The rapids were a dizzying combination of rocks, frothing white water, getting flipped over and dunked, and cursing. Lots of cursing. That said, the feet first on your back thing mostly panned out. That and he didn’t get sucked into any hidden whirlpools to be trapped in some tunnel or whatever to drown helplessly. He did get a lot of bruises. Alan kept his head up as much as possible, letting his back, shoulders and arms take the abuse rather than risk a head injury.
Frankly the fact that he could hardly feel his skin due to the cold was a blessing because what he did feel sucked. John knew a guy who put on a padded suit that also acted a bit as a floatation device, a helmet, gloves and special shoes and did this shit for fun. Bunch of psychos out there. At least they had the gear for it. The only equipment Alan was packing was definitely something he would rather protect than have protect him, thank you very much.
It felt like it went on for seconds and hours at the same time. The important thing was though that he got through it. That and he was apparently quite a ways further downriver. The waters opened into a large pond and there seemed to be a ridiculously massive beaver damn to thank for that. Beavers were not terribly hostile creatures as far as he understood. Alan didn’t want to test that though, so he only allowed himself a long moment of floating and marveling at how well he seemed to have come through that harrowing experience before he limp-swam the shore of the pond. There were a lot more established trees around the edge of the pond than he had noticed on the riverbank where his friends got out.
There were also a lot of clearly topped off saplings, cut near the ground. Didn’t beavers store saplings and green branches for their winter food supplies? Something like that. Given how freaking cold the water was, the air that had shocked him upon their ‘arrival’ felt damned warm in comparison. If you never got cold enough before you may not realize how strange and debilitating an experience it can be to try and climb up a shallow bank with soft, slippery sandy soil, while you had basically zero tactile feedback from your hands or feet.
After stumbling up and out like a drunk, it hit Alan that he might actually be at risk of hypothermia. Well, he was shivering like crazy at least. That was a good sign… he thought. It was when you stopped feeling cold at all and stopped shivering that it was entering that life or death state. He was pretty sure he read that somewhere. Probably a fiction novel, known for their accurate survival skill depictions as well as the internet is known for being an absolute and accurate font of knowledge. He nodded sagely at his internal wisdom and made the rest of the climb onto flatter ground. The damp layer of mostly broken down leaves seemed to be soft enough to walk in.
A quick check didn’t reveal any lacerations or other bleeding wounds. There were already a few purplish bruises forming though and a scrape on his right butt cheek. Yeah, that was gonna hurt… more… when he got warm. He was sure of it. For now…
“That’s no beaver...” The ‘beaver’ appeared to be looking at him with a similar disbelieving curiosity, from where it hunched near the edge of its dam made of sticks woven together several feet deep. The thing looked sort of like a beaver, if you turned your head sideways and squinted. Even as a kid, nature’s engineers had fascinated Alan. Beavers were one of the obvious ones, given that they were largish mammals that built something out of materials they harvested and processed. Ants, termites, even elephants all had their own things they did, but beaver damns were always cool. You could immediately sympathize with the creature when part of the dam broke, could see yourself in their position.
This one though bared its teeth, revealing yes, the beaver teeth in the front, but rows of jagged dog-like teeth on the sides further back. The body had the sort of fat, ground-hog like form of a beaver, but even as Alan stared at it, the skin was pulled taught as the thing… shifted… the blobby, fatty tissue compacting into rippling muscle and revealing a lean and powerful frame terminated in long curved claws that sunk into the small log it was dragging, splitting the wood with a crack.
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What should he do? Run? Stand tall and make noi… oh, he was already running. Huh, good job body? His instincts were screaming that the angry ‘beaver’ wasn’t happy to see him. Actually, given those extra teeth, maybe it was too happy to see him. He hadn’t noticed it before, but there had been the sound of birds chattering and flitting about in the trees. Now? The forested area around the beaver pond was suddenly silent other than his labored breathing, the rustle of his footsteps slamming into the soft leaf litter and the huffing and shuffling of something pursuing him.
If this was a horror movie, the creature would be letting out some bone chilling shriek right now. Just his luck that it was more focused on breathing and running down its prey instead. Prey that was already exhausted, bruised and realizing that running without supportive undergarments was not making some parts of him terribly happy with his life choice of getting magically transported to this place.
Alan didn’t even register the trees thinning out and becoming younger, thinner, until he was suddenly into the waist high grasses. They were green, fresh blades of grass. Thankfully they didn’t seem to be the kind of grasses that would cut you up with their stiff edges, instead adding a welcome soft layer beneath his feet, as the soft leaf litter gave way into the wide open plain. Still he ran, until the sounds of his pursuer had long since faded away. Either he’d left it sufficiently behind or it just wouldn’t leave its area. In either case, Alan finally collapsed, lungs and legs burning.
At least he was warm.
“Ah, shit, my foot.” Now that he was coming off the adrenaline, one of his feet let it be known he’d been hurt somehow. A nasty gouge on the insole of his left foot was bleeding pretty well. “Must’ve stepped on a branch or something, shit!” The grasses were long enough and soft enough he tore handfuls out near the ground and wrapped them around his foot, tying them and making a sort of rough bandage. The blood didn’t immediately start pouring out of the makeshift solution so he hoped it would be good enough. Also that he didn’t get an infection.
The air was feeling chill again and his body was shaking now mostly from the exertion. Pulling the grass down with his arms helped somewhat with the chill. If he was honest, it was also a bit like being hugged, even if by himself, which helped him calm down a bit. How long he lay like that he couldn’t be sure. He thought he might have even slept for a short bit. In either case, he was interrupted by nearby and familiar shouts.
“Aaaaalan!”
“Aaaaaal!”
“Damnit, don’t call me Al!” His eyebrow twitched as he shouted his complaint. Freaking John probably did that on purpose just cause he knew Alan hated that name.
“Alan!” The last thing he expected was for them to run over and to be abruptly pulled to his feet by Aaron and into a hug. A very manly and platonic hug between two totally naked male friends. He ignored the rather intimate ‘high one’ he unwillingly participated in. It’s not that Aaron wasn’t a decent looking guy but…
“Ever heard of consent? Damnit I thought coming onto people too hard was John’s thing.” Aaron just shoved him back down onto his ass in the grass, rolling his eyes. Yeah, apparently dude was just that comfortable with his body. Hell, even John was just letting it all hang out. Lucy was kind of hanging back and covering her chest with her arms, letting the grass hide everything below her navel. If he wasn’t feeling so shocked, beat up, and tired, it might have been kind of sexy, her auburn colored hair in a ‘professional lawyer’ short cut that nicely accentuated her ears and also the large amount of bronze skin that was visible. Huh, guess she made sure her tan was all over even.
“Don’t give me shit man, I know you’re not all wound up about things like that.” Aaron shook his head, gazing into the distance and probably remembering something. “…anyway, we’re just damned happy to find you! What happened to your foot? Something in the rapids?” Hmm, Aaron also had a nice all over tan, though he was a pretty pale guy to start with, while Lucy was more mixed in a way that was both familiar and exotic. John wasn’t tanned at all, looking like some kind of white power poster, pale and ripped like a movie actor.
“You guys have to hook me up with a trainer at the gym when we figure out where the hell we are.”
“What?” John raised an eyebrow.
“Ignore me. Anyways, must’ve stepped on something when I was running from the psycho monster beaver.”