When I woke up, I was immediately and keenly aware of two things: I was not where I'd closed my eyes, and I had gotten to this place by dying. The reason why I knew the first is glaringly obvious in that I had closed my eyes in a desert. A modern, civilized desert, but one nonetheless. The air was dry and choked with dust that kicked up whenever its frequent winds blew. The majority of plant life in my immediate vicinity had been covered in spines. Much of the wildlife was either venomous or the kinds of things that ate venomous critters. In short, it was as all deserts tend to be: highly antipathetic towards life in general. Which was considerably different from my surroundings.

As I forced myself to my feet, I considered how it was that I knew for a fact that I'd died, considering the unreliability of my memory and the frequency with which I vividly dreamed about dying. Well for one thing, those dream deaths tended to be singular events that clinched my failure to escape from nightmares like I haven't had in years. Not like the endless cascade of death I experienced while whatever passed for Divinity decided what to do with my soul. Which brings to mind two points I wish they'd make clear about Hell. The first being that it really is literally the separation from the Divine while dead, nothing more or less, and it feels like dying forever and in myriad ways. To the point where given enough time, you will, as I have, eventually get bored of the most horrendous sensations the human mind can experience. And I didn't even get to see any members of the heavenly host, or the infernal one for that matter. I did however, manage to forget the exact manner of my actual death, and most of my life before it. This led me to wonder why bother with reincarnation in the first place.

Luckily for me, I wasn't literally Damned, so my stay in Hell wasn't permanent. Just uncomfortably long, like the wait in a line at a popular theme park ride on a hot day. Long enough that, if I hadn't been made aware of the incredible leeway granted a mortal soul in terms of ways to not be condemned eternally, I'd feel bad for those who were and develop a deep and lasting resentment towards those who made the rules. As it is, I've found the holy to be much more forgiving than I could ever be. I resented them for that, but it was the kind of resentment I could come to terms with as something I wouldn't ever muster the energy to do something about.

All that said, they certainly still moved in mysterious ways. Such as for example dumping me in this idyllic forest with my body restored to its physical prime, sans clothes. I suppose I should be grateful that I wasn't reborn as an infant, or an invalid. Or perhaps, should I be proud of the fact that my past life earned this present one?

Thoughts like these buzzed in my mind as mostly-forgotten survival training kicked in.

"Right then... water, shelter, fire, weapons, food, clothes;" I mumbled to no one in particular as I tried to decide which method of checking off the first item on the list I'd go with. "I hope I remembered those in the right order."

There was a brook off to my right, near enough to hear but too far to see. Regardless, that was going to be a much easier source than digging a hole, which appeared to be my next best choice since despite the lushness of this forest, I didn't know when the next rain would be. The most immediate problem was going to be the trip over there. I was naked, and there was wildlife every step of the way. I was mostly familiar with the plants that were dangerous to touch back on Earth, but as the old saying goes, new world, new rules. Unclothed, unarmed, and woefully ignorant, I was about as vulnerable as a person with my physical abilities could possibly be. I picked my way to the tiny river while making every effort to make as little contact with anything as I could possibly manage, thanking the collective Divine that I didn't spontaneously discover any allergies. Maybe that meant my host of genetic blessings made the jump with me.

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Luckily the stream looked clear enough, aside from the frequent eddies that didn't seem to match up with the size and arrangement of the rocks sticking out of it. I made a mental note to avoid swimming in this place until after meeting up with a local who could. The sun's position in the sky indicated either late morning or early afternoon, so I decided I could waste a little time heading upstream to where the water was most likely cleaner. After an hour or so of walking, I really was too thirsty to keep putting it off, so I headed closer to the bank and after a quick look around and into the water for any potential danger, I knelt down and started scooping some of it into my mouth, trying not to think about brain-eating bacteria or other threats from contamination.

I never noticed the snake until it was completely coiled around my neck and had pulled my head under the surface. I'd never developed the ability to scream, let alone the instinct, I nevertheless panicked and thrashed against my captor with all the might of someone who knew what it was like to die. Which is to say I completely flipped over onto my back, my feet rather than my head now pointed toward the river's bank. Somehow, I was still completely submerged. Wait no, that wasn't quite right. I wasn't in the water, there was for lack of a better word a pile of water on me. That technicality didn't change the fact that I was still drowning, and would continue to do so until I fixed that or died.

A distinctly woman-shaped pile, my brain told me, which I responded to by telling it to shut up but still using the information provided to move my head away from "hers" enough that I could breathe again. After a few desperate gasps for air, I managed to sort out by sight and sensation that my aquatic assailant was very woman-shaped and it was her arm, not a snake, that was wrapped around my neck. I couldn't see her face, mostly because it was currently stuck to the side of mine, but I surmised that this water elemental, or nymph, or nereid, or whatever she was called (I didn't get one of those handy info boxes that came with those "game" type isekai) wasn't actually trying to kill me but was just an extremely aggressive kisser with no concept of the need for breathing. At least that's what the part of my brain that assumed the best of everyone regardless of their actions insisted.

In short, a pretty, mostly innocent creature who still posed a grave threat to my life literally had me in her clutches. She was made of water so I had no practical method of fighting her off readily coming to mind, and it was a crapshoot whether she was even capable of understanding, let alone willing to hear reason. That was the kind of world I'd found myself in. I was still trying to deal with that knowledge when my dick noticed the aforementioned womanly shape of the thing that might accidentally (or deliberately, it's hard to tell) kill me, she noticed it noticed, and things went downhill from there.