Naomi considered her options.
She could wander aimlessly in search of a cave or something, but she didn’t know enough about where she was. For all she knew, she could be miles from the nearest cave. Not to mention caves are usually home to other things that might not want her company.
Instead, Naomi tried to build a shelter from scratch. She remembered the word “lean-to” however she did not remember what a lean-to actually looked like and she had never built something like that.
In fact, she was starting to realize that she had basically no survival skills. And it didn't help that she was starting to feel exhausted.
She hated nature. Ok that wasn't exactly true. She loved nature in theory but touching things like sticks and rocks (especially if they could be wet or covered in something sticky) was anathema to her indoor-kid lifestyle. The initial threats, her hunger, and her gender euphoria had distracted her from that for a few hours but now she was forced to pick up sticks and logs as she put together a temporary shelter.
Unfortunately, this world’s video game aspects did not include Minecraft style building and crafting. Instead, Naomi built one shody pile of sticks after another. To say they fell like a house of cards would be giving the structures too much credit. She never got past the first two cards falling over as soon she took her hands away.
As the sun took more and more of the daylight with it, Naomi started to notice a change in the surrounding darkness. Rather than losing all sense of sight, her Infravision skill had activated and everything around her became a vibrant map of color scaling with heat.
Between that and her improved hearing, Naomi started to notice all kinds of things. Much of the forest was on the blue side of the spectrum and only getting cooler without sunlight. That made wild animals, mostly small creatures like the winged rabbit, stand out really well. If she did ever try hunting again, this would be the time to do it.
She noticed that the leaves blocked less of the heat signatures behind them than the trees did.
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After another failed house of sticks, Naomi felt that she needed to figure out something fast. Going to look for a cave now would be even more dangerous than before, but her shelter just was not coming together.
She decided she would need to stomach some more icky, sticky nature just to get through the night. She curled up under a tree which was leaning just ten or so degrees from normal. She covered herself with a layer of bark and leaves. It was gross and insufficient but she was too tired to come up with anything else.
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In the morning, with leaves and twigs in her hair, Naomi made an embarrassing discovery. A small, unoccupied cave just a bit farther in the direction she had been heading. It was like the kind of den in a cartoon, rather than a winding cavern. There was no way she could have known but she still felt silly.
She was pretty cold from sleeping on the ground so she spent the day prepping the cave for the next night. She gathered some dry leaves and sticks into the cave where she tried to build a fire. Again her lack of survival skills kicked her in the butt. She'd never started a fire without a lighter.
Making the cave a safe place to return to would also be a good backup in case exploration went wrong.
After many failed attempts, she took a break. Maybe she should venture out and look for something else. She hadn’t done that last night which led to a night of more exposure than she preferred. She decided it was still too risky, but that if she was going to venture further, she would need to start building her understanding of the area. Otherwise she might get totally lost and not be able to find her precious cave.
With a scrap of bark and a dirt-covered rock, she tried to draw a rudimentary map from her memory of the day before.
Crude drawing of the places Naomi remembers. A Star indicates approximately where she woke up. The tree she slept under is south of that. The cave is east of the tree. Also a crude drawing of the aberration monster with an arrow indicating which way she thinks it went. [https://alicepow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/untitled4_20240522121529.png?w=1024]image [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fU2nC0wTTi49YwXjUwd5hU05UsOa0UwU/view?usp=sharing]
She did not have a ton to go on, but she marked down about where she thought she had woken up and been attacked by Dire Wolves, the direction that aberration had gone off, where she slept last night, and her new cave.
She knew it was inaccurate but she needed to start somewhere.
Then Naomi heard something in the distance. It was faint but for just a moment she thought she heard a person yelling. If she could follow that noise, she might be able to meet up with other adventurer's and get out of the wilderness. On the other hand, they might not be friendly…