Parrothead in Paradise

by PastCat

Chapter 1

Few awakenings are more shocking than being awakened by screaming. Especially when the screaming is unexpected and coming from people you know who are sitting all around you in a moving vehicle. I’d say it was the most disorienting experience of my life, except what followed immediately after topped it full-stop. Fortunately, the vehicle also came to a full stop without sending any of us through the windshield. It was a small miracle in the middle of a nightmare. I’ll get to that in a moment.

Lewis Caroll wrote that to tell a story you “start from the beginning and keep going until you get to the end, then stop.” Sound advice I guess, so here goes. My name is Zoe Vogel. I am a sophomore at Iowa State University, taking a summer course in archaeological field techniques at the University of Hawaii. Basically we have been surveying an area on the North Shore of Oahu in search of ancient settlement sites on weekdays and just being tourists on weekends. May 22, 2015 was one of the latter kind of days. We had managed to convince Doctor Carlysle to take us Mainlanders to one of those touristy luaus that they have at the big hotels. You know, hula dancers, fire eaters, a whole roast pig in an earth oven, the whole nine yards.

Anyway, we left around eleven and were driving back to campus when the funny business happened. The drive was about an hour long, so we got there a little after midnight. I was dozing off in the back of the van next to Trish Cochran when there was a flash of light, kind of like when someone takes a picture in a dark room. My eyes were closed, luckily, though I still saw stars. Night turned to day and what was supposed to be a manicured campus lawn turned into a tunnel of green jungle. I felt the van sway and fishtail as Doc tried to maintain control. Everybody screamed. I tried to cover my ears while holding on to the Oh My God bar above the window at the same time. My heart was in my throat by the time we finally came to a stop. I gasped, trying to catch my breath when the second shock just about took it away again.

Not only were we not in the same place we were supposed to be; we were also in the wrong bodies. I looked over at Trish to see if she was ok and had to do a double-take. Where there had been a mousy Asian girl with brightly streaked hair, there was now a mint colored pony with sky blue mane and tail. She was still wearing Trish’s hoodie and jeans, though they hung on her like a tent and the tennis shoes had fallen off onto the floor. Her dark green eyes were huge; not just from fright (though I could see the whites clearly), but just in general. She looked like the cutesy drawings of horses I had made as a kid. Trish’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. I reached out an arm to comfort her and saw something that rocked me to the core. The arm that I extended in friendship was not the human one I was expecting.

I looked down at what I thought was my arm. Gone was the pale pinkish skin and shortly trimmed nails. In fact, one of the fingers was missing entirely. Instead there was a yellowish scaly appendage with three fingers and an opposable thumb-like thing. All of them were tipped with sharp claws. I withdrew my arm to get a closer look. They still moved like fingers. Huh. I reached up to scratch my head in puzzlement, only to find that it was farther away than I expected. Looking up, I found myself within just a few inches of the ceiling of the van. Odd; I was a respectable five foot six earlier and easily comfortable in the back seat of any car. Weirdly I was also leaning forward, as if there was a thick cushion between myself and the seat back. I turned to look at what appeared to be a couple of pillows covered in red, yellow, and blue feathers. It reminded me of the fancy feather cape that the old Hawaiian royalty wore. I shrugged. The cape followed my movement. As my eyes trailed the neared edge of the strange things, I realized something important. The feathery things had torn right through my sweatshirt. My marching band bowl game sweatshirt. My irreplaceable, once-in-a-lifetime-visit-New-York-City-bowl-game sweatshirt. It’s a wonder I wasn’t screaming along with everyone else.

I looked down at myself. Sure enough, my sweatshirt was in tatters. I could see the logo from the marching band on a patch on the floor. My chest was instead covered by what appeared to be a cloak or shirt of those same red feathers that the pillows behind me were. I reached a hand thing to my chest and touched them. It felt like stroking my own hair, or maybe the fur of a large cat. I felt around a little more just in case. Something rather important was missing, something I had been inordinately proud of: my boobs. Whatever had done this, it had taken my frickin’ boobs. I tried to facepalm and found that face and palm don’t connect when there is another new appendage in the way. Crossing my eyes, I glanced downward to find that my nose was no more. “What the?” I trailed off as I touched my new… beak. No wonder Trish next to me was speechless. I had no words to describe the wrongness I felt all around me.

