The low sun cast her blood red light in between elongated shadows. Shadows kept creeping closer. I knew those shadows were danger. Death. I ran. I ran as fast as I could, though it seemed like I barely moved forward. My body was already tired, but with my attempts to take in more oxigen, my lungs didn't cooperate. I ran until I thought the shadows were far away enough. I probably didn't lose them, but I could rest for a while. Breathing became a bit easier.

  Then I saw the shadows again. I could see them more clearly now, though they remained undetailed. More an outline than an object. Humans. Though it was difficult to determine the shapes, I knew instinctively. With swirly red eyes and an endless void inside them, they came closer at the same pace that I was previously running, like hunting a dog. I looked at myself. A dog.

  My heart started beating faster. I had to go. Again, I couldn't run fast. Like I was running through water. After what seemed like forever my path was blocked by a house. I couldn't go around it. The right side was a dead end and the left side stretched on forever. I decided to go over it. I could jump as well as I could run, lousy. I tried to get grip on the wall, but it was slippery, like made of glue and slowly pushed me down even if I tried to stay in place.

  After trying a while, the shadows came closer. They almost caught me. I didn't want to be caught. Fear crept over me, motivating my actions. I pushed my front end over the house while keeping my back legs on the ground. My body stretched all the way over the house. I could feel the texture of the glue on my belly. When my front paws touched the ground, my back end followed until I had a normal shape again. I could run faster on this side of the house. No more running in water. I ran and ran until I found a river and walked over it.

  There I stood, watching the shadows get closer. The shadows had no difficulty getting over the house the same way I did, and lost a lot less time that way. When they were at the river they hesitated. I knew. I knew the shadows couldn't cross the river. Thats why I felt safe. But the shadows didn't feel like they had lost. It felt as if they were laughing. Laughing and pointing at me. I looked at myself. And my shadow. Attached to my paws was a black substance that stretched all the way to the other side of the river and joined the humans. I was one of them.

  I woke up sweating and out of breath, as if still being chased. A dream. It was only a dream. I was safe here, they couldn't find me. I walked so far and never saw a person. They won't come here. I tried to convince myself that things were fine, but it all felt so real. Being chased. The feeling of fear. As if they could jump right out of the walls with their sharpened swords. They couldn't. I was here and they were not. No one was chasing me, they probably gave up after seeing me disappear. No one was chasing me. No one would come.

  I was awake now, and there was no way I could go back to sleep, so I went to sit outside. It was pitch black and even the campfire had died out, but it felt better than staying within walls. The stars were not visible through the dense branches, but it felt soothing to see them sway back and forth in the wind.

  There were also different animals awake. If you listened well, you could hear their calls every now and then. A clicking sound, that seemed to come either from really far away, or right next to me. Even once something that just sounded like a scream, that was quickly joined by more voices. But mostly it was just quiet.

  Eventually the sun rose and gave all surfaces a golden glow. I was happy to get up and move around, because even though I had been awake for half the night, it was cold and it was hard to stay warm just sitting there. Maybe it would have been warmer inside the carriage. I looked back at the gaping black entrance, unable to see its interior. Yeah, no. I wasn't going in there. Instead I just walked back and forth a bit. The ground was damp with puddles. Meant the animals were going to be a bit more scattered instead of flocking near the river, but tracks would be more visible.

  This was one of those days I would love to stay home, warm myself by the fire and drink some hot chocolate. But I didn't have enough food, or a stable enough way to get it, to make sure I had dinner next week. I shouldn't burn through my cookies too quickly, they could prove useful when hunting doesn't go well. So I resolved myself to try my best. Maybe if I hunted more than needed I could actually increase my supplies.

  But first I went to the river. Though the aninals might drink from the scattered puddles, I didn't care much for muddy water and had to walk all the way to the river every day. Of course Rex joined me. Monto was elsewhere, minding his own business.

  Rex and I managed to hunt two rats before I decided to go back. Today I wanted to see if I could skin an animal. I could really use some pelts if it became colder. Skinning was surprisingly easy. I made some mistakes that caused some holes in the skin, but it was my first try, so that was acceptable. I remembered something about hanging the skins to dry in the smoke, but Monto wasn't back yet, so I just gathered the wood for a fire and waited until Monto returned.

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  That night I had the nightmare again. The same, but also slightly different. This time the shadows talked. Demon. Evil. They also managed to touch me before I got over the house. Their hands on my back made me shiver in fear and disgust. I woke up the same: out of breath, heart beating fast and unable to fall back asleep. I felt a strong desire to run. Where to? I don't know. Away from here. Back home.

