My eyes slowly open as I feel the back of my head throbbing from the impact of my head impacting a tree. My vision is pure white as my eyes open, with my body being deep in snow buildup. I push myself up into a sitting position, looking down to inspect my strange new body for wounds. My hand shoots up to the back of my head, trying to rub the impact point for what little comfort I can give myself with the wound. Likely bruised as hell from it feeling raw to the touch, and me ripping my way out of an egg just yesterday probably means my body is not meant to be taking such damage so soon. If anything, I’m impressed I’m feeling as well as I do, doesn’t even feel like I have a concussion or anything serious like that.

I finish up my rudimentary health check-up and look around my surroundings. Evergreen trees fill my view for quite a distance, although now I’m seeing this forest from within it instead of above it like before I was… thrown. I look at the snow around me, and notice faints amount of red blood on the tree and snow where I bashed my head, as well as a few broken bits of scales. I probably need to keep checking that wound, if its that serious.

Other than that, the snow comes up to about my waist which I can guess is perhaps around a foot to a foot and a half deep. But with my perspective so different from my old human body, I can’t be sure if my guess is correct - I’m pretty short even compared to the adults of my species that were, at best, half the size of the humans from earlier.

My thoughts return to the last shocking action of what seemed like perhaps the last member of whatever civilization I was born to. Damn. He really just threw me. Did he or she know I wouldn’t take much injury from such a tumble? Is this normal?

I look up the slope I tumbled down. More importantly, I look upwards to see if I can spot anything from the village my egg was in. I frown a bit as I see no smoke rising. I may have been unconscious for quite a while. The snow covering has no marks left from my descent, either, but it’s still snowing. I may have just been out for a couple hours.

Mentally, I go over the last few things I could remember before my head was introduced to a tree’s trunk. Oh. They shoved something in my hands, I think as I quickly start digging through the snow around me. As it turns out, unconsciousness makes it hard to hold onto things. I just hope nobody, or no animal, snatched whatever they gave me. It might have been important if they wanted me to escape with it so bad.

As I dig through the snow, my clawed digits eventually clink against something metallic. I pull out the object to see a simple medallion on a chain. I couldn’t help but feel pessimistic at the moment. I inspect it closely, but it seems to just be a simple metal medallion, with a symbol of some sort of impressive lizard on the front. No wings, just claws and a somewhat serpentine looking body which circled the outside of the circular face of the medallion, with the roaring head of the lizard in the middle. Overall, kind of underwhelming. Wasn’t a precious metal either, it felt hefty and had the color of some sort of iron or perhaps an alloy with iron in it.

I shrug my shoulders and slip the chain around my neck, and the medallion hangs a bit low on my body, but I assume that’s because I’m still a child of my species. At least I can easily assume it wasn’t stolen from those humans as I think the chain would be a little tight for their necks.

With the strange item forced upon me now secured and me having made sure I’m not bleeding from the painful-to-the-touch back of my head, I decided to move my attention onto something I’ll need to learn to use here on out. I look down at my legs. Time to learn how to walk in this body.

I lean one arm against the tree I bashed my head against. I then slowly tried to stand up, my arms shaking from this little bit of effort, almost immediately slipping in the snow and landing snout first in the deep snow. A few attempts end the same way as I test my new body’s style of walking. To compare it to my experience with human legs, it’s like walking on only the front half of your foot, while your ankle instead hangs in the air. Its awkward as hell, and I don’t enjoy the feeling, but it’s time to adapt.

I believe some sort of instincts remain in this body since I seem to grasp the concept in a relatively short time. I never learned to tell the time precisely based on the sun’s position, so I have nothing to base my time off on. I still want to say it didn’t take long, since the sun didn’t seem to move much even to my untrained eye.

I stand up on shaking legs and begin to walk down the slope.

I don’t have a destination, but I’m still on the side of a slope of some sort and getting to more even ground is likely better for food to find. Probably more threats too, but I don’t know what other options I have. So, I begin to move downward, leaving my birthplace (or maybe I should call it a hatchplace?) behind. Perhaps I’ll come back and search the ruins later on when I know I’m not about to die at the hands of humans who seem to hate my kind.

Turns out the slope was longer than I thought, but the guess on potential food was correct. There is more foliage and bushes growing the lower down the slope I get, and the walking gets easier as I’m no longer doing it at an angle downward. A long pathway of disturbed snow shows my distance travelled. As much as I hope no nasty or hungry creatures follow it, it makes me somewhat happy to see my progress. I’m hearing birds of some sort, but I haven’t actually spotted them. Catching them is even less likely.

As I peacefully walk through this wintery landscape, I think about the strangeness of this all. So it turns out I feel no negatives from being in the snow so long. I thought as a lizard sort of thing, I’d be cold blooded, but apparently not. I have no clothing on, and my scales on my body are likely even thinner than adults of my species. Yet I feel absolutely no negative effects from this prolonged contact with the cold. So that’s a plus.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Even stranger, I’ve been way too calm about this entire situation. Before my rebirth of sorts, I was the type to panic when shit hits the fan. Sure, not a good quality, but so far, I haven’t shown such behavior. It’s as if I’ve had nerves of steel, very out of character for myself. Did this form of mine change my thinking somewhat? I really don’t like that thought. Maybe brain structure has something to do with it. Humans usually have-

A familiar sudden pain in my head erupts as I think of old medical facts, and I stumble and fall to the ground as I lose my balance. Right. Try not to think of stuff in the past. Weirdly enough, it didn’t happen when I was comparing my old personality, so certain things may be… allowed as strange as that sounds. I still need to figure out the source of that pain. Big goal there.

