The first thing Neve saw when he opened his eyes was the sky.
Blue. Clear. Way too quiet.
His brain took three seconds to load and then said, very simply he realised... 'this is not the zoo.'
He tried to sit up.
He rolled sideways and fell off a tree branch.
He dropped through two smaller branches on the way down, hit the ground and lay there in the dirt staring back up at where he had just been.
A tree.
He had been sleeping in a tree.
Why was he in a tree?
He sat up slowly and looked around. Dense forest. Mountains in the distance. A small river cut through the trees not far from where he was. Birds he didn't recognise. Plants he had never seen.
Definitely not the zoo.
He lifted his hand to rub his face and stopped.
Red fur.
He turned his hand over slowly. Then the other one. Red fur, small clawed fingers, a tail he could feel behind him without turning around.
He turned around anyway.
Fluffy. Red. Definitely a tail.
Neve sat with it for a moment.
Just sat with it.
Then he got up and ran to the river.
He pushed through the grass at the bank and looked down into the water and what looked back at him was a red panda. Small round face, white-lined ears, small eyes, the whole thing.
He stared at it.
It stared back.
"...Okay," he said.
But his words came out as a chittering sound.
He knew what a red panda was. Of course he did — they'd had three at the zoo. Shy animals. Mostly kept to themselves. Ate constantly. Slept in trees, which suddenly explained a lot. Tourists always wanted to see them because they were stupidly cute and the zoo always put them near the entrance because of it.
He had cleaned their enclosure every Thursday.
He had complained about it every Thursday.
And now he was one.
He looked away from the river and looked at the mountains then the forest stretching out in every direction with no fence, no path, no signage, no anything that suggested a single human being had ever been here.
"Where is this?" he said to himself.
Chittering.
He needed to find out where he was. He needed information. He needed to figure out what this world was, what the rules were, and how any of this worked. He turned around to pick a direction and that was when he saw the birds.
A whole flock of them, bursting out of the trees to his left all at once.
Neve watched them go.
'Something scared them,' his brain said. 'Something in that direction. Something big probably.'
He looked at the forest to his left, then at the birds getting smaller in the sky and looked back at the forest.
He ran toward it.
.
He smelled the blood before he saw it.
A dark patch on the ground between the roots of a large tree. Fresh. He crouched down and before his brain could have any kind of opinion about it his tongue had already moved.
He licked it.
He shot upright immediately.
'WHAT,' his brain said. 'WHAT WAS THAT? WHY DID YOU DO THAT? WHY DID YOUR BODY JUST—'
But something strange had happened. The smell of it had opened up into a trail, clear as a line drawn on the ground, pulling his nose in a specific direction like a thread he could follow.
He stood there for a moment.
'I just licked blood off the ground,' he thought. 'I licked blood off the damned ground and I can now track it. I have watched documentaries about hygiene. Fuck! I hate this life–'
He followed the trail anyway because he needed information and this was apparently how he was getting it.
.
He heard them before he saw them.
Heavy movement and strong impact. A sound that was somewhere between a snarl and something worse.
Neve pushed through a gap between two large trees and stopped.
Two leopards.
One golden. One darker, almost black, with gold eyes that were losing focus fast. The dark one was bleeding badly from its side and moving like something that knew it was running out of time. The golden one moved around it in a slow patient circle, waiting.
Neve stood completely still at the edge of the trees and watched.
The dark leopard lunged.
The golden one moved sideways, fast and clean, and came back with teeth at the throat and that was it. One whimper. Then nothing. The dark leopard went still.
Silence.
The golden one stood over it for a moment, breathing, and then it was over.
Neve slowly brought his two front paws together.
And clapped.
He didn't decide to do it. It just happened. Three full claps, before his brain caught up and screamed at him.
'THIS IS NOT A FILM. STOP CLAPPING. YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.'
He stopped.
The golden leopard turned its head.
Yellow eyes found him immediately.
Neve took one step back.
The leopard took one step forward.
'Okay,' Neve thought, very calmly. 'Okay. I just watched this animal kill something twice its size and then I clapped at it like it was a performance. I am going to die in a forest as a red panda and it is going to be entirely my own fault.'
He took another step back.
The leopard watched him without blinking.
Neve's legs said run and his brain said
'It will catch you in four seconds'
He stood there trying to remember everything he knew about leopards.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
Then he heard it.
A sound like something cracking.
He opened one eye and the leopard was gone.
A man was standing where it had been. Tall. Built like someone who had never struggled with anything physical in his life. Tribal tattoos across his chest and arms. Dark hair. Yellow eyes that were still watching Neve with the same calm expression.
Also completely naked.
Neve stared at him.
The man stared back.
Neve's brain was doing several things at once.
'That leopard just turned into a man. A man. A human man. That leopard is a man. This is a beast world. I am in a beast world. The legends were real or the anime was real or... something was real and I am in a BEAST WORLD which means—'
He looked down at his own paws.
'—which means I can probably do that too.'
He looked back up at the man.
Then he walked forward on all four paws, stopped right in front of him and lifted both front legs in the air, gesturing at his own body, then at the man, then back at himself. He chittered rapidly, pointing at the man's hands, then his own face. He tilted his head and chittered again.
'How do you do that? Can I do that? How do I do that? Is it a button? Is there a word? Do I just think about it? What's the trick? Tell me the trick.'
The man crouched down slowly until they were eye level.
He tilted his head and looked at this small red panda waving its arms around and making rapid chittering sounds at him.
"...What," he said slowly, "is this thing saying?"