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kyat
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One minute he is getting up and trudging with Sarham back to the village, out of the woods.

The next minute he is... a... quadruped?? And it's dark, and wet, and he is SO confused.

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It's dark, although - not that dark, once his eyes have had a little time to adjust?  There's most of a distinctive moon lighting up the sky; that's probably why.

It's also wet.  Substantially more wet.  He's in a river!  And much, much shorter than he was a minute ago.

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He is... a quadruped on the Earth... and he's not great at swimming! Ack! Swim swim swim! Where is the shore!

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It's over there!  Not terribly hard to get to; there's a much steeper bank a ways out from the actual waterline.

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Swim swim scramble scramble. Climb? Oh he's got claws. Are those going to help at all.

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They help, yeah!  Up on the bank, things are much drier, and between the weather and his fur he's not too cold despite his drenching.  He's in a forest.

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Well, he was in a forest before, too. Not this one. There aren't any Ibyabekan plants here.

He doesn't know what this kind of quadruped eats or anything. Or if it's supposed to be asleep at night.

He starts walking.

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Forest forest.

.....He can smell so many things.  He can't really tell what they are, but there are constantly different ones as he tracks on.  Some of them are from specific plants, he might be able to tell as he passes instances of them enough times.  One of them is: him.  He has a smell now.

 

Some of them might be other quadrupeds of the same kind he is??  And there are lots of other things that smell alive in vaguely the same way, many of them different from both each other and him.

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He doesn't know if this kind of quadruped is social and, if it is, will be happy to meet a new member of the kind, or if they will instead beat him up over him not being already friends with them. Maybe he can veer slightly toward the other-quadruped smells to see if he can catch a glimpse and try to read quadruped body language?

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He catches no glimpses.

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...well, he'll keep going for a bit then.

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Forest forest forest forest.

There's a stream, here, that flows back towards the river he crawled out of.  It, too, looks like it's usually filled with more water than it currently happens to be.

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He could probably jump it, but it's not like he has anywhere in particular to go. If he follows it along its length he at least won't be retracing his steps.

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If he goes for long enough, long enough that the moon is in a different position in the sky, he comes across a road.  There's a tunnel under it which the steam passes through, lined in brick.

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Well, it's pretty hard to see in the tunnel, so he's just going to cross the street instead. Any cars coming? No? Over he goes.

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He does not get hit by a car!

On the other side of the road, the forest transitions to coniferousness.

 

 

And then he suddenly knows a word for the kind of quadruped he is.  It wouldn't be intuitive to pronounce with his human mouth, but maybe it is with this one.  It's 'cat'.

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It's 'cat'.

 

 

 

A baby one is a 'kit'.

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If you say so, mysterious cat language information!

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This is 'hello'.  'River'.  'Stream'.  'Prey'.  'Hunt'.  'Not'.  'I'.  'You'.  'Clan'.  'Help'.  'Sorry'.  'Trespass'.

They all stick pretty well in his memory, despite how many there are and how quick they come.

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Oh, is he about to have to sorry for trespassing? Oh dear.

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Here is a bunch of grammar information.

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Thanks??

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Yeah, that's in there too, once it switches back to vocabulary.  He gets a steady drip of mysterious cat language information for the next while.  The landscape gets a bit marshy, then swampy.

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This kind of quadruped - a "cat" - does not seem to be a big fan of marshy swampy landscape. Is there a dry part to walk on.

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Not in quite the direction he's been headed.  But it's not so big he can't go around.

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