  I cried a bit. I couldn't even remember that other world well, but this one had been so hostile to me that anything else should be better. I didn't deserve this. I deserved to feel safe. I didn't know if it was possible to travel back, but at this place and time it felt so far away. Logically thinking I should try to make this place my home. Try to build a life here. I was certainly trying to stay alive, but was this place what I would call home for a long time? It didn't have insulation, barely sheltered from the wind and was dark and small. I couldn't even make a fire in here out of fear of burning it all down. But it was all I had.

  I went outside and picked up a bit of charcoal from yesterdays fire. Maybe I could draw with it and it would calm my mind. I decided to draw the inside of the carriage. It was dark and the small space made me feel caged a bit, but I didn't like the wind and maybe I needed to feel caged a little.

  At first I drew simple stickmen. Some arms, legs and a circle for a head proved that I could draw fine with charcoal on wood, even though it was a bit rough. I experimented a bit with holding the charcoal at an angle to draw shadows and clouds. Eventually I drew a simple house: a square with a triangle on top. One window, one door and a tree right next to it. Drawing calmed me down enough that I managed to fall into a dreamless sleep until morning.

  When the morning light came in I discovered the rat skins had failed. They were dry and brittle and nothing like the fur I had imagined. This put me in a bad mood. Skins were a limited resource and since we could only hunt small animals, I could only get small skins. Which meant I had to have a lot of them if I wanted to make myself a nice coat before winter. And now they become useless out of nowhere? I thought I was doing pretty well surviving, but looking back at all my setbacks it was mostly helping animals and luck that got me this far.

  Fortunately the hunt with Rex got us big bounty: some large-ish bird animal I had never seen before. It had black feathers like a raven, but with its thick, long legs it stood slightly taller than my waist. It had no talons to match its imressive legs. Instead its feet looked like a cross between human and bird feet, with thick and blunt toes. It had larger feathers around the neck which made it look fancy. Its beak was as large as its head, thick and as blunt as I had ever seen any beak. All in all a strange bird.

  I spent a lot of time plucking the bird. Feathers had lots of uses and didn't require preraration like skin, so they would always be usable no matter how unskilled I was. Maybe I should make a pillow. It would just be a small inscrease in comfort, but I was looking forward to it. Maybe it would become livable here after all.

  I gave the head, guts and a quarter of the meat to Rex, while I ate half myself. The other quarter I hang a bit above the fire, right in the smoke. If my memories served me well, this was a way to preserve meat for a longer time. I also tried to use the skin, even though this one didn't have fur since I took the feathers. Even though it wouldn't make for a good coat, maybe I could make it into a bag or something. I had just been using clothes until now, but they were bound to rip sooner or later.

  In hopes of getting a better result than the rat skin, I rubbed fat on it. I didn't have a specific thought process on this, other than that I remembered tanning was pretty complicated with a lot of steps, so maybe adding more steps would yield better results eventually.

  That activity took the rest of the day. I was kind of planning to work on improving the shelter, but that would have to wait until tomorrow. I wasn't upset about it though. It was hard to be in a bad mood with a full belly.

  I found that drawing helped ease the nightmares. I would get the same nightmare, with slight variations, and wake up in a panic. Drawing helped me calm down and go back to sleep. I would draw whatever was on my mind. I drew Rex, and Monto, and the faces of the family I knew I had somewhere, even if they were blank. I would draw forests and seas and huge flocks of birds. Soon the inside of the carriage was littered with charcoal drawings.

  I also worked on the carriage in the evening hours, though you couldn't really call it a carriage anymore. With its defects and intentionally broken wheels, it would never ride again. I remembered how some animals live underground and how it offers insulation, so I shoveled up dirt to make a giant heap over the carriage. I wasn't quite there yet, because the sand was loose and kept falling down, but after adding some sticks and rocks I had most of the sides covered.

  If I took a step back and really looked at it, I would have seen this shoddy place that was a temporary shelter at best. But with all the effort I put in, it felt like home. I needed a home. I really needed this all to be true and to stay. Though it felt like a long time since I came into this world, it hadn't even been a month yet. At first I thought I found my home with Carch, that filthy traitor, and I could gradually build up my own life there. Now I was barely surviving, but still alive. Every desicion was for here and now and everything felt a lot more in the moment. But I needed to rest. I needed to breathe out and have all of this still be here tomorrow. Wake up and not have my life collapse around me. For once.

  The hides also succeeded, sort of. At first the bird hide was stiff, though not as brittle as the rat hides earlier. Over the days it became a bit more flexible, so now I was thinking of actually using it for something. I also made new hides: another rat and a rabbit. They had very different results. The rabbit fur was very soft, but lost a lot of flexibility. The rat fur was straight up unusable. I accidentally left little bits of meat on there and it began to rot and stink horribly. Rex really wanted to have it, so I had to bury it to prevent him from chewing on rotten meat.