I could hear hyperventilating coming from the row of seats in front of me. Who was sitting there? Oh yeah. Nic Buckley and Emmy Schneider, the other two students in our van. I leaned forward to see over the seat, not that I had to lean very far. On the other side of the bench seat were two more pony creatures. One of them sat up straight, stiff as a board. Even through a mass of curly pink hair I could see a sharp horn poking out between a pair of equine ears covered in fluffy blue fur. The ears twitched a little towards me as I tried to get a better look at the other equine. He was leaning really far forward and gasping for breath. At first glance he seemed to be the same pale tan color that the crayon box used to call “flesh”. Yeah, not politically correct or anything, especially considering that Nic had come into this world the color of milk chocolate. The way he was bent over, his face was hidden by his long forest green mane. A similarly colored tail poked out the top of his cutoff jeans.

I couldn’t see what was behind the bucket seats of the driver’s seat and passenger’s seat. That was where Doc and his teaching assistant, Adam Falk, were sitting. I poked at the latch of my seatbelt until it came undone. It took a few tries; something meant to be pushed by fleshy fingers does not react as well to sharp claws. Once freed from my encumbrance, I tried to climb over the middle seat. Emmy fell over sideways, like those goats on YouTube that faint when you scare them. Nic turned his head to see what I was up to, whimpered, and went back to his attempts at breathing. I pulled myself forward. My feet felt weird, but I paid them little mind for now. I made it halfway over the gap before I got stuck. A glance told me that I had brought the feathery pillow-cape things with me. I grumbled under my breath as I tried to push them back. They stuck to me like glue, but I managed after a few tries to get them to lay flat enough for me to get over the seat. I hoped that Doc and Adam were ok; I liked the professor and Adam had been nice enough to let me try flying the quadcopter he used to take aerial photos of the survey sites.

The front seats contained two more surprises. The airbags had deployed and then deflated to reveal two more non-humans. In the driver’s seat sat a large dog of some kind. He reminded me of the live action Scooby-Doo movies, except this dog was real. He looked like some kind of hound with dusty brown fur. He was still wearing the vest and broad brimmed hat that Doc wore on site. He was rubbing at his forehead with one paw, still recovering from the sudden stop. His other paw was on the ignition key. It looked like he was ok though. I turned to look at Adam. My view was blocked by a wall of bright magenta feathers. I could hear a series of cuss words coming from behind them. I paused to admire his creativity; I thought I had heard everything he had when Nic got the big ‘copter stuck in the tree at one of the sites. “Hey, you ok?” I asked.

He looked over his feathers at me, then past my shoulders. “How the hell did you get yours to lie flat?” Adam asked, staring.

“Huh? My what?” I looked over my shoulder at what I had assumed was chair padding or a pillow covered in feathers. “Please tell me those aren’t…”

“You’ve got fucking wings! Like these only bigger.” Adam said poking at me with a hoof. “And don’t you dare tell me you’re still normal, not looking like that.”

I fell back between the comatose Emmy and bent-over Nic. My wings pressed uncomfortably against the back of the chair. From here, I could see myself in the rear-view mirror above the dashboard. What stared back at me was nothing human. I was basically looking into the face of a bird of some kind. It mostly reminded me of a scarlet macaw, but as if drawn in a cartoon. I blinked; so did the parrot, with eyes at least as large as those on the horse creatures my friends had become. A proudly hooked black beak stood out in the center of my face. I opened my mouth to reveal a set of teeth and a blue tongue. Weird. There was a sort of crest of feathers on top of my head that stuck out kind of like my short hair had. The elastic that had held my ponytail in place now contained a handful of bright red feathers. My wings seemed to have three layers of color: the end feathers were blue, the middle ones yellow, and the rest red. I looked further downward and was surprised to see that the feathers gave way to fur about halfway down my body. The fur was a creamy tan and covered what looked like the butt end of a lion. My feet were now paws; flexing them showed that I now had retractable claws there too. I also seemed to have gained the additional appendage of a tail, a long leonine one with a tuft of fur the same bright red as my feathers. I looked like I had gone swimming in a paint factory.

