My eyes open wide, and my heart thumps loudly in my ears as I jerk my head back and forth in confusion. A surge of adrenaline brings the whole world into sharp focus.

I gaze, wide-eyed, at the trees that sway gently around me. In stark contrast to my pounding heart, a warm breeze caresses my skin, and the damp scent of dirt and wood enters my nostrils.

Sunlight dapples through the branches of the trees, some of the beams barely the floor of the forest. The ground beneath my bare feet feels soft.

What in the ever-loving fuck?

Just a second ago I’m in a quaint, cramped bookshop. The next second I am here. Wherever the hell here is.

I take a nervous step forward and notice my shoes are missing. I can feel the earth beneath my toes, the soft carpet of the forest floor made up of leaves, twigs, and mulch.

I glance at my left hand, which I’m fairly certain was just clutching a book about raspberries, but now it’s bare. My hand opens and closes, as if hoping this simple motion will somehow make it reappear.

A tiny bird explodes out of the undergrowth. I jerk back as I'm jolted back to reality. The creature lets out an indignant squawk before taking flight, disappearing into the foliage while I stare after it.

I make an effort to calm my racing heart. Whatever happened, I’m not going to deal with it by panicking. This isn’t the first time I’ve had some shit suddenly dropped on me, even if this is a new level of mad.

After I gain control over myself. My heart-rate lowering from a manic 160 beats per second to a mere 120, I truly absorb my surroundings for the first time.

There are trees everywhere as far as the eye can see. I'm in a quaint glade, a small open space about ten to twenty meters across amidst the dense woods. Like a small field, but overgrown with hundreds of different little plants and shrubberies. The trees reach across the sky all around. An ancient tree that once stood in the center of the glade lies fallen, just barely recognizable beneath a thick cover of moss.

I can’t see a sign of the shop, nor of the surrounding city. Just trees as far as the eye can see.

The sounds and smells of the city are similarly gone, no more noise of people, no more background hum from all the cars, no advertisements playing anywhere. Instead there’s the wind whispering through the trees, and the faint cries of a few birds.

Then the lack of ice and snow hits me, and my heart resumes is merry attempt to tear itself out of my chest… How?! It was just freezing! That was the whole reason I went into the shop in the first place! How can it be so warm?!

As I attempt to make sense of this impossibility by frantically trying to see anything, anything at all that would give me some idea of what happened, when I suddenly realize I’m start naked. My book, wallet, clothes, coat, everything's gone!

I crouch down, and tear my gaze around, stumbling slightly as I nearly lose my balance in my haste, suddenly feeling immensely exposed. A second later I realize that I’d already done that, and the whole area is empty. There’s nobody to see me like this. I grab my lovely black ponytail and nervously twist my fingers through it.

I frantically inspect myself, but there’s nothing wrong with my body, I’m fine in all ways except for the utter lack of any possessions. At least my hair is still here.

Thank god the weather is pleasant, if it’d still been as frigid as before this would have been a death sentence. I take a deep breath, slowly letting it out. However, a sense of calm seems to be eluding me.

I let out a strangled laugh, and more out some perverted sense of humor I pinch myself. As expected, nothing changes, but it still feels like a lead weight in my stomach. Then I realize that I have no idea if that ever helped me wake up from a dream before.

This doesn’t feel like a dream though. I’m just somehow instantly somewhere else. Like a teleport, except that the whole time and season is different too. It’s warm instead of cold, and the sun in the sky is in a different position.

The fact my stuff is gone is bizarre, being naked is somewhat disturbing. But what's really bugging me is how the heck this happened.

Right, another deep breath. So I am somewhere else, at a different time, and probably different season, and I got here in an instant. I can't think of a single reasonable explanation for that happening. I’d say amnesia, except that all my other memories seem intact and consistent, there's just nothing between being in the bookshop one moment, and then here.

I try to remember everything that happened up to this point, but am hindered by the fact that the whole point of my trip was to turn my brain off for once.

I can remember walking through the snowy street without any particular goal. Partially trying to escape my apartment and another day spent entirely inside, but also excited to just walk through the light snowfall that had started that morning. I just picked a spot on the map and then went there. An act of discovery, no checking to see what, if anything, was there.

I found the bookshop there, in a tiny shopping street. Nestled oddly between a bakery and a butcher, it was a bizarrely narrow space, about a square meter and a half wide and nearly twenty deep, lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases that stretched the entire length of the shop. I’m fairly certain a counter stood at the far end, but I don't think I ever reached it or the person behind it.

