Venya had been lying on the ground, staring at the night sky for a long time before it finally struck her.
She couldn’t find the Dipper or the Crux, or a single one of the zodiac constellations.
The stars were wrong.
Utterly wrong.
The pinkish moon was way too large, with only a few dark clouds drifting slowly above it.
She blinked.
Blinked again.
The sky stayed wrong.
“What the hell.” She let out a slow breath and glared at the night sky as if it could tell her how she had ended up here.
First, she wanted to get the basics straight.
She knew her name, she was thirty-six years old, and she remembered the shitty software project that had been slowly killing her for the last six months.
No children.
Divorced, yeah.
Whew, all there.
She counted it out on her fingers.
One might think that that would end the suffering, but an evil, hardworking person is the worst combination.
Even after a year, the ex was snooping on her every move.
Rubbing her temples, pressing hard with her knuckles, she tried to piece together what had happened before she woke up here.
She remembered being so annoyed.
About what?
The last thing she remembered was being outside.
Maybe in a park, or maybe by the pier?
She wasn’t sure which.
After that, nothing.
Her eyes narrowed.
She pushed her memory for what had happened next, but her vision blurred at the edges.
Her forehead began to burn and a heavy pressure crawled up from her hairline.
This must be a dream, she thought.
A passing breeze carried a faint sound of swaying grass and buzzing insects from somewhere.
Her eyelids grew heavy, and her thoughts drifted.
She sank into the serene rest until she felt something on her leg.
“Stop it.
It tickles,” she said aloud in the middle of the calm, and with her hand she swept away the cause of it.
Then she felt a gentle nudge, and another.
She felt something slightly wet and cold on her skin.
She opened her eyes— She shrieked.
She saw a big cat-like beast lying down beside her.
The beast suddenly jerked its head in her direction and pushed itself halfway up onto its paws.
Her hand moved before her mind caught up, slapping the beast across the snout.
It recoiled with a growl and raked its claws across her thigh.
“That fucking hurt.” She gasped and stumbled backward, one hand flying to the burning gashes.
At the same time, the beast yelped and took a few steps back but stayed there staring intently at Venya.
Its thick, fluffy coat was a soft mix of tawny and grayish-brown, dotted with dark spots.
When it turned its head, Venya could see a faint metallic black glimmer pass over the fur for just a heartbeat.
The tuft-eared cat-like beast with a gray streak running across its face would have looked fluffy, cute even, if it hadn’t been showing its sharp teeth and making a threatening noise.
Venya didn’t need to be told twice.
Her eyes darted left and right, and when she saw what looked like a meadow sloping downward, she bolted.
But the way down was longer than she thought, and before long, she was panting, her breath wheezing in her chest.
She winced as the sharp pain in her side intensified.
Her steps began to drag, and her shoulders sagged.
She had to stop there to catch her breath for just a minute, leaning on her knees.
She turned to look back and sighed in relief that the beast hadn’t followed.
For the first time, she looked around at where she was.
She was standing in the middle of the meadow, which was filled with a sea of knee-high grass broken by patches of flowers.
A thin rainbow haze drifted here and there.
But in the moonlight, she couldn’t make out much beyond it.
Everything looked like a fucking scene from a children’s picture book.
The thin rainbow haze had crept closer, growing thicker until it reached her and condensed into small droplets that ran down her skin, leaving angry red stripes behind.
Then came the burning sensation.
An animal cry echoed from behind her.
The beast was coming, her terrified mind decided.
Her heart tried to jump out of her chest, and cold sweat prickled on her neck.
High on adrenaline, she bolted again.
This time, zigzagging around the burning haze.
Sometimes she jumped over it, but she couldn’t completely avoid it.
The meadow fought her the whole way.
The sharp grass scraped against her bare legs, leaving them tender and covered in small, shallow cuts.
But the strain on her body was taking its toll, and her legs started to wobble.
“Let’s go, Venya.
You can do this,” she said with fake excitement.
She then knitted her eyebrows together and muttered every swear word she knew to keep herself moving.
She might have invented a few new ones when she stumbled over something and rolled the rest of the way down.
When she finally stopped, her body crashed into a shallow pool of mud on a narrow path, knocking her breath out.
Her head was spinning, and she pressed both hands to her forehead.
She counted to ten before taking a deep breath and slowly opening her eyes.
The stars above laughed at her as she turned onto her back and lay there for a moment, afraid to stand, her body pressed against the cold, wet ground.
She slowly stood up.
It took a while for her brain to register the path she was now standing on.
It was the first sign of civilization.
Maybe it would lead her to the nearest city or road.
Or, preferably, a convenience store.
There had to be someone who could help her.
Or at least something to pin her location on a map of Earth.
No.
Wherever in this whatever-it-was she happened to be.
She wasn’t very keen on being eaten by the beast, she thought as another howl came from behind.
Luckily, it sounded farther away now.
“Or a dragon, for fuck’s sake,” she muttered, trying to joke herself into moving.
It didn’t help.
In this dream world, wizards or the Eye of Sauron wouldn’t surprise her at all.
Then she looked down at herself for the first time, and before she could stop herself, her arms flew to cover her naked body.
She was all alone, so who was she covering herself for?
She chuckled a little as she came down from the hyper state of escape.
She started to wipe off the mud, blood, and whatever else covered her body when she noticed her hands.
Venya raised her hands and turned them over, then curled her delicate fingers and rubbed them together.
These were not her hands.
Nor the rest of her.
This is a slow, but not boring, isekai-inspired story about rebuilding an old inn, healing, a little mystery and magic, and perhaps eventually finding love.
What would you do if you woke beneath the wrong stars and discovered the body wasn’t yours?