Around me, everyone else seemed to be slowly coming to their senses. I heard unintelligible groans coming behind me from where Trish was sitting. I looked back to see her struggling with her seatbelt. I reached over the seat to lend a hand and she squirmed out of the seatbelt and as far away from me as she could reach. She was making these kind of horsey whinnies that you’d expect to see in a tv show. Her eyes were still huge and staring at me. It was as if she didn't dare to blink, lest I try to bite her or something.

“Hey, T. I know you are freaking out right now and so is everybody else, but can you at least stop that sound? It’s grating on my, uh, ears and making me even more nervous than I already am.” I said in as low and calm a voice as I could muster. Trish closed her mouth and stopped the horse noises.

“Z-zoe? Is that you? What’s going on? Why do you look like something that escaped from a pet-store? I feel like I could turn you into a stuffed animal for little kids or something.” Trish hadn’t seen the others yet. Come to think of it, she hadn’t even seen herself in a mirror.

“Yeah it’s me. I have no effin idea what is going on, but we’re not the only ones. The guys up here are plushie candidates too. This car looks like it came out of some little girl’s fantasy story complete with unicorns and pegasuses.” I gestured forward to where the others were sorting themselves out. “Wanna join us up here?”

“I really hope I’m dreaming, Zoe. I can’t feel my fingers or toes and I am sitting on something that was not there ten minutes ago. Help me out here. Did someone spike those drinks at the luau?” She tried to get to two feet and fell sideways onto my seat. I tried to suppress a snicker. She looked goofy with her butt in the air and that cute blue tail sticking out the back of her shorts. She glared at me. “So not helping, Parrothead. Are you gonna get me up there so I can see too or just sit there half in and half out of that seat staring at my behind and laughing?”

“All right, all right, I will help. Just… uh… don’t make any more of those horsey noises when I touch you okay? This is weird enough as it is.” I reached for her and carefully picked her up in my… hands? Bird feet thingies? Whatever. I did my best not to use my new claws as I pulled the two of us onto the middle seat between Emmy and Nic.

Emmy still looked stiff as a board, but as best as I could tell she was breathing normally. Her eyes were crossed as she stared at the horn that emerged between her curly bangs. I got the impression that she was doing her level best not to move now; it was not the same panicked freeze she had been doing before. Nic’s breathing had gone back to normal by that point. He was staring at Emmy. I wondered what had happened behind my back when I had been talking with Trish.

“Dude, do it again.” Nic said to Emmy.

“Do what?” Emmy said back.

“Do that thing you just did. You know, that little laser light show with the spike on your head.” He turned to me. “You missed it, Z. A bit ago when your butt was the only thing between us, she lit that spike up. It was kinda glowy blue like the LED on a computer screen or something. Then when she stiffened up again it went out. It was so cool!”

“I don’t know how I did that, Nic. It kinda just happened.” Emmy shuddered. “I don’t like this at all.”

I sat down on the floor in front of the middle seat and left Trish in the middle between them. My pony friends were so small their little hooves did not reach the floor when they sat on the seat and I was big enough to look at them in the eye from where I was on the floor. Behind me I heard Doc and Adam shift in their seats to look at us. We all kind of stared at each other in silence for a moment. Four little horses, one with wings, one with a horn, one dog creature and one pet-store griffon were sitting in a van in the middle of the jungle. It sounds like the build up to a really bad joke, I know.

“Now what?” I asked finally. I looked to Doc, who looked as shell-shocked as the rest of us. I guess I figured he was the adult of our group, being the only one who was an actual teacher instead of a student, but he was at a total loss.

“Uh, Let’s see if we can figure out where we are first.” Doc said at last. He glanced at Adam. “Have you gotten anything on the GPS? Even in dense tree cover there should be something.”

