The escalating song of birds woke me up. Half-conscious, I first heard a quiet chirping, as if a lively conversation among small children, with more birds gradually joining in, the sound becoming louder and more diverse. A bit like an alarm clock on a phone — it starts ringing softly, but unless you wake up, it rings louder and louder to the point where it screams so loudly the speaker crackles. Usually, I woke up to the slightest sound in the morning, even a fly passing close to my head could wake me up, and I would jump out of bed with a false feeling of being late somewhere. Not this time, though. I must have been sleeping very deeply, which had been rare for me over the last few years. I needed a good few minutes before my body began to respond to my commands. Slowly, I tried to open my eyes, but the thought of snoozing for just five more minutes seemed like a better choice. The chirping of the birds was very close, as if they were sitting on my head. This morning wakeup started quite pleasantly, but slowly began to get irritating. Suddenly, a thought flashed through my mind—why are there so many birds? I lived on the outskirts of a small town, about a kilometer away from the nearest forest. Usually, in the summer season, you could see a large number of sparrows, a few magpies and blackbirds, and sometimes swallows near my house. The chirping I heard now was much more diverse, as if at least a dozen different species were present. An unsettling thought burrowed into my mind that something was wrong, something didn’t add up, something didn’t fit. However, I was still drowsy enough that I wasn’t sure if this was reality or still a dream. Then, a short buzzing sound, like an old car’s horn, rang out. My heart started pounding in my chest as if I had been electrocuted, and I sat up in an instant, trying to frantically figure out where I was and what was happening.

I was sitting in a sparse, deciduous forest. Warm sunlight gently pierced through the tree canopy and scattered on the morning dew like glittering brocade sprinkled across the undergrowth. The bright green of the tree leaves and bushes, darker patches of moss, here and there small grey stones, clumps of light green and yellow grass, white flowers, evenly scattered among the greenery. I was in shock, slowly looking around, sitting on damp moss. Was this some kind of fairy tale? The view was like from a game, where the creators turned up ray tracing and all possible graphical effects to the maximum to make it epic, no matter that it looked unnatural, it had to impress the player.

My daydream was interrupted by another sound of a horn, coming from a short distance, and a few seconds later by a similar one, as if from a slightly greater distance.

"Cranes," I thought. I had probably never seen them in real life, but that’s how it sounded in nature documentaries and video games. I woke up completely, and the first thing I usually did was to check the notifications on my phone and see what was happening in the big world. I reached into my pocket and froze. That mini heart attack when the device, which had become an integral part of life, was not within reach. I frantically looked around, my mind swirling with thoughts. Did I lose it? Was I robbed? I always carried my ID, driver's license, and payment card in my phone’s case. My blood pressure spiked, I started to sweat. Instinctively, I reached for my wrist, where I normally wore my smartwatch, from which I could send a signal to find my phone. But the watch wasn’t there either.

I started feeling an unpleasant pressure in my chest associated with high stress. My noble backside was wet from the moss I was sitting on. Only then did I realize what I was wearing. I stood up quickly, as if I had sat on an anthill, and started examining each part of my clothing with interest.

I was wearing a vest made of hard leather. Smooth and a bit shiny on the outside, inside rough, its texture similar to short-shaven bristles. It was sewn from two pieces of leather, stitched together with thick thread only on the shoulders, all edges finished in black as if burned. The vest was put on over the head and adjusted by tightening leather straps under both arms. Under the vest, I had a sand-colored linen shirt. The sleeves reached to the elbows and were tightly edged with hard thread at the ends.

On my legs, I had loose pants in a light brown color, something like training sweatpants, but made of a hard and rough material, held up by a woven cord at the top, the legs were long almost to the ground and had slits a few inches from the bottom, so they could be put on over shoes.

The shoes lay next to me, looking a bit like low-cut rubber boots, made entirely of leather and lined inside with something resembling linen flat cushions, which acted like the very popular bean bags from a few years back, also known as sako pillows. I wasn't sure what they were filled with, but they effectively conformed to the foot, and despite the shoe being about two sizes too big, the foot held well, neither sliding nor chafing. The sole was made of thicker leather with charred cross strips for better traction. It wasn't Adidas Traxxion, but certainly offered better grip than smooth leather. Accustomed to comfortable clothing, I quickly noticed that the underwear consisted of linen, loose shorts. Uncomfortable and itchy.

Next to the shoes on the moss lay a small fabric bag, closed with a string, which could also be tied to the pants' belt-loop or to the vest's straps. In the bag, there was only a small knife in a wooden sheath, with a handle made from bone or horn. The blade looked a bit like it was from a medieval exhibit in a museum—uneven blackened metal, as if a novice blacksmith had decided at the last minute what the tool was going to be. The edge was sharp, but slightly jagged, appearing to have been honed with ordinary stones rather than a high-quality whetstone.

After acquainting myself with my meager attire and equipment, my thoughts returned to my situation. 

Where am I?
How did I get here?
Who am I?

After a few minutes of really intense struggle through a mass of tangled thoughts, I began to remember something.