I went into the shop, browsed through a bunch of other books, found the one about raspberries, then started reading that. I was on a page that detailed various types of raspberries. I couldn't help but think that the author was incredibly passionate about the subject.

Then… here, now.

While in some ways, I much prefer here to waking up in a hospital or a ditch, at least in those cases I could have made rough guesses as to what had happened, and what my next steps should be. As it is, I have no clue.

Maybe if I can determine where 'here' is, I will have a better idea on how to proceed?

As if it is going to help me see something new, I inspect the clearing with a more critical eye. There’s nothing about the forest that stands out to me other than its apparent age. The trees are a mixture of deciduous and pine trees, the bushes are, well I never knew what those were called, but bushes. The few tufts of grass that grow in various places look like bog standard grass.

If I had even the tiniest doubt about my memories, or if it weren't for the time and temperature differences, I might've chalked it up to amnesia. But how on earth could I have been gone for that long? And in the middle of a bustling city with people all around? Honestly, discounting the temperature difference, I'm not sure I could've made it to a forest in the few hours that the sun indicates have passed. No matter how I spin it, it just doesn’t add up.

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Another thought occurs to me. Could I be dead? I’m not quite sure how the afterlife works, and I’m not sure why I’d suddenly die standing in a bookshop, but I’ve always been able to come up with a surprising number of creative ways I or anyone else, could suddenly die.

I smile wryly as my mind immediately conjures up an image of an exploding saucepan in the restaurant opposite the bookshop. Maybe a saucepan wouldn’t have enough force? A pressure cooker then? I don't know if pressure cookers have enough force to punch through a wall, but the mental image is amusing.

Having my mind focus on imagining also calms me down somewhat, which is a double win.

But then, if I died, why would I be here? I wasn’t so certain there would be any afterlife in the first place, but if there was anything I didn’t expect it to work like this. You generally expect some sort of explanation, a session with the gods to tell you whether you’ve been good or bad, and where you are going.

Of course, that’s discounting all the variety of ways people suddenly reincarnate in a different world in the isekai stories I loved to read, but they’re stories for a reason. And in proper stories at least, you don’t usually re-appear as your old self. At least, I do not remember ever reading as such.

Even trying to hide my decency as I am, I can’t help but smirk. Maybe I just skipped reincarnation and was directly transported to a new world for some reason?

Heh, as if… The weirdest sensation pours through me. I am momentarily absolutely certain that that is what has happened. It fades in a second, but it is extremely creepy. I know I thought the idea silly just a moment before, but even the lingering sensation makes it hard to even contemplate anything other than what just crossed my mind.

I have skipped reincarnation, and been directly transported to a different world…? What the hell? Like, it’s not as if I’m unfamiliar with the concept, but...

I seem to have my own body. Same old pimples, same old… yeah. That’s actually mildly infuriating. If this happens, should I not… I dunno, get some cheat like power or something? Some god telling me that I’ve died, and that I have the choice of afterlife or reincarnation?

If so, do I get a stat screen?

I try conjuring one up by a variety of taps, thoughts, and other methods I read about before, but nothing happens. Well, I guess that would be too much to expect.

Distracting myself from what the hell has happened with happy fantasies seems to agree with my anxiety better, so I guess it’s fine to continue for a bit.

I step close to some white flowers that are growing here, and I try to identify them. Or I want to anyway. I just look at them really intensely. “Identify” I call out, feeling a tad silly, but nothing happens. Guess there are not going to be any convenient skills telling me what the flowers are either.

I give up on the flowers, and switch to staring at some rocks lying nearby, I remember a story in which that triggered the skill evolution if you looked at them long and hard enough. To be fair, I believe that the character in question had just recently been born, and spent several weeks staring at rocks, so maybe it wouldn’t work for me. I don’t have any particular desire to spend weeks looking at rocks, not to mention I’d die way before that.

Well, either no skills exist, or they are not forthcoming from my cursory investigation.

If this is indeed a reincarnation kind of story, it is a sorely disappointing one. Who ever heard about being reincarnated and getting nothing out the experience.

I slowly stand up, carefully looking around. Of course, there’s still nobody there. I can’t keep standing around here wondering what happened. I glance down at my startlingly ordinary, very unclothed 32-year-old body and grimace. Hiking has kept me pretty fit, but I'm no supermodel. There's no way I can wander around like this. Part of me used to think streaking would be hilarious purely for the shock value, but in reality I find myself quite uncomfortable without my clothes. Then again, there doesn't seem to be anybody around.

