Bernard "Bern" Thurrowgood.

  That's me... I think.

  It was me, anyway. Now, I might be less "me", maybe. Or perhaps just a different me?

  I ponder these questions, staring at my hands as I rest butt-naked against the rough bark of a great old tree. I'd have almost called it an ancient oak, but I'd be wrong. It's towering branches ended In strange, sagging leaves, mottled with clustering of fruit that greatly resembled grapes, if grapes were small, loose clustering of blue tinged berries.

  'It's like a redwood and a weeping willow had a baby.' I think to myself, before dragging myself back to my introspection.

  My hands were still calloused, but they were different. Younger maybe, with less age on the back. It looks like whatever happened, it shaved a few years off the top. I'd guess I was back in my mid-to-te 20's, just from looking myself over.

  My body seems like it's fine. Too fine, considering the whirlwind of already hazing memories. My skin is clear, all my bits still seem attached, and the scars I used to have seem remarkably absent.

  And perhaps strangest of all, was the journal, a thick leather-bound thing with rustic, hand pressed pages, still sitting in the grass beside where I had awoken. It's presence was gringly obvious, in light of all of my other notably missing gear. However, it had been quickly abandoned as I scrambled to figure out my actual location. It didn't take a genius to realize that I wasn't home. Most likely not on earth at all, judging by the blue-tinted sun and the alien pnt life. The ideas of everything from alien abductions to kidnapping via some obscure cryptid out of folklore had rattled through my thoughts as I had tried to climb the great tree I'm currently leaning against.

  It was a climb, to be sure, but between my apparently younger body and the adrenaline now coursing through me, it was doable. I didnt endanger myself too greatly though, just high enough to get a view.

  What met me though, was a sea of endless verdant leaves, stretching across rolling hills and mottling the horizon, speckled with more great towering arboreal giants that stuck out like vegetative stactites. Distant shadows against the rising sun may have been something adjacent to birds (though their twisted shape made even that assumption questionable), and the cacophany of alien whoops and chirps painted a clear picture of the dense life hidden within the woods.

  But no structures. No smoke. No carved footpaths, roads, or clearcutting. Just cloying, endless green.

  "I must be miles out." I said, my voice coming out croaking and unfamiliar. It was still my voice of course, just wrong... again. Like putting on a pair of shoes that don't quite fit anymore.

  "If there's anyone out there at all..." I continued, putting more strength in my voice despite the bitter contents of my pondering. It felt necessary, like I was reciming myself. Stretching an unused muscle.

  I squinted against the morning gre, peering around for anything that could help. To the North (or, north by earth standards based on the sunrise) was what looked like a mountain range, only partially obscured by the titanic trees that towered from its foothills.

  Mountains could mean streams, and streams can lead to civilization. At least I had a lead.

  I'd shimmied down the tree with only minimal splinters, before colpsing at the base. The waves of anxiety and dread threatened to overflow as I made an effort to suppress them. Again.

  And here I am. Staring at my hands as if they hold the secrets to the universe.

  I shudder.

  I don't want to think about the universe right now. Waking up to the night sky made icy knots twist in my guts as I feared they too might simply shear off, revealing the intestines of reality again. The sky itself made me anxious, but I suppressed it. Fear won't help me here.

  I nearly ughed at the irony.

  Nearly.

  Here I am, in some god-forsaken alien wilderness, now trying to follow the very rules that did nothing to stop my first death.

  ...But essentials are essential. I can't argue that, even if I wanted to. Rolling over and letting the wilderness just consume me wasn't an option.

  My eye catches on the journal again. I recognize it, but I definitely didn't have it when... everything happened. It was my journal. One of my first, that wasn't written in a spiral notebook. My grandmother had gifted it to me when I was young, and I had used it extensively for cataloging all the local flora around our camp sites. I'd even taken up some basic art lessons to make the sketches of the pnts and mushrooms beside annotated notes. Eventually I had memorized all the information, and the book ran out of pages for new entries, but I had kept it in my shelf out of pride. It held warm memories for me...

  But it didn't belong here. Even more so than I, it was out of pce. I was tempted to avoid it, my grandmother's old stories of German fairytale and the fae left me cautious.

  Besides, logically, I didn't even have anything to write with, and the information would be useless here. No flora or fauna I had seen was familiar to me, and it's pages were full.

  ...But I couldn't abandon it. It felt like a piece of me. A rustic sliver of home against the now suffocating green of the forest.

  I stood, dusting off the wood chips and stray twigs that clung to my hair and skin, mentally suppressing another nauseating spike of anxiety as it tried to cw its way up from my twisting guts. I need to survive, and taking inventory is the first step.

  I make my way back towards the treeline through the thick grass. The morning dew clung to its furling fronds and left my skin covered in the chilled glistening beads before I emerged from the other side, damp but determined.

  Reaching for the old journal, I felt a warmth rush through me as my fingers finally closed over the worn leather. Not the comforting warmth of home. Physical heat seemed to travel up my arm and spiral through my body, casting off the damp morning chill.

  I dropped it, of course. Who wouldn't? That's not a normal thing bricks of leather and paper should do.

  Radiation was my first guess, and I cursed myself for thinking it might be safe, ready to make a mad dash away from the sneaky biohazard as I tried to recall if there was a way to deal with acute radiation poisoning in the wild. But before I could even pick a direction, I saw the open pages of the book where I had dropped it.

  Swirling ink seemed to move across the startlingly empty pages like two dimensional serpents. They twisted and slithered across the pressed parchment before finally, and unmistakably, settling into words.

  "Greetings Host Bernard"

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  FyreDrop