Apparently, thought Violet, “initialize” means the whole world changes.

The car had been on the ground inside the guardrail, then without warning (other than the word initialize) it was falling through the air. One moment she was in her seat looking out the window and the next she was barely taller than the waist strap of her seat belt and holding on with all her strength.

The car ricocheted off the side of the mountain. The side-airbag deployed and Violet’s feet bounced into it as they slipped out of the now much-too-large belt and over her head. Her new paws held tight to the waist strap keeping her grip keeping her mostly in place as the car tumbled.

Another bump against the mountain followed freefall, followed bump, followed freefall, followed car flipping in midair. Then it all stopped with a smash. Violet’s grip was unable to resist the force of the impact and she launched out of her seat and crashed into the roof before caroming into the side airbag on the opposite side of the car. It was below her. The car must be on its side. She looked into the rearview for her mom. She saw a brown bear in her mother’s Lululemon zip-up.

Lauren recognized her Mini had crashed at the bottom of a cliff. The airbags had all deployed and her door was against the ground. She took her phone from where it had landed on the dashboard. The screen was cracked and though a bit of light shone out it did not respond to any of her button presses.

“Hey Siri, call police,” she said. It was ruined. She dropped it back to her seat and proceeded to pull her giant hairy body across the passenger side. She slammed her shoulder against the stuck passenger door a few times before it opened and she pulled herself out of the Mini. She pulled herself over the edge of her car and settled onto the ground where she turned and looked at the vehicle. It was ruined.

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The front was all smashed in. The back window had shattered and the sides looked like someone had dropped and entire weight rack on them. She loved that car.

“Mom, is that you?” asked a small dormouse pulling itself through the passenger door, her voice barely louder than a squeak.

Lauren had heard it earlier, squeaking, but had ignored it in the urgency of the accident.

“Yes, of course it’s me,” said Lauren in the same voice she had as a human. “Is that you Violet?”

“Mom, you’re a bear.

Lauren looked down at her body.

“Look at your paws.”

Lauren raised one and saw the huge claws sticking out the end. She had always looked down on woman that kept their nails long.

“Oh,” said Lauren realizing just now the difficult of their situation. “And you’re a mouse . And the cell phone’s not working. And our car has crashed. Down a mountain. And we are hours away from Vancouver. And getting to Whistler would… We’d have to climb up a mountain. And we’re lost.”

Violet jumped down to the ground and scurried over to her mother, crying now into her paws. She grabbed onto her ankle and gave her what hug she could and started crying too.

Lauren looked down at Violet, wiped the tears out of the fur surrounding her eyes and bent over to pick up her daughter who fit in one of her paws.

“It’s been a long time since I could pick you up, let alone like this.” And she held her daughter close to her chest with her other paw in the closest thing to a hug that she could offer her daughter in their current forms.

“Everything is going to be all right,” Lauren said.

“It is?” asked Violet through her sobs.

“It is,” said Lauren. “First we have to get out supplies from the mini for a camping trip, then we head out. Just a long hike, looks like it is back to Vancouver because of the Mountain with some camping in the middle.”

“Mom, you’re a bear,” said Violet.

“I am and you’re a mouse, and we are going on a mother-daughter camping trip.”