Adam shook his head. His yellow mane fell over his eyes. “I’m not getting any kind of signal here, Doc. None. Zero. Zilch. It’s as if there is nothing out there it can even connect to. I don’t get it. Even on Rapa Nui we got GPS. Crappy but there. Here? Nada.” He had a stylus pen stuck between his teeth; I guess that is what he had been using. “Maybe we should try outside?” The stylus pen fell out as he gestured towards the door.

“Sounds good to me.” Nic said. He reached for the sliding door next to him. His hoof barely fit the latch, but he managed to get the door sliding a little before it was stopped by something outside. He tugged at it a little, then decided he needed more leverage and slid out of the seat. He sat on the floor next to me and gave the door a shove. It moved a little. He pushed again, then again. It stuck. Nic grimaced and with an almost growl of frustration turned his back to the jammed door and gave it a good kick with his back legs. There was a screech of metal and instead of sliding, the door was wrenched from its track and fell with a thud on the forest floor outside the van. My jaw was on the floor, as was everyone else’s. Nic was staring at his feet in bald astonishment. I wondered what other surprises these new weird forms had in store.

The six of us managed to crawl out of the van without anyone else freaking out. I say crawl because only Doc could manage to move on two feet. It looked really awkward though, kind of like when a gorilla walks around on two feet. Apparently dog-apes are meant to be knuckle walkers. Everyone else walked on all fours. Including me. Somehow it was much easier to do if you stopped thinking about it and just moved. We sat in a circle between the broken door and the van. None of us really wanted to have our backs to the forest, but I sat there anyway next to Doc. From here I could see that the van was mostly intact, aside from Nic’s door. The trailer was still attached to the back, with all of our dig equipment inside.

Doc nodded to the trailer. “In there we have some supplies that would be useful I’d say. There are at least two machetes from when we were clearing brush around that housing platform. There’s a first aid kit in there too although I really hope we don’t need to use any of it any time soon. I think there’s a lantern and some flashlights there, in with our camping stuff. Rope and tarps too.”

“The big quadcopter is in there too, Doc.” Adam said. “I was going to tinker with it tonight. It should still have some spare batteries with enough juice for a flight or two. I’m not sure about the computer and the camera rig though. It would be a crapshoot whether we could get it through the canopy here long enough to take a picture and then get the computer running to download the shot.” He shook his head. “I would rather try it from a clearing anyhow.” Doc nodded in agreement. “Other than that, we still have the handhelds, though how charged they are I have no idea.” Adam finished.

“So why bother with the tech stuff? At least for now, I mean.” I said. Doc and Adam looked at me curiously. I flushed a little, but continued. “I might be able to get up that tree over there and get enough of a look around to at least tell how far we are from something like civilization. If nothing else, I could probably see the ocean or a river or something like that to get our bearings.”

Doc nodded cautiously. “If you’re willing to try, Miss Vogel, I won’t stop you.” He gestured to the tree I had been eyeing. “That one?”

“Yep.” I stood up and walked over. The branches started a few feet above eye level. I figured I could reach one of the lower ones by jumping. I looked down at my talons and at the retractable claws on my paws. I was still feeling a little shaky on them, but I figured it was worth a try. “Let’s see if these things work.” I jumped upwards and hit the tree without finding purchase. “Ooof.” There were snickers behind me. “I got this.” I backed up and gave myself a slight running start but landed ungracefully again. “All right, all right let me think.” I sat down again. An image snuck into my mind, of my roommate’s cat trying to get onto a high shelf she was not supposed to be climbing. That fuzzball could get into anything. I stood up and walked over to the tree again. In my mind’s eye, I saw that cat, ready to pounce. I remembered her pose and how her butt wiggled and she adjusted her paws before exploding upward. The next thing I knew, I had my bird feet wrapped around a stout branch and my paws dangling below me. My tail went back and forth as I scrambled onto the branch. With my talons digging into the bark I looked down to see the wide-eyed expressions of my friends. “Got… it…” I panted.

