The creature that slipped from the underbrush and regarded Sarah with wary curiosity was much like the alien trees: both hauntingly familiar and jarringly different.
[Horned Fox], the System called it, which, Sarah reflected, seemed a rather obvious and unimaginative name. It looked like a mix between a regular red fox and one of those wild mountain sheep she’d once seen in a zoo…well, ok, maybe just a super buff fox with black curly horns.
From what Sarah could remember (from a long ago grade school report) foxes on Earth tended to be swift and light on their feet, hunting fast prey like rabbits, mice, and small birds. They also tended to be no larger that a really big housecat, albeit with longer legs, tail, and ears.
This animal looked like its back would nearly reach Sarah’s knees. Its haunches and shoulders were heavy with muscle and its neck was thick to support the weight of its horns. Also, Sarah suspected, to cushion the impact and protect the fox’s delicate spine whenever the animal smashed head-first – or rather, horns-first – into…well…whatever [Horned Foxes] tended to butt heads with.
“You’re actually kinda cute, you know that?” Sarah said in a calm, quiet voice as she carefully grasped her spear and slowly straightened up.
The fox flinched at the sound of her voice but she kept talking, her tone soothing and soft.
“So, [Horned Fox], it’s kinda on the nose, you know? I suppose it’s like the trees…the locals probably have their own name for you and the System is translating that to the closest Earth analogue. And really, it’s not like creatures have to be named something weird and complicated, descriptive labels work really well too, like….um…well, the bobcat, with its bob of a tail, or…oh, the goldfish, which is a gold-coloured fish, so, yeah…”
As she spoke, the animal slowly relaxed back into its initial level of cautious curiosity. It was likely she was the first human it had ever seen and it wasn’t quite sure what to make of her. Wait, this was a virtual reality simulation created specifically for her, so of course she was the first human the fox had seen…but at the same time this fox was nothing more than lines of code manifested in a virtual space, so…no, wait, she’d already decided the best way to survive was to treat this like the real world, right? Right.
Sarah gave her head a small shake and turned her focus back to the fox. As she talked, she slowly shifted her weight a little bit at a time, sliding her feet back, one foot, then the other, putting more distance between herself and the alien animal. It watched her with alert orange eyes but seemed more interested in the soothing sound of her voice than the movement of her feet.
“You actually kinda make sense, you know? Not like horned rabbits. You know about horned rabbits? Of course you don’t. It’s an Earth thing." She shook her head again, this time in that slow way that people did when faced with something they found to be somewhere between astonishing and horrifying.
“Horned rabbits,” Sarah managed to stop her snort of derision at the last second and applied extra effort to keep her voice from becoming strident, despite her feelings on the topic of her monologue.
“I always thought that was so stupid. I mean, in what world does it make sense to put a unicorn horn on a rabbit? Rabbits are herbivores; they don’t need to gore their lettuce before they eat it. Plus, they live in burrows, so the first time Mr. Bunny goes diving down his hole to escape from, well, from someone like you, I suppose, that horn sticking up from his forehead is going to get jammed into the dirt and leave him helplessly kicking his legs while you dig him up and eat him. Silly, right?
“Your horns, on the other hand, they look a bit more practical. And you…” Sarah ran an appraising eye over the well-muscled form of the red-furred creature, “…you look like you could really use those things, although…what exactly would you be hitting with them?
She regarded the [Horned Fox] with a frown that started out “thoughtful” but soon shifted to “concerned” as the animal began to crouch. Her eyes went wide with sudden realization.
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“Oh, shit!”
Adrenaline spiked through her bloodstream and her most primitive instinct activated. Perhaps it was the safe world in which she had been raised that made her choose flight over fight. Perhaps it was an unconscious recognition that her [Crude Wooden Spear (Basic)] would be no more effective that a cheap mop handle against the hard black keratin of the fox’s horns. Either way, Sarah spun on her heel and ran.
