Chapter 2
World So Undecided

I didn’t know what I expected. In my defense, the last time I’d seen Doctor Who was like, seven years ago, and even then I’d always zoned out during the intro. But generally, when falling into a hole in the world, I felt that some kind of infinite black void or whirling vortex of colours was appropriate. Instead, the world became hues of… tasteful off-white. Still whirled a lot, though. 

“Well, that’s… um…” was all I managed, before the panicking ball of fur and, more pressingly, teeth and nails in my arms started to try and wriggle itself out of my grip. “Pa— Panc— Stop it,” I mumbled between my teeth, as I tried to hold onto him, but eventually relented, and immediately Pancakes relished in the freedom of freefall. He hung in mid-air in front of me as the two of us tumbled through the eggshell void. 

“Mwrp?” he said as he tried to orient himself in a vague direction that could be considered down, and only managed to make himself spin slightly. 

“Yeah,” I said, feeling slightly victorious about being able to say ‘I told you so’ to an animal that had to be taught to poop in a box. “Are you calm now?” Pancakes managed to turn to look at me, and then tried to swim towards me in mid-air. Not quite calm yet, but at least he seemed to be panicking less. 

“Mwee,” Pancakes exclaimed as I reached out and grabbed him under the armpits, which was a strange sensation without gravity weighing him down. I held him to my chest as I pondered our current situation. So, there appeared to be just… nothing in every direction, but at least it was fairly easy on the eyes. 

There was also a slight rustling noise, like wind blowing through the leaves of trees. “You know,” I said to nobody but Pan in particular, “this is quite nice.” As I was falling through the void and was therefore lacking in any wood furniture or surfaces to knock on, irony hit me in the face like a cartoon frying pan. 

There was a ‘VWERP’, followed by a ‘GLORF’, and capped off by a ‘BWAAAM’. Everything went black. Then white again. Then something like a purplish orange, and then with the sound of a cruise liner being crushed like a soda can, the whole world came back. Well. A world. In a rush of sound and fury and a lot of air being blown in every direction, I appeared some five feet above the ground, knees up. 

I wished I’d had the time to say something witty or funny like an ‘ah, crap’, but gravity actually hit harder than animated characters would’ve had you believe. I immediately ate a facefull of… snow? It took me a moment to register that it was snow, because it was in my eyes, nose and ears, but after I got up with a gasp and a whimper I confirmed that it was, indeed, snow. At least a foot or so. And I was naked in it. But that wasn’t my first and immediate concern. Not really. I looked around. “Pan?” 

When I had popped out of whatever I’d popped into, there had been a noise unlike anything I’d ever heard, like ten-thousand people opening their candy at the movie theatre, all at once. What followed now was more of a disappointing ‘pwarp’, the last breath of a desperate trumpeter.

What appeared to be a large, fluffy dog appeared in the air, and fell onto the snow. When it raised its head, I immediately lurched back. I was smart — and educated — enough to know that this wasn’t a dog. Dogs are smaller, and don’t look like the wolves in nature documentaries. Wolves do. I started backing away slowly, but the creature’s eyes immediately trained themselves on me, and I froze. 

“Meow,” the wolf said. I frowned. Wolves howled, didn’t they? I read once that dogs bark because they’re descended from wolf pups who were the smallest and cutest and easiest to domesticate. But I’d never heard of them meowing. Apparently, neither had the wolf, because it looked cross-eyed at its own muzzle. “Mrrp?” 

Looking down at my own nakedness again, something was starting to click. It hadn’t originally registered, my senses being too busy to register “cold” to really record any other useful data, but now it was becoming clear to me that this is not what I looked like. 

I hadn’t been out of — Okay, that wasn’t true, I had been out of shape, but I hadn’t been that badly out of shape. But I’d definitely put on some extra weight during my extended stays inside and my general lack of a life outside of work (and Pan). 

This body, however, was lean. Lean like that of an athlete. It was also taller than I had ever been, and with a more slender frame. My family had always prided themselves as being “country people, through and through”, despite my mother having been an interior decorator and my father being a third generation ‘finances guy’. But we were definitely built to have a little extra. This body didn’t have extra. It didn’t have any place to put extra. 

The long and short of it was that this wasn’t my body, another reason not to look further down. That would feel inappropriate. It wasn’t my business. But if this wasn’t my body… I looked at the wolf again. “Pan?” I asked. 

“Myew,” the wolf said, and got up. It tried to lick its own back and fell over onto a fresh bank of snow. Immediately after that, there was another noise, like a bunch of grapes being squeezed through a straw, and a stack of magazines crashed through the air, on the ground between us. Now more in charge of its senses, the wolf barreled away in the other direction with a kind of lisping hiss. 

