They went to bed early that evening. There weren't enough trees in the foothills for Sylvia to use the alert-perimeter approach as she'd done on previous nights, but she was fairly certain that there was nothing of concern in the area, so they didn't bother setting up a watch; they needed as much sleep as they could get.
Particularily since sleep wasn't coming all that easy, at least not for Jon. Tomorrow would bring the first real battle she'd ever been involved in. Sure, she'd gotten into a couple fights at school over the years, but the worst that ever came of those was a black eye. And in the one real battle she had seen, here in this other world, her contribution had consisted entirely of getting knocked out and waking up alone afterward.
Here, though, she was going to be the one doing the fighting. She was going to be the aggressor. And the stakes were far higher than any schoolyard squabble; she could get injured, or even killed! And even though she knew the enemies were bandits, who had probably killed at least a few innocents, would she be able to kill them if she had to? She didn't want to if she could avoid it, but what if she couldn't?
Jon thought of calling it off. She thought about turning and running back south until she couldn't run any more. But where would she run to? She had nothing here but the clothes on her back and some coins in a pouch, and the only people she knew she could turn to were right here with her. She missed her parents, and she missed her siblings. And she missed her body; she at least had hands now, but her breasts felt weird and got in the way, and her wings felt less weird but also got in the way, and her tail felt weird and got more in the way, and going to the bathroom as a girl was a hassle, and on top of all that it just wasn't her body. But surprisingly, even more than her body, she just missed home.
And the only place she knew of that might help her find a way home was on the other side of these mountains. Jon looked up at the mountain range, which ran a long ways into the distance both to the east and to the west. To the east, on the other side of the great forest, the mountain range took a jog to the south, or so Sylvia had said. Somewhere up there, all the way across the woods, was the thatch nest on the rocky outcropping where she had first awoken in this world. It was only, what? Five days ago? It felt more like a month.
Jon wondered how her first companions were doing. It had been alarming to wake up and find them gone, and it didn't really bode well for them. But if anybody in this crazy world could take care of themselves, she knew that they could. She thought of how ready they were for combat. They had been players, too; it was hard to imagine that any of them would have done anything of the sort before arriving in this world, any more than she had. Could she become as used to it as they had? She wasn't sure if she wanted to, but from the way things looked in this world, she'd probably need to.
Jon shut her eyes, tried her best to force these thoughts out of her mind, and drifted off into a troubled half-sleep. It wasn't until someone small snuggled up against her that she finally began to get some real rest.