I pull myself out of the snow and continue walking, stumbling here and there on bumps or roots beneath the snow that I can’t see. Plant life is abundant now that I’ve reached an area with a common ground level. The plant life reminds me once again of a boreal forest. New bushes with strange orange berries appear here and there, and I’m nervous to eat something without knowing if its harmful in any way. They looked like orange cranberries if I had to draw a comparison.

I decided to grab a handful from multiple bushes and place the handfuls in a few piles on top of the snow where they’re very visible. I then simply walk away a decent distance and sit down in the snow. I should be able to wait until some bird of some sort eats one… Hopefully. There’s still bird calls in the trees above me, even if I can’t spot the animals very well myself. I get myself somewhat comfortable where I sit and begin the wait.

A short while passes, before a small bird takes the bait. I didn’t see it fly down until it was simply standing on the snow, providing an easy to compare white background. The creature was a small sparrow-looking bird, which flew down and pecked at the berries. No wonder I couldn’t spot them, they’re a deep brown with speckles or lines of green in their feather patterns. They blend into the evergreen trees exceptionally well.

At least some creatures can eat the berries and hopefully they’re not special with some resistance to them or something, as my stomach slowly begins to grumble at me. Seeing as I walked down some great sloped distance after knocking myself out against a tree, and also was hatched today, my body was really starting to make some noise at me, protesting my actions of sitting and watching for evidence the berries are edible.

I begin gathering a large pile of berries for myself. As I sit down in the snow again, holding large handfuls of berries, I still don’t feel good eating something I don’t know about. I never had to worry about this as a human. If I didn’t know what it was, I could’ve used the internet. Even with my bird experiment, the hesitation has me thinking over other ways I could test them, but nothing comes to mind. I was never the type to research survival methods. I was more into looking up animal types and facts in my boredom, not plants.

…But worries won’t fill my stomach, so I begin by grabbing a large berry and throwing it into my mouth and crushing it between the larger teeth in the back of my mouth. Hell, I’m not even sure if I’m an omnivore anymore. But here goes.

The berry crushes easily, and the juicy bits coat the inside of my mouth. It doesn’t taste like much, but if it can give me sustenance that’s all that matters. I swallow the first and wait a minute or two, unsure how fast a berry like this would affect me if it could. After the wait, I don’t feel horrible after tasting and swallowing it, so I begin eating small handfuls at a time. Here’s the moment of truth…

I eat my fill for my first meal in this new world and sit still for a period of time. Again, not sure, but the sun moves a bit so maybe an hour? I was waiting for the worst to happen, but I don’t feel any different after this period. I guess these berries are a success! For water I’m unsure if eating snow is bad, but I don’t feel thirsty just yet. Hopefully I find a river or something, but even then I don’t know how I’d make the water clean. Although… I’m a weird lizard thing currently so I don’t even know if anything I’ve been worrying about is an issue.

With my stomach full, I press onward, slowly exploring the general area. I have no map, no idea where I am, and no knowledge of even the world I’m in. So exploring is easy! Just pick a direction and walk. So far, it’s worked out all right. So I look at the direction the sun is setting in, I at least know that’s west if it works like Earth.

My walk brings me westward, which happens to be slowly going down some slopes again. Fine by me, I need to reach lower ground for rivers or water sources. I will say however, that I am deeply regretting never watching survival shows. I probably could’ve picked up a few useful ideas that-

I hear a certain noise and I freeze, dropping my body lower into the snow, hoping my white scales keep me hidden. My walk westward has brought me into a more densely vegetated area, but that’s not the issue. The issue was a growling noise I could hear stalking through the bushes or trees far to my left. No clue how close it is to me, and I can only hope I’m not it’s target. Very slowly, I turn my head to try and line up my ears with the source of the noise, and I focus.

What I hear is the growling, fire of some sort, and the sound of an older voice - more surprisingly, one I can understand.

“Back, beast. Hah!”

It sounds like he’s swinging something as I hear him grunting, and as I focus I hear faint noises of fire. Perhaps he has a torch? I hear the crunching of snow very slowly approaching me, each step taking a few seconds, and the growling also approaching.

Well, if I can understand them, it may be someone friendly to me. Time to find out. I begin to slowly sneak through the snow, or at least as well as I can when the snow is as high as slightly below my waist.

As I approach the sounds of the individual and the beast, I hide behind a bush and look out at where I believe I heard them. Sure enough, I spot another of my lizard-like race holding a torch up. He’s doesn’t have as small of a body as me though, so he’s likely an adult. One major difference however is that his scales are a brilliant crimson, much different from my white. I hope that doesn’t make him a rival tribe or something. All the same, I might be able to help him.

The beast, meanwhile, looked to be a lynx of considerable size. Well, perhaps considerable to me and the new lizard’s sizes. Even stranger, however, were the ice crystals that seemed to be forming wherever the lynx stepped. Well. Fuck. I guess magic or something comparable of some sort exists, and I’m going to learn this from a beast that will likely kill me and this other lizard.