The three looked at each other with concern, so Alan tried to assuage their totally reasonable fears. He would be worried too if some monster was going to suddenly run up and attack. “Don’t worry, I don’t think it followed me past the trees.” They just looked at him for a bit. John then insisted on looking at his pupils, making him follow and then count fingers, etc.

“He doesn’t seem to have a bad concussion.” John declared. Alan glared at him. They didn’t believe him about the beaver. No shock, he wouldn’t have believed him either. Well, excepting for the whole ‘magic circle’ thing, not to mention they were teleported somewhere… hey, yeah, why wouldn’t there be monster beavers?

“I dunno, it’s like we were just teleported somewhere. I mean, the grass and trees look pretty normal, though not exactly like what I would be familiar with, at least within the realm of normal. Even so, how the hell did we get here? Naked of all things, getting dropped into the river like that?” At least Lucy seemed to agree with him regarding the teleportation, even if she felt like things still seemed ‘normal’. Nobody had a good answer except for Alan.

“Magic.” Naturally, John wanted to check for a concussion again, but Alan pushed him off. “No, chill out. I woke up because there was some kind of light. I’m a pretty sensitive sleeper and I was crashing on your couch and all. I thought it was morning or something but instead, there was like, a magic circle or something. Just like out of some anime.” He described how it seemed to encompass the apartment, then dropped below the floor, startled the bakers who were probably setting up for the day and then… “It’s like we were just there one moment and here the next. Not here, but over there in the air, over the water. I was still in a lying down position even.”

“I dunno…” Aaron shook his head, trailing off. It was clear they were all thinking about it and coming to a similar conclusion.

“It is a bit too much for a prank.”

“A prank? I’m surprised we’re alive and with all of our organs.”

“Shit, check me for an incision…”

“Like you wouldn’t feel it!”

“Hold on everyone.” Aaron, ever the peacemaker, held up his hands. Mostly out of habit, everyone did pause. The truth was that excepting when John and Lucy got into a heated discussion, they were all generally very calm with each other. They had the kind of friendship that made each other family, by choice. They’d all known each other about ten years and had not grown apart, rather closer, during that time. Lucy had a group that she could complain about cases and clients to but who weren’t lawyers. John could ask for advice about the trickier cases he faced when dealing with HR issues, which often got him into arguments with Lucy… but then again, they had their private thing going on that complicated the matter. Aaron was some hotshot tech CEO but he also flitted from company to company. He probably didn’t realize they all knew he secretly felt like a fake.

Alan was really the odd one out… but for some reason they’d always kept him as part of the circle. Maybe because he was a pretty good listener? Maybe because he was totally non-judgmental. In either case, it was a private cause of concern for him that they would drop him some day. It hadn’t happened though in a decade and that did inspire some confidence. Plus he’d go to bat for them and they knew it. He’d done it before. Nobody like Alan to handle the really awkward situations when you really just needed someone to say something that felt uncomfortable to say. It helps not really caring that much what other people think. Not that he went out of his way to offend people or just say whatever came to mind. He wasn’t socially inept.

Well, not totally.

“Alright, so we tentatively agree that there might be something supernatural involved and based on that, we’ll avoid the ‘monster beaver’ area for the moment.” Aaron bullet-pointed the result of their ongoing discussion for them, deftly steering them back to the agenda he felt was actually important. Getting hesitant nods from Lucy and John and a thumbs-up from Alan, Aaron continued. “We’re naked, in an unknown area with potentially hostile wildlife. It seems to be morning, but cold. The grass is giving us some shelter, but only moving around is really keeping us warm and that takes calories.” Calories they didn’t have. Everyone was sort of pacing or hopping around. Lucy kept making them move so her gradually trampled area of grass didn’t end up revealing more than she already had to reveal.

“Luce… unless we can magic up some clothes, we’re gonna end up just having to get cool with the nudity anyways. We’re not gonna do anything to you. John would kill us anyways.” Lucy flushed red at the suggestion she just go exposed. John raised an questioning eyebrow at Alan’s comment. “You know, because he…” Now Lucy and John were looking at him. Ah, they figured their little side thing was still a secret. “…is in HR, right?” They just stared at him but Aaron nodded in agreement. With a glance between them, John and Lucy suddenly agreed with him.

“Yeah.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Of course!”

“Even so, I’ll still keep my modesty as much as possible, thank you very much. Can’t completely trust three naked men with just one naked me after all.” Aaron was aghast and Alan just snorted, but they quickly moved on from the subject when something occurred to John.

“Hey, why not make some clothes then?”

“With what cloth and sewing machine?” Alan sassed.

“Don’t be a smartass. You already did it a little.” John pointed at his roughly made bandage, which was still holding fine despite his pacing. His foot was throbbing pretty badly and his scraped and bruised butt burned whenever he brushed the abraded surface on the grasses.