From here, the climbing was easier. The branches were closer together and as long as I tried to keep with the cat climbing method I did okay. I realized after a few branches that my wings could hold onto things almost like a hand, but with a much weaker grip. They couldn’t hold my weight, but they could move leaves and such aside as I climbed. So could my tail, with similar dexterity.

At last I poked my head above the crown of the tree. I looked around. Sure enough, there was the ocean perhaps a mile or two distant. Between us and the coast were a series of blocky overgrown structures, kind of like Angkor Wat with those jungle plants climbing over everything. I couldn’t see what would have been ground level from here due to all the growth, but I could see big stuff. The shoreline was vaguely familiar but that didn’t register at first. I followed the shoreline towards my left and found myself having a “Statue-of-Liberty-in-the-sand moment”. The view here could have come from any picture postcard from Waikiki, sans buildings. I was staring up at the monolithic shape of Diamond Head, the old volcanic remnant that defined the skyline of Honolulu.

I climbed carefully down through the branches until I sat on the one I had started from. I did not want to go all the way back to the ground yet; there was something about being up here that was strangely comforting. I looked down at my waiting friends. “Well,” I said, “I have good news and bad news. Which would you rather hear first?”

“Given that we can’t see anything except your fuzzy behind down here, I suggest you start with the good news.” Trish said, with a raised eyebrow. I didn’t know horses had eyebrows, but evidently big-eyed ponies did.

“The good news is I could see the coast. It’s a ways away but we could probably get there if we can get through the forest here. The bad news is, that’s the only good news.” I described what I had seen. Yep, those were definitely more raised eyebrows. Nic was shaking his head in disbelief and Doc looked very skeptical. “Look, toss me somebody’s camera and I’ll take a few pics to show you.” I said.

The others glanced at each other before Emmy grumbled “Ugh, fine. Just give it back to me in one piece, ok? She climbed back into the van and came out carrying a camera by its strap in her teeth. With Doc standing propped against the tree and me reaching out with a wing, he managed to pass it to me. I put the camera around my neck and started climbing back to where I had been before. I took several shots, wishing I could take a panorama of the view here. As it was I did the best I could.

After climbing back down, I tried to pass the camera back to Doc, but my grip slipped. I yelled for someone to catch it. The others rushed forward, but no one was close enough; I cringed and waited for the ensuing crunch, but to my surprise it did not come. A foot or so from the ground, the camera hovered in a bright blue glow, one that matched a similar glow coming from Emmy’s horn. She stared wide eyed at the camera before managing to gently set it down on the ground. “Hey dumbass. I said be careful!” She yelled up at me.

“Sorry.” I yelled out. Doc was already messing with the camera. Seeing as he was the only one down there with anything resembling hands, everybody else crowded around him as he previewed the pictures on the tiny screen. Just as I had seen, the landscape above the trees showed that we had found ourselves exactly where we had been last night when the weird shit went down.

Trish was the first to break the silence. “If the next words out of your blinkin’ beak are going to be ‘I told you so’, I suggest you stop while you are ahead, Birdbrain.”

“Now when have I ever said that to you guys?”

“Shall I mention the times by alphabetical order or by timing?”

“Enough!” Doc barked. Literally; it sounded like a dog barking but in human words. The forest around us fell silent. He glared at both me and Trish. “If we start arguing among ourselves, we will never figure out what happened or what is going on. Zoe, did you see any sign of people inhabiting those structures closer to the shore?”

“No, Doc. Or at least I could see none. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Both. Neither. It is a good thing in that we don’t need to be concerned about being discovered by humans who would wish us ill, but bad in that we have no real way to communicate with anyone outside of our group. I mean,we’re not getting any GPS signals and none of the cell phones we have with us are getting a signal, right?” Everyone shook their heads. “So unless we can get ahold of something like a satellite phone with power, we are more-or-less cut off from outside. In that case, our first focus should be survival. Water, food, shelter. No matter how much we might want to, we won’t be able to live out of the van and trailer forever. Now, any ideas?”

“We should see what all we have in our personal stuff too. Maybe there’s something we’re overlooking.” Nic suggested.

