubs, girls, nights out, and left Mark alone with his PC and headset.

  It hadn’t gone exactly like that.

  Or maybe it had.

  Or maybe it had, but not the way Mark imagined.

  “So you finally believe I’m actually Anton?” she asked, sharp.

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “Good. Anyway, now I only play Clash Royale.”

  Mark let out a quiet laugh.

  “You turned into a fucking normie.”

  Antea stared at him.

  “I discovered pussy.”

  Pause.

  “I bet you can’t say the same.”

  Mark shut down like a traumatized oyster.

  Ten minutes of heavy silence.

  Antea hated herself for saying it.

  Then hated herself even more because it was true.

  And because they both knew it.

  They walked for another two hours.

  The hunger wasn’t hunger anymore: it was an animal gnawing her guts from the inside.

  Her legs trembled.

  Her breasts hurt from bouncing so much.

  And Mark kept trying to hit horned squirrels or three-eared rabbits with his “psychokinetic whip,” missing them by several meters every time.

  “Maybe traps would be better,” she said at last, exhausted.

  “I just need to fix my aim. I can do this. I’m learning to direct the force, to adjust it…”

  Antea burst out laughing.

  A real laugh. Cruel, almost hysterical.

  “Psychokinetic whip? What a shitty-ass name.”

  Mark turned, offended.

  “Hmph.”

  And kept walking.

  Antea followed.

  And for the first time, clearly, since she had woken up in that body, she thought:

  If we die here, at least I won’t die alone.

  And then, right after, a much nastier thought:

  And if I survive… how long before I start hating myself for wanting to fuck him?

  She didn’t answer it.

  She just kept walking, two steps behind him.

  Watching his back.

  Because it was the only thing, right now, that didn’t make her want to scream.

  Then he got one—one of those weird three-eared rabbit-things that, looking closely, didn’t look like a rabbit at all.

  The psychokinetic whip snapped with a sharp crack, the air bending like someone had yanked an invisible cable. The thing just cracked and collapsed sideways.

  It was a clean kill.

  Neck snapped neatly, no blood, no torn flesh.

  Just that unnatural stillness of something that, a second earlier, was minding its own business.

  Mark stared at it like he’d just unlocked a secret achievement.

  “Did you see that?” he panted. “Did you see? I nailed it. I actually nailed it.”

  Antea opened her mouth to tell him the cruel truth:

  even a mediocre basketball player, if she takes a hundred free throws, will sink one eventually.

  But she closed it again.

  He was happy.

  Actually happy.

  Not an ironic smile, not a pose.

  A clean, stupid kind of happiness she hadn’t seen on his face in years.

  And that happiness, right now, was worth more than realism.

  So she just said, with a half-smile:

  “Good job. You finally hit something that wasn’t a branch.”

  He laughed, like an idiot, sniffling.

  The problem came after.

  Because the rabbit-thing was there.

  Small, soft, still warm.

  And Antea’s stomach decided that yes, that was food.

  It growled long and humiliatingly, like a broken washing machine.

  They stared at it.

  The two of them.

  The alien rabbit.

  And an awkward silence.

  “How the hell do we cook it?” she asked finally.

  In cartoons and movies it looked simple: cut, stick it in the fire, eat.

  Easy.

  Reality:

  they didn’t have a knife.

  They had no idea where to cut.

  They didn’t know if puncturing the wrong organ would poison them.

  They knew jack shit.

  Mark knelt, reached toward the body, then immediately pulled his hand back.

  “If I open it wrong and ruin it, we lose everything,” he muttered.

  He was right.

  Again.

  And Antea hated him a little for that.

  She knelt too.

  Touched the fur behind the neck.

  Warm.

  Alive until a minute ago.

  We could do it, she thought. We could try. We could…

  But the image of her hands sinking into the guts of a mutant rabbit, not knowing which part was edible and which part would kill them in three hours, stopped her.

  No.

  Not today.

  They left it there.

  Not out of cowardice.

  Out of stupid, survival-instinct prudence.

  They kept walking.

  After a while—an hour, two, or maybe just twenty minutes, time had stopped meaning anything—the sun changed color.

  Noon slid away, and the orange light filtering through the trees felt like a slow condemnation.

  That’s when Antea remembered Mark’s vest.

  The one the bear-man had practically ripped off him in a single swipe.

  Mark had looked at it for one second, then tossed it aside because it was shredded beyond hope.

  Great, Antea thought. We’ve been in another world for two days and we’ve already lost half our gear.

  Ahead of her, Mark walked shirtless, skin goosebumped, breath visible in the cold air.

  She had the shirt.

  The vest was dead.

  That’s when they heard it.

  First a confused noise, like a distant struggle.

  Then something that sounded like a growl.

  Then screams.

  And finally… crying.

  Not an animal’s cry.

  A cry that sounded like “help” in a language their brains almost understood.

  Mark froze.

  Shoulders tense, head tilted slightly.

  “You hear that?” he whispered.

  “No, I was busy studying the fucking urban planning of these trees,” she thought.

  But out loud:

  “Yes.”

  Another echo.

  Closer.

  Screams.

  Tearing.

  Metal?

  Or maybe claws on something that wasn’t wood.

  “People,” Mark murmured.

  “Or more grizzlies,” she shot back.

  And then it happened.

  They didn’t emerge into anything: she emerged in front of them.

  They saw her between the trees—a dark shape, staggering, dragging herself forward with a choked sound. A presence that seemed to materialize straight from the forest.

  A female grizzly-woman.

  Much smaller than the male from the day before, but still massive. Her body hunched forward by a huge, taut belly that screamed “pregnant” even to an idiot.

  Her fur was ripped in patches.

  Blood poured from her side.

  Three deep gouges marked her arm.

  Her neck bore a savage bite.

  And she was running.

  Or trying to.

  Limping, whining, panting—making sounds that didn’t belong to any known category.

  When she noticed Mark and Antea directly in her path—

  Antea screamed.

  Mark lifted his arm, ready to use his psychokinetic whip.

  But the grizzly-woman veered hard, let out a heartbreaking sound, and bolted between the trees, disappearing deeper into the forest, still crying, still fleeing from something they couldn’t see.

  The forest swallowed the noise.

  Antea realized only then that her nails were digging into Mark’s arm.

  “Let’s go. Now.”

  Mark didn’t move.

  He inhaled slowly.

  “Humans… did that to her,” he murmured. “They must’ve found a family of bear-people. She was running away. The male… maybe they killed him.”

  Antea stared at him like he’d lost it.

  “And you want to go toward people who beat the shit out of a pregnant woman just because she’s got more fur?”

  He didn’t look away.

  “If we don’t meet other humans, we starve.

  Or freeze.

  And we stay ignorant.

  And we never get home.”

  Her legs shook.

  “If you want, stay here,” Mark said, taking a step forward. “I’ll go.”

  Idiot, Antea thought.

  Then she snorted.

  “Pff. Let’s go.”

  And she followed him.

  Because whatever was beyond those trees… she’d rather face it in two.