“Yeah,” I said to myself, “that’s him.” Pancakes was trying — and being remarkably successful — at climbing a tree. He’d crashed into it at first when his legs had turned out to be bad at the kind of vertical jumping cats were supposed to be good at, and then also bad at clinging to trees in a similar way. I walked up to it just as he scrambled up onto the first branch. “C’mon buddy,” I said. “It’s okay.” I looked around and rubbed my arms. It really was very cold. I wouldn’t mind having a large, warm fluffy animal to be at least close to. Behind me, more magazines tumbled out of the air with various sputtering noises.

“Wreow!” Pan argued down at me. “Breow,” he added. I rolled my eyes. It was going to be one of these. At least he was undeniably him. He still had the same look on his face, despite it being so different. And he seemed to recognise me too, which was something. I doubt he’d argue so vigorously with someone he didn’t know.

“Listen, I know it was loud and scary. So are you.” Pan eyed me suspiciously, and I was once again reminded of the fact that my lot in life seemed to be arguing with this cat-turned-puppy. 

“Mweh,” Pancakes said as he tried to get his feet under him on a branch that was already shockingly thin for a wolf that sise to sit on. 

I rubbed my face. “How about,” I said, “if you come down, I promise not to eat you and wear you like a coat when the hypothermia hits, and you promise not to eat me for sustenance?”

“Brf,” Pan said, and fell off the branch with a yelp. I jumped forward to catch him and realised that wolves weighed something around the ‘fully grown adult’-mark, and weren’t snatched out of the air like cats were. 

“Get off,” I grumbled into the fur. Pan did so, and for the second time, I picked myself up out of the snow. Pancakes looked at me expectantly. There was a primal part of my brain that was telling me he should be wagging, but it seemed he wasn’t that much wolf just yet. As I let my joints pop themselves into place again, I looked around, taking stock. There had to be something, right?” 

I looked over at the stack of magazines, haphazardly piled and strewn about the snow. They were, quite obviously, the same ones from my living room. I hopped over, trying to keep moving so I wouldn’t freeze my toes off. Vaguely remembering what they were about, I found one about landscapes and traveling. That one might help me figure out where I was, although what science-fiction I’d read made me feel like my chances of figuring that out were minimal at best. 

Leafing through it and jumping from foot to foot, I was completely unprepared to be hit in the face with a boot. Thankfully, there was nobody in it, or the impact might’ve seriously hurt, but as it was, I lost my balance anyway and crashed into the snow a third time. Because Pan was the only witness, I was free to pretend like I hadn’t just whooped in icy surprise, and just got back up as the hole in the air spat out thick, black, wool clothes. I practically dove onto them. It took me longer than I would’ve ever dared to admit to try and fit my upper body into a shirt before realizing it was pants. 

Finally wearing surprisingly non-itching clothes, I hopped up and down a few times to get my blood flowing, but I couldn’t get my teeth to stop chattering. Despite the clothes and the cloak, it was still, quite obviously, freezing. Next to me, Pancakes was sniffing through the magazines, and I took that as a reminder to get back to figuring out what to do next. 

I looked at the trees again. Most of them were… Pine trees? Maybe? Whatever, Christmas trees. Pointy. Although there were a few that weren’t, like the one Pan had tried to climb, without leaves. Other than that, the sky was a perfect milky white, with no visible sun. My only real option was to try and find… something. Anything, really?

“What do you think, Pancakes?” I asked, grabbing handfuls of the magazines and stuffing them in my clothes like I thought I’d seen in a movie once. Pancakes looked up at me and meowed, so there was that. I looked around. There was ever so slight a slope to the little field I was on. I figured, if I walked downhill, I’d eventually end up at a river or a valley and that would, hopefully, lead to some kind of civilization. I looked at Pan, and knelt down, grabbing his little face in my hands. Well, it wasn’t so little now, but he was always going to be my little idiot, no matter how big he got. “We’re gonna get out of here, alright?” 

“Frrpt,” Pan said, and I kissed him on the forehead. Deciding that I had best get going, I got up and started to walk, and dutifully, Pan trotted alongside me. It was good that he wasn’t his tiny cat self. He would’ve had a rough time getting through the snow. Now it barely came halfway up his legs. Not that either of us had it easy. The snow was quite thick and hard to navigate, even while trying to go downhill. 

After walking for a while, I realised that the terrain had flattened out. No more downhill. Well, nothing for it but to press on. Trying to go in a straight line, I looked behind me every once in a while to make sure. My stomach was starting to rumble uncomfortably, and I realised that I hadn’t actually eaten before we’d arrived here. 

The second unfortunate realization was that the sky was turning slightly bluish orange; the sun was setting. There was a slight hill, but I figured, if I got to the top of that, maybe I could see something more. It took some huffing and puffing, but even halfway up, I saw something ahead. An interrupted patch in the snow. I hurried a little more and realised, to my horror… that it was a stack of magazines. Well, part of one. I’d gone in a big circle. 

“Ah, crap.”

Elamimax

Chapter 2! I hope you're enjoying this one :3 I'll update it a bit more regularly, so another chappy tomorrow :3 I'll be uploading the last one on New Year's I think :D