“Huh…” In no time at all they all started gathering grasses. Lucy was so focused she let herself get a little bit more exposed than she probably realized and Alan got a few rather pleasing eyefuls. John noticed and glared him off, though he noticed John didn’t seem to hesitate to take a look himself. Bastard, not that he hadn’t probably already seen it. Alan didn’t have… hadn’t really ever had a girlfriend. Definitely not someone he was intimate enough to have skin time with. There, he said it, even if it was inside his brain. He was a total virgin. He’d barely even held hands or made out with anyone. That time as a young teen with his cousin didn’t count and besides, they got caught by grandma before they actually got up to anything.

Huh, maybe he did have some stories he didn’t tell anyone.

“I feel like I’m getting in touch with my ancient roots!” Alan proclaimed, roughly two hours later, as they appraised each other’s handiwork. They’d helped each other with the fastening and adjustments as much as possible. Lucy had given in and let John help her. It took a while to braid together bulky fistfuls of the soft grass, but they managed to ‘weave’ some passible coverings.

“Oh god, is that a pun? You’re making plant puns at a time like this?” John groaned. Aaron and Lucy tried to hide their smirks.

“I dub this my Blade Armor!”

“Ugh, please don’t.”

“Excuse me, but I’m feeling just a bit grassy…” John groaned extra load. Wow, he could really groan super load. Kind of like some large and angry creature.

“Oh look, it’s a monster beaver.” They’d apparently wandered back closer to the tree line in their avid pulling of grasses. The grass nearer the trees was taller, likely from the added moisture content in the soil from the large pond. It just made braiding enough so much easier and they hadn’t seen or heard anything in the trees.

“Everyone run, damnit!” Aaron didn’t need to say that twice. They all broke out into a run together. Quite promptly Alan’s ‘Blade Armor’ started to come undone. Most notably his ‘shorts’, given the rapid and abusive task they faced in holding together while he was running. What the hell? Nobody else’s grass outfits were coming apart! Was he just that much more careless with his construction?

The beaver barely pursued them into the prairie. Not that they noticed until they’d gone quite a ways. You didn’t stop running very easily after seeing one of those things coming for you. After they’d all calmed down and John, who it turned out had literally taken Basket Weaving as an elective in school, helped Alan with recrafting his ‘shorts’, they broached a subject that was becoming critically important.

“I have to pee and I didn’t make this thing easy to take off.” No not that subject, though everyone ended up converting their outfits into more like skirts than shorts after that interruption. Securely fastened clothing also meant it couldn’t be removed easily for body needs, as it turns out. Go figure. Where was the elastic grass? No rather the question was…

“What do we do now?”

Aaron paced back and forth, his thigh length grass skirt swaying suggestively each time he switched his hips. That, or maybe Alan just thought it was fun that they got to wear skirts and he didn’t have to call it a kilt and claim clan connections to get away with it. Skirts, it turned out, were liberating. Not supportive though. Running without the support was… unpleasant. But liberating for sure! Plus having a thick layer of grass covering his upper body was doing wonders for feeling comfortable in the chill air. Plus it was close to noon and it was almost a comfortable temperature. The dew on the grass had dried fully now, which did mean they had to be a bit more careful, apparently the dew was helping to lubricate their movement through the grass a bit and now if they went too fast it did start to abrade the skin a little.

“We need shelter, water, food, in that order right?” Everyone shrugged at Aaron. He knew as well as they did. “Water isn’t an issue assuming we can drink from the river or find a way to boil the water. It was very clear… and cold… probably snowmelt from the mountains.” Alan hadn’t even registered the distant landscape before that moment. He’d gone from river to rapids to death beaver to playing Adam, Adam, Adam and Eve in the grass. Not as fun as it sounds, by the way.

“I don’t know if this grass will burn easily, or how we could get a fire started. Plus we’d have to clear a big area to prevent it spreading.” John tore off a few blades of the stuff and held it up, squeezing it and getting moisture to come out to demonstrate his point. “It might just be too fresh. I don’t remember grass fires happening back home until the grass dried in the summer.”

“There might be branches and stuff we could burn back in the trees.” Aaron suggested. The others glanced back at the beaver pond forest, but Aaron shook his head. “Not just there, there were trees all along the river, remember? Just not as big a spread. Maybe we can also find some big enough ones to make a lean-to shelter. Given how cold it was when we… arrived… I’ll bet it will be pretty chilly tonight.” They discussed the possibility of sheltering from the cold by simply making a massive pile of ripped up grass and burrowing inside as well. Lucy wasn’t terribly thrilled about the idea of squeezing into a tight space with three men and both approaches would likely end up that way, but survival was survival.

So they set out towards the river, upstream, roughly where everyone except Alan had climbed out. The prairie went up and down in gentle hills, but Alan had only been swept about a half a mile downstream from them. They figured that was probably more than far enough to be free of the beaver but also agreed that putting more distance was better. So they made their way along the tree line, looking mostly from the outside in, keeping an eye out for dangerous creatures.