Having a sudden thought—and less hesitant now that nobody seems likely to just jump out of the bushes—I scour the clearing. Maybe my stuff just landed in a different place? I look under branches, dig through heaps of fallen leaves.

I spent way longer than I’d like to admit searching the glade before finally accepting that, nope, none of my belongings made the trip with me. I guess I’ll just have to—somehow—face this situation with grace and aplomb.

Looking around the glade, I don’t see any particular location or direction that stands out to me as a sign I should go there. You’d think if this was like a reincarnation story there'd at least be an obvious path for the hero to follow.

I grimace at the idea that I’d ever consider myself a hero. At least the lawful good ones. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to play with one of those characters without throwing up a little bit every time they open their self-righteous mouths. Minsc and Boo get a pass.

No, Emma is firmly chaotic, whether or not it’s good or neutral? Well, the jury is still out on that.

With that settled, I shrug. If every direction looks identical, then... I shut my eyes, spin around a bit, and when I feel ready, I open them. Closing my eyes and pointing is as good a way as any to choose a path. At least this way, I'm making a choice. I really need to get back to civilization fast. Fantasy world or not, winter or not, being naked in an unknown forest isn’t exactly ideal for my continued well-being and safety.

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The forest is odd. It looks much like a forest back in my world, but it feels different. Ancient. Like it has been here for hundreds of years. The smell is heavy, like the smell of fresh leaves has been distilled, and layered on top of itself several times. There's dark green moss on every part of the trees that looks like it's been spreading for centuries.

Every step pushes my foot deep in underbrush that's a mix of warm earth and what I imagine to be years of fallen leaves. I have to be a bit careful to not step on fallen branches, or other lovely gifts of the forest like chestnuts, but overall it’s relatively free from painful obstacles. Maybe as a virtue of being so old? I have little experience walking in any forests that haven’t been planted in the last hundred years.

There's a feeling I get when walking through a forest that has been deliberately planted. Where it all just feels a little bit too perfect? The trees line up, sometimes there’s a nice embankment that just so happens to also be the end of the tree cover. Well, this feels like the exact opposite of that.

It almost feels like sacrilege to walk through it after it's been undisturbed for so long. Like the first person to walk on the moon.

The forest looks like it has been here since time immemorial, and will remain long after humanity has finally nuked themselves into oblivion.

Which begs the question: Can humanity nuke themselves into oblivion in this world? The feeling that this is truly a different world is still strong, but I don’t sense much beyond that. What kind of world is this. If there were magic here, would I intuit that as well? If I've actually been reincarnated or moved to a different world, then surely all my assumptions of what is possible should be re-evaluated? There a possibility these things exist?

I'd love it if there is magic. It's pretty much the best part of any fantasy book. Of course, it'd be nice if it were actually sensible.

Free-form magic would be great for me. Assuming I have any talent for it, I could do anything I can imagine with it. Though it generally makes for pretty silly stories, where you can solve basically any problem with magic. I've only ever read a single story that did that very well, and it involved a ridiculous amount of digging canals.

Of course the magic could be very strict, where there are defined abilities, and it's hard to go outside the limits of the exact spells and or abilities I learn. That makes for more interesting stories, since I can speculate on ways to use the abilities myself.

I smile and look around at all the ancient trees digging deep into the earth. I step around a single root that's as thick around as my entire body.

I love the idea of sticking a bunch of gravity bindings on one of these trees and seeing what happens. I imagine one of the massive primeval trees creaking, toppling, and shooting off through the forest like a massive projectile.

What was that oath? "I will protect those that cannot protect themselves"? I can't remember the rest.

Then there's gods. Gods would be... I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure they'd be trouble. They're pretty much always messing with the main character or making their life more difficult in some way. If they give a blessing, it's always a curse in disguise.

I may have been transported to a random location in a primeval forest, but at least I haven't been reborn as the daughter of some widely feared evil witch. Or made the plaything of some grand cosmic phoenix, just scooped straight out of my apartment and rebuilt in a different world.

Although... I stop walking and frown, the circumstances are sort of the same. Could be the same. But I'm not surrounded by a blood cult, so that's a win I guess. Doesn't look like I'll be saved by some friendly adventurers either, so maybe it's a net loss?

Anyhow, gods are bad news. Whether cosmic, real, imagined, or otherwise. I cannot remember a single story, including in the holy books, where gods aren't basically just humans with a massive amount of power. They get jealous, steal, fight, and fuck. Humans are bad enough. Better pray for no gods. Or maybe that doesn't make any sense.

I shrug and continue walking, not really what I should be focusing on right now, but I can't keep the thoughts out of my head. Not much else to think about now.