Having only a pair of wool pajamas and a simple tee shirt, I immediately realized how cold it was on the other side, so to speak.
Stepping gingerly with barefeet along the sparse grass, the soil was hard, cool. It’s coarseness was near unforgiving against my bare flesh. I exhaled, finding that while it was indeed chilly, I could not see my breath in front of me, which was a relief.
Walking about within a large field I spotted sparse tree line creating a natural border to my left, what I felt like might be to the west, but now I couldn’t be sure could I?
The sun hung low to my opposite side, either rising or setting depending on its orientation. I had guessed at the time, that it looked more like a sunrise, than a sunset. More blues, less purples and pinks, and clouds decorated the bright sky like strips of crumpled paper.
I walked, aimlessly, my heart filled with wonder and dread. My pulse hastening rapidly to rid my body of the nervousness. I was alone, unarmed, and certainly not dressed to survive in any real wilderness situation. But then again, I wasn’t truly in the wild at all was I?
Ahem, moving on...I made an educated guess (50/50 shot right?) that to my right was east. Deciding purely on instinct to continue moving with the sun at my right, I kept going. After several minutes the adrenaline of exploration began to fade and dread kicked in. What if i happened by a predator? What if this area turned out to be Chernobyl? What if I wasn’t even on Earth any longer?
More time passed and fear began to ignite even more fundamental concerns. I was growing thirsty, and expelling many calories for only modest progress as I eased my shoeless feet across the terrain. It was entirely possible that I might die long before any beast would have a shot to end me.
Before I knew it the sun had left my side, and was above my head. It had warmed slightly. Although my sweat and thin clothing still left me colder than I would have liked. In fact my toes had gone a bit numb, despite all their work.
As I trudged along, I only had a second to regret stepping through that window, that gateway, to wherever I now was. Because it was at that moment I saw a fuzzy dark shape on the horizon.
It was a wolf. It was carefully sniffing around what appeared to be a harvested wheat field. I could see its black coat easily against the skyline, despite its thin, lupine shape. Pondering what it was still doing lurking about during the day, I thought it might not have had a successful hunt, and as night gave way to morning it found itself still hungry. This paranoid thought, naturally and scarily led me to my next; with hunger would come desperation. While wolves weren’t known to attack humans, an empty stomach could be the proper motivation.
Remembering, or at least I thought I did, that in order to avoid being attacked by a wolf, one needed to make oneself into something of a spectacle, appearing larger, louder and more ferocious than the creature. Acting only on this half-recalled factoid, I continued forward.
My eyes swept over the clodded dirt and chintzy grass as the earth changed into a golden yellow. The discarded, empty chaffs littered the ground, I tried my best to dance around them.
TO BE CONTINUED!
