Chapter 6

Natalie groaned as she stretched, the pop of joints still settling echoed in her ears. She rolled her neck to a symphony of cracks, noting the dull thud behind her eyes that a couple of pain killers could fix.

... if there were any around.

Running her tongue along her teeth, she grimaced at the fuzzy residue in her mouth. Gathering it all in one go, she spat the collection of fur and sinew onto the forest floor. Luckily, she still couldn’t taste much of anything, although that did mean it was going to get worse next month. Rodents and the occasional squirrel really weren’t enough to sate her, but short of tying up a deer next to her when she changed, there wasn’t much she could do about it. Winters were always the worst. Not enough prey.

Standing stark naked in the middle of the woods with no clear direction home was always disorienting, but a lifetime of waking up in strange places made this a rather routine experience.

First, check for injuries.

Aside from dirt under her nails and an assortment of detritus in her hair, she seemed to be fine. She rolled her shoulders and did a few deep stretches. Body seemed in good shape, too.

Second, check the surroundings.

She had apparently made a burrow at some point to shield her from the frigid winds. It wasn’t much more than a hole in the side of a hill, but it had kept her insulated. Not that it really bothered her all that much anyway.

Pines dotted the area with brush and shrubs hiding her little haven. It wasn’t particularly dense, and with the sloping hills, that probably meant she was somewhere to the East of where she’d stashed her stuff.

Third, figure out a way home.

Natalie limbered up, picking the occasional twig out of her tangled hair. It had only taken a few changes before she’d learned to keep it short. Anything past shoulder level was an invitation for random crap to hitch a ride back home.

Setting her sights on the biggest tree, she bound up onto the first branch and nimbly climbed to a spot where she could clear the tree line.

One of the reasons she was forever hiking in these woods wasn’t only for health, it was to scope out locations. And the most important part of scoping out locations was being able to recognize major geographic markers and orienting on them. The worst part of moving somewhere new was that the first few months would always be the hardest to get back home because she couldn’t recognize places at a glance.

Noting the familiar peeks in the distance and catching the faint bubbling of a river gave her a rough estimate of where she was. Spotting the telltale towering pine known as Old Reliable, to her at least, set her off on her path.

Dropping to the forest floor, she irritably wiped her sappy hands to little avail on the side of a rock. Until she got to her supplies, she’d need to suffer being naked, dirty, and sticky.

If only it were as fun as all the stories made it sound.

Natalie took off toward Old Reliable, twigs snapping beneath her bare feet as she went. If there was one benefit of this condition, it was that the soles of her feet, like the rest of her, were tough as boiled leather. Luckily, it didn’t feel like anything but well-moisturized skin, otherwise her nearly non-existent love life would have been even more non-existent.

Natalie banished those thoughts from her head as trees passed at a decent clip.

The best she could really hope for at this point was to find someone who’d be cool with her disappearing every month.

More important was figuring out what was going on at Melissa’s place. Ever since that afternoon with the pizzas at her place, Natalie had been finding more and more excuses to hang out there. Maybe it was something in the walls. Maybe it was their oven. Maybe it was haunted by the ghost of a chef who had died wanting all his guests to always taste the best meals.

That last one seemed highly suspect though. Even if there were ghosts, they probably didn’t care about her taste buds.

The only other thing it could be was related to that weird scent. It was always so subtle that she’d forget it was there, but she could feel it like an electric charge. Without being too weird, which was already a challenge, she couldn’t exactly go tearing around the house smelling everything and everyone. She’d already been caught by Melissa and then her brother on several occasions trying to surreptitiously sniff things.

Natalie groaned at the memory of Melissa’s brother slowly backing out of the bathroom as she’d sniffed the towel he’d just used to wash his hands.

“Ugh, kill me,” she muttered to herself, that expression of his somewhere between confusion and amusement permanently etched into her mind.

With a few stops on the way to find Old Reliable again, she finally made her way to her stash. Soon enough she had a crackling fire going with the supplies she had squirreled away, water boiling while she cleaned herself up with her prodigious amount of wet wipes. Next to diving into a river or lake, which even she found unpleasant at these temperatures, it was the best option, though cleanup was a bit of a hassle.