There was a chuff of released breath from behind her and the swift, hard thumping of four black paws on the forest floor. It had been only a second or two since she began to move but already the fox was nearly upon her. Worse, that dead, fallen tree lay between her and the road; she would have to slow her headlong rush to navigate the snarl of brittle old branches, and in that moment, the fox would surely strike.
Desperately, Sarah did the only thing she could think of and attempted to sidestep at the last possible moment. She knew she didn’t have time to stop now; she was going to go head over heels into the dead tree’s branches, but hopefully her momentum would allow her to roll over the bulk of the tree, through the ditch, and onto the road, where she would have a clear path to flee. More importantly, the fox following so close on her heels was committed to its charge and wouldn’t have time to stop either. She hoped.
It would charge right into the same mess of dead wood and – unlike her – wouldn’t have the body mass to simply break through to the other side on momentum alone, buying her precious time to escape. Again…she hoped.
Sarah was ready for the pain of ploughing through the branches. She even had her arms raised strategically to protect her vulnerable face and throat. What she wasn’t prepared for was the low roar of pain that blossomed in her lower left leg as the fox struck, horns-first.
Her last step had been with her right leg, swung far to the side to carry her out of the charging creature’s path. Just as she’d planted her weight on her right foot, and lifted her left, beginning to swing it over in a swift cross-step, the fox’s horns hit her calf and momentum took control.
Sarah’s left leg, its movement begun by nerve, and muscle, and sinew, was now empowered by all the force imparted by the fast-moving fox. Her running side-step turned into an uncontrolled spin, as momentum flung her into the brittle embrace of the dead tree’s branches.
She landed hard on her left side, both hearing and feeling multiple branches breaking beneath and around her. Only her upflung arms protected her head from serious injury, though her left elbow took a heavy blow and her entire lower arm went numb.
For what felt like a very long moment, Sarah lay still. The local birds had been momentarily startled into silence but they quickly regained their composure and she could hear their twittering over the pounding of her pulse in her ears and the rasping of her throat as she struggled to regain the breath that had been driven from her lungs by the hard landing.
As her breathing finally became more regular, Sarah groaned. She wanted to swear. She even wanted to use some of the really nasty words she’d heard on public transit – the ones her parents had taught her were unworthy of an intelligent, well-spoken person such as herself – but she didn’t swear, letting out another moan instead. In that moment, her verbal restraint had less to do with morality or ingrained inhibitions and more to do with the fact that swearing would simply have required more effort than she wanted to expend just then.
A third groan slipped from her lips and she had a moment of panic as she remembered the [Horned Fox] (really, how could she have forgotten that? Was she sure she hadn’t hit her head?) but she gradually calmed as long minutes passed and no claws scrabbled on dead wood, no jaws slavered for her throat, and no eerie foxy screeches echoed through the trees.
The panic might have faded but the worry niggled nonetheless; she couldn’t think of a reason for the fox to voluntarily leave her alone when she was so clearly helpless…she moved her arms and legs, groaning at fresh waves of pain but managing to grab her (miraculously) undamaged spear…okay, so not completely helpless. She could wiggle all her toes so her leg wasn’t broken – not badly broken, at least – and the feeling was starting to return to her lower left arm in waves of painful prickles.
There was still no sign of the fox. Had it knocked itself out by running into the fallen tree after hitting her? That seemed unlikely; the creature was clearly designed to absorb such impacts and it had expended a lot of its momentum into her squishy self. Perhaps it had impaled itself on a broken branch? Or maybe it had simply retreated to a safe distance and now watched, waiting patiently for her to die of her injuries before it moved in to feast.
That last thought brought forth a wave of anger. She was not some helpless prey animal, darn it! She wasn’t just going to lie here, mewling in pain, waiting for the end. And so, fuelled by anger and determination, using her spear as a lever and prop, with many false starts, much groaning, and teeth tightly clenched, Sarah stood up.