Instincts.

His current main issue. He would eventually have to relearn how to walk, run, swim, and basically control his body. His bones are arranged differently. His muscles are of different lengths. His organs are located in different areas. His nerves even reacted differently. His entire body was no longer one that he was used to.

As a human, he did not have to think about how to walk. How to precisely move each specific muscle in his leg to propel his body forward. It all came naturally to him after he had gotten the hang of it. And decades of moving, whether it be walking or swimming, caused him to get used to the way that he moved in a human body.

Six months. That’s how long it takes for someone to relearn how to walk after a spinal cord injury. Heightened neuroplasticity, the ability for your nerves to rewire adapt themselves, also greatly speeds up the healing process after an injury. But people who have experienced spinal injuries and needed to relearn how to walk already would have a general idea or feeling of how to walk. Lucas had no idea where to start

Luckily for him, his nerves weren’t damaged. It would not take nearly as long as six months for him to learn how to walk. It was a similar situation to a spinal injury, but at the same time, completely different. His nerves still worked; it was just that he did not know how to properly control them.

All in all, one thing was true.

That Lucas had no idea how to move.

But in the surprise of being born into a new body, he had forgotten that one incredibly important aspect. And stretched as he would have in his old, human, body.

It went as well as anyone who thought about the situation would have guessed.

His first injury came when he moved his arms to stretch. Or at least he attempted to. He raised both of his arms, using the rotator cuff to raise them when suddenly, a burning pain started to develop in his shoulders. More specifically, his armpit. He had raised his forelegs further than they were supposed to go, and in doing so, he had pulled them.

His second injury came only a little bit later. He had previously propped himself up on his arms, but due to the body structure of a wolf, his head was facing forward. Whereas in a human, his head would be facing down. Therefore, he incorrectly assumed that he was in an upright position, when he was in fact, lying down. Without the support of his two front limbs, he now had nothing supporting his front body.

His jaw fell onto the solid rock that he had previously been laying on, and his jaws clamped down on his tongue. Surprisingly, it did not hurt as much as he had expected it to. He assumed that it had something to do with the greater bone density or maybe his thick coat of fur. Probably both.

The end result of him stretching normally was a light bruise on his jaw, a bloody tongue, and both of his shoulders pulled. He had received his first injury mere moments after coming into this world.

Lucas collapsed onto his side, tired from the recent events, and his mind awhirl. As he lay there, he began to think. About what happened to him and what might happen to him.

A lot had happened to him in a very short amount of time.

He died.

Saw the plane of memories.

Watched it fall apart.

Jumped into this new world.

Became a wolf pup.

And accidentally injured himself.

Lucas had died. He was absolutely sure about that. Most of his memories leading up to his death were gone. Luckily, he still retained most of his knowledge from his old life. He knew things like calculus, chemistry, and English. But he was unable to recall ever learning those things. He understood that he needed to go through school to learn them but was unable to recall ever being taught.

Judging from the existence of wolves and scents that he was familiar with, he assumed he was in a similar world to his old one. Maybe even the same. But if it was a cycle of reincarnation, then his memories should have been completely wiped. He should not have the knowledge that he did. Maybe it was a bug in the system that let him keep some of his memories. Maybe it was on purpose.

He really did not want it to be on purpose. That would mean that there was some reason that he was here. He also disliked the fact of a higher entity playing with this life. What was his purpose? Why him?

But how exactly was he reincarnated? Were his memories basically downloaded onto this wolf? He did not think that this was the case. If so, he would have been more animalistic. And without the higher cognitive power of a human. Hell, he did not even think that he would have been able to process years of information if his memories had would have been carried over. So that only left one other option.

The transference of his soul.

A person’s personality has been the object of curiosity for humans for thousands of years. Most religions state that your soul is who you are. Your memories, your identity, yourself. Science, on the other hand, says that your identity is just a bunch of neurons inside of your head that makes up your memories. Your genes determining how much and when to secret various hormones that determine your thoughts, which lead to actions.

If his memories were not copied and pasted into the wolf’s body, then that meant the existence of a soul. Or something like it. That meant that science was incorrect but maybe not entirely. But the existence of a soul led to further questions that all boiled down into two main questions.

What is a soul? And what exactly can you do with it?

As of now, Lucas had no information about it and no way of gaining information about it, so he decided to put aside those questions in favor of a more prominent current one.

How was he going to survive?

Living like an animal in the wild is an incredibly dangerous and risky life, even if you were an apex predator. He would have to worry about food, shelter, water, and basic necessities.

The majority of that work had already been done for him when he was a human. He didn’t build his own house. He didn’t grow his own food. He didn’t even produce his own clean water. All he had to do was work to be paid and pay others for their work.

And electricity. Probably the only thing that was not necessary for survival, but a necessity for his time. The discovery and use of it changed the world. One of humanity’s greatest achievements but also limitations. How much of the modern world had required electricity for anything?

He had been so dependent on other people and technology that he was not entirely sure if he could survive for a year. He had never hunted anything as a human. He had never grown food, besides maybe a few small gardens as here and there. All of the food that he needed, he just went somewhere and bought. Whether it be a store or a restaurant.

One of his most difficult times would be as a pup. If he remembered correctly, most pups die before and age of one. Many were due to reasons such as predators or starving, but also competition between packs. And with his luck, he was relatively sure he was going to be in that majority.

He was determined to survive though. He had already painfully died once, and he wasn’t willing to do it again. The one thing that was going for him was that he had his past memories. The memories of a different life and the intelligence to go with it.

He wasn’t sure how useful his memories would prove to be. They were more modern and humanized, like various aspects of knowledge and society. He was fairly sure that chemistry and how to do taxes would not help him in his current situation.

His intelligence, on the other hand, could be extremely useful. He had a pet dog once, who like other dogs, was a little dumb. It was extremely curious, and he had to keep a constant eye on it so that it wouldn’t injure itself. It would also try to eat things that it should not and generally tried to eat everything. He hoped that other predators and such would act similarly. Common sense, which really was not that common, could be one of the greatest advantages in his current situation.

However, being a wolf had its own benefits. He had built-in weapons in the form of claws and teeth. He had loose skin, making it harder for other predators to kill him. He had superior senses, which could alert him to predators and prey. He needed to get used to his senses first. The pure amount of information that he received from his nose gave him a headache, and he needed to sort through it.

He was determined. He would live. What would he do with his life? He was not entirely sure. Roam the world looking for intelligent life? Stay in this little area of the forest? Find humans and become the ancestor of domesticated dogs? First things first, he would need to survive until he was an adult. After that, he’ll just have to wait and see.