There’s a shift, and I’m in a forest. So it happened again. Figure out where I am.



“What the fuck just happened?” Shamir’s voice comes from behind me. I turn around to see-

“Holy shit you have dog ears.”

“Wolf ears!” Shamir “And you have fox ones, which are cuter.”

“You can’t see your own ears, how would you know they’re wolf ones?”

“Because being a wolf fits me.”

“You wear a collar.”

“Collaring a wolf doesn’t make them a dog.”

“But taming them does.”

“So you want to be in charge? Leash me? Be my master?” I turn away to hide my blush.

“Yes.” It’s whispered. I don’t like to admit it, but-

“You gotta speak up, then.” OH FUCK SHE HEARD THAT. “You’ll never be in charge if you don’t act.”

Oh god. Oh god this is embarrassing. I move to go, to get somewhere that’s not here humiliating myself- and a pair of arms wrap around my torso and holds me back.

“I’m down for that sort of thing.” Her voice is soft, from somewhere behind my head. “You don’t need to run away from me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“It’s not about how you’re a psycho, it’s about how I am really not ready for a relationship.”

“Why not?” Something wraps around my waist. I look down and see a tail, dark red and fluffy.

“Because I’m a depressed idiot.”

She turns me around to face her. I can’t look her in the eyes, and my gaze drifts down to her tail, which remains wrapped around us. “Sam, you are such a good mech designer there were kidnapping attempts. You are in no way an idiot.”

“Still depressed and hardly functional, though.”

“I don’t care about your depression. I care about you.”

“You tortured one of the kidnappers to death in front of me.”

“Nobody’s allowed to take you away from me.” She pauses, lifting my head with one hand, meeting my eyes with her own. “You were the first person I’d met in years that didn’t see me as an attack dog or just the replaceable control unit for their design.”

“And instead I just saw you as something to lust after, and then fear.”

“Don’t be a fucking idiot. You were the only friend I’d had in a long time. The only real emotional connection.” Shamir’s green eyes stare at me, and I can’t look away. “And I’m pretty sure it was the same for you.”

“I… yes. Yes it was.” It’s terrifying, showing weakness. Letting other know you’re vulnerable. It’s giving them power over you, and I hate that. My mind races, thinking of ways she can leverage this. Potential ways she’ll use my weakness to attack me, to harm me. Expose my isolation in public, leverage this to-

She kisses me. Not the stereotypical movie kiss, with it’s facehuggerish mashing, but just a small one. I’m fairly certain she had to stand on her toes to do it. “Sam, please. I really do care for you. Don’t try to push me away.”

“I-I like you too.” Oh god, I sound like a teenager again.

“Just hug me back.” She pulls me tight, where in a poorly written romance I would feel her heartbeat. (She can feel mine, but I don’t know this at the time. Superhuman senses are bullshit, and I wish I got them.)

I do, wrapping my arms around her. And after a moment of thought, do the same with my tail. Holy shit I’ve got a tail now, this is weird as hell.

“So do you have any idea what the fuck just happened?” I’m pretty sure she feels me twitch at that, and by pretty sure I mean certain.

“Sorta?” I creak out.

 “Go on.” Her voice is reassuring, and the warmth of her hug helps.

“So it starts a few years back by your reckoning, when I wake up in the future. Or a future that wasn’t. Timelines are weird and I never found proof yours was mine.” Oh god I’m rambling. “Anyway, what happened was I woke up with the papers stating I was a student, and I went to study, and ended up really good at it. And then I got hired, and met you, and there we go. But the weird thing is that the me I remember being was the me I am? Wasn’t? I don’t-”

“Relax. Just tell the basics of what happened, save the full story for later.” Okay, I can do this.

“Somehow I got transported between timelines, or something. And I’m pretty sure it was done by something, rather than just sheer bad luck and falling into a random portal or something. It’s why I’m really old-fashioned by your standards, because I am from the past. Or something close to it.” Deep breath. “And I guess it just happened again.”

“I’m guessing the first time didn’t involve fox ears?” She’s only half teasing.

“No. But I did wake up different, sorta. I was always clever, but now I got things easier. Like, you know that moment when you’ve put together how a couple things work together, and you link more things to it? That’s how I felt when I was studying, most of the time. Not quite at the same eurekaness, but it was like that so much more often, and then sometimes I’d have an epiphany on top of that and /everything would make sense/.”

Shamir takes a moment to think, and take it all in. “The past. Wow. How was it?”

“’The past is a foreign country’, as the saying goes. Or went, as back then they still had countries. Fucking corps.” Wait shit, off track. Right. “But yeah, I liked it more. I mean part was that I was used to it, but the freedom of information was great. And food was cheap. And being able to walk outside was nice, even if I didn’t go out there very often.”

“You’ll have to tell me stories of it.”

“I suppose I will.”

There’s a pause, then Shamir asks the question on both of our minds. “Do you have any idea where we are?”