"You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts."

― Kahlil G.

"I'm going to end up as a meal, aren't I?" River asked after waking up in an enormous tent that looked a lot like those fancy tents she had seen in pictures of glamping resorts.

She couldn't help staring at a golden glow through the fabric stretching across the walls of the tent. It was early morning light pouring in through rough fabric and its glow washed throughout the room. It gave her an odd sense of home, a nostalgic feeling that got her wistful for a better life.

They had sent her to a dome-like tent with a bed that was thrice the size of a normal bed. These warriors were built like a tall Mack truck but damn she hadn't expected to wake up in an opulent bed filled with soft feathery silk sheets.

It was morning and by the looks of it, things hadn't started making sense yet. Rover and his friends were gone and she had to find a way back to normalcy. Back to her familiar place where everything made sense.

When the warriors picked her up in the amber grasslands, they began to travel for their village. During that trip, they had fed her a trail mix of nuts and gave her a folded brown pouch packed with dried beef jerky.

It was a long way from the challenge arena to their main village but these werewolf warriors had spent most of an afternoon jogging on foot while she had munched on her only meal that day on wolfback. She might have fallen asleep between her meals because she woke up feeling refreshed like a tiny Thumbelina with a large yellow wolf sprawled across the bed right beside her in a colossal tent fit for giants.

Not bothering to answer her future fate, the wolf continued to regard her with a steady watchful look.

River bit her lip, remembering that she had just watched this wolf transform from a man. It was a view from a great careful distance so she didn't really know what he looked like as a human. Merely that he was blonde, tall, crazy strong and people loved the hell out of him. And somehow having him consider her as food and not as a person was quite upsetting. There are more important things to worry about but somehow, on the off-chance these were all products of her fragmented mind, shouldn't everything in this universe be centered around her?

She hasn't fully shrugged off the notion of hysteria and delusions. If she had learned anything from reading too many fairy tales, it was to start going about her strange situation like Alice in Wonderland. In that case, she would have to find the center of her troubles to get a clue on how to get back to normalcy. Perhaps that was the key to waking up from this nightmare.

Follow the yellow brick road, she told herself, wondering about the huge soulful eyes staring back at her. "I was thinking if it were up to me, I would never bother to name my food, you know. I imagine it makes it easier to eat something if you knew it didn't have a life to go back to. I mean- who does that? Give their food a name. It's weird." she shrugged, bumbling whatever came to her head. "Is that what this is? Do you get to feel bad when your food has a name because it implies I have a real life and a real family waiting for me back home?"

The wolf chuffed, his snout nuzzling into her hair, inhaling her scent deep as his furry paw was weighing down on her stomach. It reminded her that she was trapped under him, unable to move if she tried.

She should be affronted. But the bed was filled to the brim with the softest feathers, dipping her further down under the silk sheets like she was being hugged by heaven itself.

Then, a huge ache in her body bloomed at every slight movement. Sore muscles began screaming murder. That wild rainforest & mountain adventure was no joke. She didn't think she would have made it out if yesterday had been her first time getting lost in the mountains.

Cursing her sore muscles, she opted to bargain with him instead of fighting back on instinct. "If I tell you my name, will you not eat me?"

When he didn't reply, she figured telling him her whole life story, how her grandparents died in a car accident, and that she can cook up a storm of gourmet dishes in one fell swoop like it's nobody's business.

"My name ish-moomwoob"

The wolf had sunk his claws in a pillow to smother her face with it.

"Don't!" someone squeaked. The pillow was pulled off almost immediately.

The wolf chuffed again, bringing down his head between his paws to rest.

There was a little plump girl with golden hair that went past her waist, wearing a heavyset of glasses and an orange cape over her leather dress. "You are behagthi" she said with a wide-eyed look, holding the pillow in the air like a weapon.

"As much as everyone keeps telling me that. I don't know what it means. Am I about to be cooked and eaten?"

Mouth gaping open, she got offended and squeaked out a "No!" then pointed to the wolf cozying next to her, "This is my sun prince."

The strangeness of the situation slapped her like a bag of bricks. Sun prince?

Taking in the anxious girl across her, she said slowly "You don't seem like you believe that."

"I still haven't wrapped my head around it. No one has ever fully shifted like this in decades. Look at him, he's a colossal giant if I've ever seen one."

It seemed like River wasn't alone in experiencing strangeness. Come to think of it, the warriors had looked spooked yesterday. Not only at her, but all the more frightened of the giant wolf carrying her.

Both of them stared at the wolf for a few moments.

Suddenly, the girl burst out laughing. "It is him, all right. Still ordering me about like I'm his apprentice. Says he has gotta feed you but he hasn't found a way to change back."

"He talks to you?"

"Yes. I don't know how you can't. He says he tried to in the same way he talked to everyone else, but with a behagthi like you it's hard to make any serious chances. No one really knows what to expect of you."

Pursing her lips, River crossed her arms.

The girl pushed up her glasses, canting her head to the side "There. Don't you hear that?"

"No."

She frowned, "He says you smell like the Dumuzid forest after a heavy rainfall."

A dried-out muddy nightgown might do that, she thought and glanced down to find she slept in dirty clothes. "I did trek through a rainforest for hours on end yesterday"

"That must be why." the girl said weakly, unsure.

Her necklace gifted by her grandmother was thankfully around her neck, and she clutched it wishing for confidence. "Do you think.." she started to ask, already embarrassed for how she was dressed "..it's possible for me to have a wash?" Looking around the dome structure of the tent, there was a sturdy iron basin with a barrel full of water next to it.

"Of course." she said, putting down her pillow and gestured for the wolf "It is just as well because the king and queen have requested for my sun prince. We'll be right back, or maybe longer. I don't really know when we will be back. Nevermind. After you're done, hop on to the bell tent next to this one to your left. Russ'lo is there and he has extended an invitation to feed you breakfast."

The wolf tensed to a stop but the plump girl herded themselves outside quickly before saying, "Oh by the way, I'm called Lei'la."

"Nice to meet you, Lei'la!" she called after her, not even sweating about her strange name. But they were already gone.

It was nice knowing that she wasn't going to end up on a meat platter. Somehow with dinosauric birds, people wearing fresh leather, and no evidence of technological advancement, she didn't want to put cannibalism past them until it became very clear that any savage human-eating rituals are definitely not on the table. The few people she had met from this village were insistent to designate her as "behagthi" with a tone of awe-inspiring reverence attached to it.

She shuddered at the thought of being pegged as a religious icon or being put to a pedestal of impossible divine ideals. One way or another, they ended up being sacrificed.