"Ah."

  I found myself lying in the forest, staring up at the sprawling branches above.

  I rose a hand to block the sun filtering through the leaves from getting into my eyes and blinding me.

  "So I died again."

  I couldn't really remember all the details. My previous life had already become little more than a vague dream... but there were two usual endings for me.

  Either the world itself was simply too hostile for me to survive in, or the people in it would eventually betray me.

  'Demon,' I was often called.

  My last life had ended in the second conclusion. Given how peaceful this forest seemed, this one likely would too.

  Of course, that was no reason to give up.

  Giving up didn't accomplish anything.

  So I sat up and took stock of my situation.

  I was once more dressed in the familiar garb of my youth: a simple white robe with my house's insignia across the front... not that anyone would recognize its true meaning.

  Hopefully it didn't mean anything strange or unfortunate here.

  Of course, I had no other possessions.

  The local plant life was all familiar enough at a glance. There could always be unexpected surprises waiting for me, but it was a waste of time to be overly wary.

  As I got to my feet, my first order of business was water.

  I had nothing to boil it with, so I'd just have to gamble a bit until I did.

  ***

  I wandered around the forest exploring. I was primarily listening for any sign of water, but my other goal was to get a good idea of the layout.

  Those were my goals, anyway.

  I did find a stream, and drank my fill, but not before noticing several oddities along the way.

  First of all, there were no insects.

  This could be a blessing, since even if the world had technological conveniences, I'd still prefer to live in the wild. It was too early to tell what it meant about the ecosystem, as things were clearly managing just fine without them.

  The second oddity was the abundance of wildlife.

  There were plenty of deer, squirrels, boars, gophers, and more.

  But they weren't just abundant. They were fearlessly docile.

  It wasn't exactly crowded or anything. It was abundance in the countryside sense, with plenty of space between neighbors, but there was no lack of them when I cared to search.

  I was skittish at first. I favored animals over people, but animals did not always favor me. However, these let me simply approach them.

  If I got too close, they'd step away with an expression as if I'd somehow wronged them, but they took such abuses like easily-bullied children. I wasn't intending to be their bully, but I had to learn how this world worked somehow, so I only felt a bit guilty as I tested their patience.

  It was dangerous to do so, of course, so I didn't push them too far.

  But it seemed like this world was a utopia.

  At least at first.

  ***

  The first trouble was that there weren't any edible plants. It was all grass and trees, with the occasional bush.

  I could probably evaluate how nutritional the local greenery was, but my initial guess was: not at all.

  So, fearing starvation in my near future, I found some rocks that I could use to knap up something sharp.

  I didn't really have the luxury or resources to make a perfect stone blade, just something I could use to cut a poor creature open.

  Then I gathered a bit of firewood in advance.

  After that, it was time to hunt.

  The squirrels were my best bet. They avoided me a bit more than the other wildlife, but it'd basically be like spearfishing.

  But with a rock. A makeshift bludgeon. My so-called stone blade was for after the hunt.

  The kind-hearted creature avoided my attack and jumped at my face, making me fall on my back. It attacked with surprising viciousness given its previously peaceful demeanor.

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  Of course, it probably wanted to live too.

  Perhaps it wasn't docile because it was non-violent, but because it didn't see a small girl like me as a threat?

  I was one, though.

  While I managed to keep it from clawing my eyes out, I got scratched up all over as it searched wildly for a way to kill me, but its assault was too frantic for it to land a decisive blow...

  But for a little guy, its claws sure carved deeply!

  I had been caught off guard, but I was not as frantic. Using my own body as bait, I clubbed its tiny body with the rock.

  That didn't finish it off, but it did knock it off of me, and knock the wind out of it.

  I kept up my assault.

  Rolling over on top of it, I pinned it down beneath me, grimacing as it scratched all along my hand and arm. My robe's long sleeves were too thin to protect me, and just got scratched up too.

  But I held it still enough to land a decisive blow to its skull with my handy rock, cracking it and killing the poor yet surprisingly violent creature.

  'I might have difficulties surviving if every hunt goes this poorly... huh?'

  I thought the squirrel's viciousness was the last of my troubles, but it was only the beginning.

  After it stopped moving, the small creature began to glow, before just as quickly fading into nothing.

  Instead of the meat I'd longed for, all that was left behind in its place was a tiny crystal as small as the tip of my finger.

  ***

  "Perhaps this place is too hostile after all," I mused to myself in a tongue no doubt never spoken on this land prior to my arrival.

  But I wasn't defeated yet.

  My next step remained the same. Drinking a bit of fresh water was risky, but a gamble that was usually worth it in my particular circumstances. Faced with countless unknowns, it was better to be hydrated than not.

  Continuing to do so indefinitely was a needless risk, however.

  And so, I began to look for clay.

  Surprisingly, I found plenty. It didn't seem too bad for pottery, either!

