Alone in the Woods

Chapter 6 - Growth

I continued practicing my growth magic and sense riding over the coming days.

Sense riding with my wolf mom was the closest thing I had to a mirror. Looking at myself though her eyes just made it very obvious how much I needed a bath and clothes and scissors for this ridiculously long hair! It was pretty, but I couldn't walk a dozen paces before my hair caught on something. The price of beauty.

With wolf mom's help I did manage to find a stream and wash off all the dirt and blood. Unfortunately, the water was cold as shit. It reminded me that I'd probably freeze to death come winter. Assuming this world had winter. I had a hunch it did.

Connecting with plants was definitely different than connecting with animals. I tried sense sharing with wolf mom and blue bird at the same time and I got a headache from all the visual input. When I did the same thing with plants it was fine, I could sense share with dozens of trees and bushes and barely got any additional strain when I added another.

I hadn't had many nonmagical sensory issues since arriving in the woods. Turns out a rather mundane fantasy forest has a lot less sensory input than modern America. Go figure. I still stimmed. I had my whip stem and my hair which wasn't an exceptional amount of fidget items, but it was better than banging rocks together.

My worries about being ambushed by the hunter waned as I got better at sense sharing with all the plants around me. The cool part is it made me feel like the forest itself was my physical body. I'm not just a tiny druidess, I'm the forest itself muahahaha! Till my fox friend bite me on the bum to remind me I'm still just me. Also something about not getting drunk on power or whatever.

Hanging out near the watering hole one day, I realized there were some wild flowers that looked pretty. I picked one and grew it into a hair tie. Looking through blue bird's eyes confirmed that it looked very pretty on me.

I also grew some nice moss on the trails I liked to walk. The stuff was like walking on a carpet and it made my shoeless feet happy. It also helped me practice using magic through my feet. Cause yup feet work too. Nothing makes you feel like a nature goddess quite like having plants literally spring up from your step!

Really all these thoughts of druidess this and goddess that had me asking myself the hard questions. Am I a guy or a girl? Am I allowed to be girl? Do I want to be? What about my name? The old one doesn't really fit me anymore. Do I even need a name, it's not like I need one when telepathically sending vibes to my animal and plant friends.

To my new friends I'm just me. I'm not sure any of them even have a strong enough concept of gender to talk to. Well except the really weird tree. She definitely understands gender on a level I don't. But I can't just talk to her, I get nervous just thinking about it.

I also spent my days healing animals and plants afflicted by injury or disease. I tried not to disrupt the predator prey thing, I mean wolf mom and me ate meat like every other night. I might not have to, but she does. So basically I only heal a prey animal if it escaped from a predator. No interfering in ongoing hunts. From animals, fuck the hunter.

Being liked by the animals because I'm a healer felt nice. I mean they already liked me because of nature magic or something, but the healing made me feel like I earned those feelings. I guess being liked for being me, rather than something I did felt less genuine.

Oh yea and my time of the month eventually came. Wolf mom was very not helpful, basically none of the animals were. Apparently, periods were a human only thing cause fuck me. I didn't even have clothes to hide it. Just every single animal in the forest asking me if I was okay for multiple days. If a human had shown up during that time and saw me, I might have just crawled in a hole and died. Oh and fuck cramps.

Overall it ended up being a rather calm… week maybe? I was really starting to lose track of time out here. Not that I minded. I enjoyed the peace while it lasted. It was unfortunate that something had to come along and ruin it.