“It is a start, I guess. For water and shelter, we should see what if anything is intact up here before we venture down to those structures by the beach. If this really is where we thought we were last night, then this should be the entrance to campus. There were a lot of buildings around here, classrooms, labs, dorms, you name it. We can and should use anything we can.” Adam said. “I for one do not want to be soaking wet all the time from all the ‘liquid sunshine’.” He rolled his eyes at the term tourist sites use to describe the tropical rains that happen with annoying regularity on the islands.

We filtered back to the van to see if our personal stuff had anything useful. I doubted my bag did. I have a tendency to eat lightly and constantly, so my backpack was more likely than not to contain junk food or the remnants thereof. I did find my Swiss army knife though, along with a couple of unopened bags of beef jerky and a slightly crumpled bag of cheetos. Trish wrinkled her nose when I showed her. “Are you sure you want to eat that, Zoe? It smells… off to me.”

I took a sniff at the packaging. All I could smell was the spicy barbecue scent of the dried meat. “Seems all right to me, T.” I started to open the bag, but she forced me to stay my hand. “Hold off for now until we are done, okay? I want to see if the others found anything before you spoil my appetite.”

Trish didn’t have anything useful either; she was mostly carrying books. She looked about ready to throw the whole lot out, but I stopped her. “We can use these, T.”

“They are just novels and textbooks, though. How useful can they possibly be?”

“Tinder and kindling.”

Trish rolled her eyes but carried her bag of reading material out with her anyway. I had my jerky snacks and pocket knife in my claws when my eye was caught by something under the middle seat. I put my stuff down, reached underneath and pulled it out. It was a book of some kind, but not some flimsy paperback or cardboard hardcover. It was made of something like leather, but it felt strangely heavy. There was a sketchy outline of a horse on the cover. I was ready to add it to the kindling pile, but that image stopped me. The horse picture looked a lot like my friends. The drawing had the same short legs and rounded curves, and big eyes with eyebrows, but also had wings and a horn. It was too uncanny to be a coincidence. I brought the book with me when I came out. It was still light enough outside that even through the trees it was bright enough to read once I was out of the van.

Greetings, the introduction read. Welcome to the new world. You are probably scared and wondering what has happened to you and why you are in the form of ponies or other unusual creatures. Fear not. You are not alone. This guide is made to help you find your way in the new world that surrounds you and its new inhabitants. It contains survival strategies as well as information about your new bodies and their capabilities.

But first: a history lesson. On May 23, 2015, the heart of the Milky Way galaxy emitted a new and novel form of energy. This energy was unknown to humanity and has never been observed on Earth. However, a nearby universe, moving alongside our own, had contact with this energy as well as with Earth. The inhabitants of this other universe, known as Equestrians, adapted to use this energy, which they termed magic. When humans attempted to visit their world, the magic proved to be fatal to humans and thus it was determined to cut off contact.

However, the heart of our own galaxy’s surge of magic threatened to destroy humanity as it existed. Not wanting to witness the extinction of our unique species, the Equestrians opted to create an immense spell designed to transform the population of Earth into magic-compatible beings similar to those on their home world. Knowing that a sudden global species change would cause chaos, the spell was designed to occur gradually. Those most compatible with their new forms would change immediately, while all others were sent into the timestream so as to return to Earth when their bodies were ready.

You probably returned long after that initial date. Those of us who Returned immediately have done our best to rebuild a semblance of civilization in what remains of our great cities and nations. With luck you will benefit from this. If you find yourself in an isolated location, do not despair. Humanity is a species that has challenged nature again and again, surviving and becoming stronger every time. You are no different. Survive by any means necessary, friends. Remember, you are not alone.

The end of the letter was signed by someone named Archive. I held the book close to my chest for a moment. I hoped the pony author knew what they were talking about. I flipped through the pages a little before showing the book to the others. Sure enough, there were anatomical illustrations of the three kinds of ponies that had come out of the van with me. There were a few words that popped out. “Weather control”. “Telekinesis”. Most interesting of all there was “magic”, even on the pages about the ponies without horn or wings. I was about to look further when Trish called me out. “Hey, whatcha got there?”