  I dug the best primitive firepit my small body could muster without wasting too much energy, placed the wood I'd gathered earlier in it, and got to work molding the clay into crude bowls.

  Once I had a small variety of different attempts, with different clay-to-water ratios and different levels of thickness, next was a fire.

  With no other tools, even a simple flame was a tremendous effort, but the wood was particularly dry, so I got a bit of smoke before long, and blew on it to create a proper spark.

  I gathered more wood and carefully fed the small fire, letting it slowly bake my creations.

  It took a few hours, it was approaching evening by the time they were done, but I finally had a couple bowls. Some of my attempts had cracked or shattered, instead serving as useful information if I ever needed to make more.

  My hands, which were always so soft after a fresh reincarnation and never became as calloused as a proper adult's no matter what I did, were a bit sore and numb after all this work, but there wasn't anything I could do about that.

  I could finally boil water.

  Not that it was easy or convenient. The clay could still simply shatter over an open flame that was hot enough to boil water. I had to warm it up just enough to reduce thermal shock, before putting small, heated stones into the water itself.

  There were no visible contaminants, and my body was unusually hardy against most toxins, so the biggest threat to me was usually pathogens and parasites. Even then, I had a strong resilience to such things, since I was an alien life form here.

  But that was no guarantee.

  Still, even though my body would never grow, it was still young, so by night time, I just boiled up enough water to have my fill and clean my wounds, once it cooled a bit, before finding a place to sleep.

  Perhaps the deceptively vicious wildlife would try eating me in my sleep, but... what could I do to stop them anyway?

  ***

  I awoke to the sun assaulting my closed eyes, and groggily got up.

  Today, I would try to extract nutrients from the local plant life.

  Chewing on some leaves and grass revealed it to be pretty inedible. Even I couldn't fathom the strange peculiarities of my body's digestion system, which could extract nutrients from all sorts of alien life, but not grass.

  But perhaps grass or leaf tea would be different.

  I also used my crude stone knife to stab into a tree and remove some bark. Both the outer bark and softer inner bark got their own bowls.

  And so, I boiled them all.

  The grassy tea was... not promising.

  Surprisingly, the tree leaves seemed to make an adequate green dye. I considered dying my robe green later for camouflage, once basic nutrition was no longer an unsolved problem... but for now, it was just a waste of energy.

  Given I was all scratched up, it'd be nice if either secretly had medicinal properties, but the line between medicine and poison was too fine to be hopeful for such things.

  The rough bark... yeah, it's better not to speak of that, but it was worth a try.

  Now, the inner bark I was more hopeful about yielded something. The water thickened up, hinting at some inner starch. Sipping at it was unpleasant, but it did confirm my suspicions.

  It was a good thing my body didn't have many nutritional needs. When you remove the cost of growing up, kids don't need that much to survive.

  So, I set out gathering cambium from the local bark to grind into crude flour, which I'd make into something reminiscent of gruel or perhaps even bread.

  I was doubtful the energy I spent gathering it was worth the energy it'd give me, but at least it'd give my stomach something to do.

  It was important to keep one's mind clear in situations like these, and focus on taking small steps forward.

  ***

  Nutrition remained a major problem with no solution in sight, but...

  There was another mystery.

  'What does this crystal do?'

  I'd won it in a tangle with a single squirrel that made me hesitant to try attacking any other wildlife, but it was a mystery.

  Clearly, this world had strange phenomena that most would call magic, but the meaning wasn't very clear.

  Worlds with things like mana occasionally had organs or cores for gathering or interfacing with such things, and gathering those was occasionally alchemically useful, so I suspected it was like that... but the rest of the animal vanishing was strange.

  'Why did it vanish?'

  I had few answers.

  But putting the crystal in boiling water seemed to make it boil even more, and so I quickly learned that it was a form of fuel after adding it to the fire.

  It felt like a waste, since the forest was already full of dry wood.

  Perhaps it'd help in the rain, except I had no way of starting a fire in those conditions anyway.

  It seemed it'd be useful in the future though, so...

  Grimly, I took up my weapons, a pair of rocks, and traded some more painful scratches for another squirrel's crystal shard.

  "Ow," I complained to myself, hoping none of my wounds got infected.

  I was an alien lifeform, but microbes weren't smart enough to care whether I was tasty or not. They'd die trying to eat me anyway.

  ***

  On day three, after eating my extremely unappetizing meal of bark stew, I set out to explore, using a stick and some homemade green dye to turn the trees into my own personal map.

  Even if there was other sentient life here, there was no way they could understand my bewildering system. I was an alien after all.

  I was hopeful I'd find some new form of sustenance.

  After all, it's possible the local biome was simply weird. Perhaps I'd reincarnated in a wizard's experimental forest, or a place so steeped into magic that it broke away from the natural order of things.

  I sure hadn't expected to stumble upon other humans though.