I stood up.

I couldn't rest out here in the open.

I walked further into the forest and kept on the lookout for some kind of place I could take temporary and especially camouflaged shelter.

Hmm, some of those bits of bark are pretty big.

Following the idea, I started gathering a few pieces and leaned them against a tree, and also laid one inside as a floor. It took a bit but altogether not really long and I had a rough shelter that would pass as one of the bigger roots at a glance.

Satisfied, I nodded and crawled inside. I used another piece of bark as a covering for the entrance and only left a small gap to let in light.

Good. I still didn't feel outright safe, but definitely safer. It was better than nothing.

I still felt skittish but I was tired. I kept forgetting that I was a newborn, a baby. I simply wasn't developed enough to have a great deal of endurance. I also had yet to eat something.

I need to rest. With that determined, I lay down my head and closed my eyes. I started listening to my heartbeat and let it fill my mind, pushing any other thoughts away.

Ba-dum-dum-dum

I started wondering how I didn't seem to have a pulse but heard—

No.

Ba-dum-dum-dum

Ba-dum-dum-dum

Ba-dum-dum-dum

Ba-dum-dum-dum

­»——————«

I awoke rather calmly, but when I opened my eyes I immediately lost that tranquility. Something surrounded me.

No, not some creatures. I meant more something like a dome.

I also couldn't see it purely with my eagle eyes. I only saw the hexagons this cupola was made of in my heat vision.

The scare also seemed to have triggered my sleep paralysis.

Great, so I still have that. How inconvenient. I wanted to add a huff, but, well...

Finally, with a shudder, I could move again.

The first thing I did was carefully extending my paw to tap against the dome.

Clink

Wat?

That was not the sound I'd been expecting.

Is this glass?

I kept tapping one of the hexagons harder and harder, but even when I tried breaking the glass, it would not.

Oh, no. I might have started panicking a little bit in fear of not getting out.

Come onnnn. Break, break, BREAK!

Crrrrckshh

And suddenly, as if on queue, it shattered and dissolved. Oh, not only that one tile but the whole dome.

Shocked and still full of adrenalin — or whatever its counterpart in my current body, if I even had any comparable biology — I just stared for a while.

What was that? I had no idea.