I looked up from the book to find everybody else watching me. I gave a sheepish grin. “I found this in the van. Do any of you recognize it?” I passed it over to Trish, who shook her head. Similar negative answers came from everybody else. Even Doc looked confused.

“Hey look. It’s us!” Nic said. He held open the book to a page comparing sizes of the different creatures in the book. The three ponies were about the same size, all things considered, but the bird beast next to them was labelled as “griffon” and was bigger. The “diamond dog” was similar in size to the griffon. I guess that is what Doc turned into. My eyes drifted towards some of the other creatures though. My jaw dropped as I realized that there were a lot more creatures than I had initially thought about. There were sea ponies and zebras about the same size as the ponies, but there were also smaller creatures, including a little tiny butterfly pony thing labelled a “breezy” or “flutterpony”. At the other end of the scale there was an honest-to-god dragon, with enormous wings and an expression on its face that said “I can eat you at any time”. I hoped we wouldn’t run into a hungry one any time soon.

“We aren’t getting rid of that book any time soon, that’s for sure.” Doc said at last. I nodded in agreement. We sorted through the stack of books from everyone else’s personal bags. Most of them were standard fictional fare; romance novels, dime store mysteries, Harry Potter (Trish clung to that one and could not be persuaded to let go until we promised not to burn it). To her own surprise, one of Trish’s textbooks included a first aid guide that we dubbed useful and added to the “keep” stack. The only other things we considered safe were a couple of tourist guides (“they may give us an idea of where we could find useful stuff” as Nic pointed out) and a dog-eared book about eating your way across the islands, which also contained info about edible plants that grow wild around here. Emmy shrugged when we asked why it was in her pack. Whatever, it was useful looking so we kept it.

I was not the only one to have some food. Adam’s bag had a plastic tote full of trail mix (with all the chocolate bits eaten out) and Emmy had some dried fruit in hers. Not much to survive on. We decided to stick together as we made our way towards what Doc thought was the middle of campus. He and I used the machetes from the trailer to mark blazes on the trees as we passed and cut our way through vines. Seeing as we were not sure how much shelter there would be still standing, it behooved us to find our way back to the van eventually. The kindling books we left in the middle of the van’s floor and the keepers on the middle seat. None of us carried much for now.

We found our way to the remnants of the administration building. Part of the roof had collapsed and it was heavily overgrown, but we could still get inside. It appeared that someone before us had ransacked the place. It must have happened a long time ago, as there was a thick layer of leaf litter on the floor and not a single window was left intact. A lot of the wood had rotted away too, so we opted not to attempt any stairs, even metal ones. Water dripped down from the remains of a skylight and gathered into a pool in the atrium. It was a potential source of freshwater, though it looked like it could sour in a hurry if we weren’t careful.

Doc led our little group through a couple more buildings; the situation was the same in most of them. Many of them were nothing more than overgrown rubble. Those standing were the exception. There was nobody around except for the wildlife and it seemed intent on avoiding us. Given that two of us at least looked like predators, that was probably a wise move. Eventually we found ourselves in the student union building. Although the windward side had collapsed, the leeward side of the structure was mostly intact. More importantly, it was fairly dry inside and large enough for all of us to shelter comfortably. A pair of gnarled trees held up what was left of the roof on one side; I was pleased to note that it had a lot of climbable branches. The nearby courtyard even had an old rusty barbecue grill that we could use as a fire pit of sorts. By unspoken agreement, we settled down to rest. I guess changing into a new body takes a lot out of you because we all fell asleep pretty quickly. I woke up only once, after nightfall to an eerie sound echoing through the empty buildings. It was the keening howl of my diamond dog teacher singing to the full moon overhead.

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Comments

[Zutcha]

This should be interesting.

[SolangeEggbert]

An excellent start! Griffins are very underused :)

[bluemoon1996]

I know I am delayed on this but I feel the need to say that walls of texts are not fun to read otherwise not bad