Trees.

No, not trees. I was at the mall with one of my aunts, at the top of an escalator.

Trees?

But I remembered a hard shove to the middle of my back, and tumbling—a sharp, white-hot pain—

I open my eyes and find that what my ears and nose have been telling me is indeed correct: I am in a forest.

The sun is sparkling though the branches above me. Birds are whistling short staccato songs to each other. I can hear the gentle gurgling of a stream.

Nope, nothing suspicious here.

What the. . . .

And cue the suspicion.

I sit upright gingerly, wary of that sudden, horrible pain. I look extremely out-of-place, I realize. The forest is warm and natural, directly in contrast to the teenager wearing a thick coat and still holding three plastic shopping bags. I put the bags down and rub the back of my neck carefully.

We'd gone to my mom's sister's house for Thanksgiving. Auntie Beth had dragged me to the mall for some "bonding time," which usually involved her trying to wear out her paycheck on me, her only niece. I would chivalrously deflect the intent and persuade her to buy stuff for my brothers, instead, and that was where I had found myself a few minutes ago: laden with bags and stepping onto the "down" escalator.

Then someone had bumped into me and I'd rolled down the steps and had hit the back of my neck hard enough to . . . hmm.

I rub my neck again, not noticing any lumps, and feel a headache coming on. Hmm.

Dead? Maybe.

Is this heaven? Clearly not.

Coma and dreaming? Possibly.

So where am I?

I stand up, stretch, brush a leaf out of my snarled hair, and look around. Oak trees. Stream. "Hello?" I call, not really expecting an answer. "Hello!" I shout again, before wincing at my headache and deciding that I'm probably on my own.

Or hallucinating.

There's a penny in the left pocket of my jeans. I'd found it in the parking lot, winking up at me in all its alluring copper glory. My right pocket has one of my brothers' old pocketknives in it. Good. If I can't find civilization soon, I'm going to need it. Not to mention my lack of cash.

The first bag has six rolls of blue and red wrapping paper that say "Happy Birthday" and "Merry Christmas," respectively. There are a few packets of tissue paper shoved in the bottom like afterthoughts.

The second bag has a ping pong paddle, two six-packs of balls and pink fuzzy socks that were supposed to be a gag gift.

Bag number three is full of small things: ponytail holders, crepe paper, bubblegum, a pack of batteries, a teddy bear.

Well, that's better than I could have hoped for, after tumbling merrily down the steps. Although the year's stash of candy and the towels would have been nice.

So. Alone in a forest. Water? Check. Way to distill the water? Rats.

I walk over to the small stream and scoop out a handful. It looks clear enough. There's a little algae growing between the rocks, but it's bright green and there isn't any silt and I've always been a trusting person anyway.

I really should go upstream until I find the source of the water, but I'd been lugging ten bags of purchases around and have reached my packhorse capacity. I slurp a bit of water out of my cupped palm, prepared for dirt flavor.

It doesn't taste muddy. It tastes better than any water I've ever drunk before. I drink a few more handfuls and march back to my bags, thinking. Clean. Fresh. Sparkling.

My biggest problem will obviously be food. My second biggest problem is the lack of a water container. Without one, my options are limited. At least shelter will be easy. There are plenty of giant oaks.

Both disheartened and reassured by this observation, I grab my possessions and find a tree with low-lying branches. I climb until the branches are as thin as is bearable and hang the bags from some twigs.

I don't want to dwell on what-the-hey-just-happened, but I can't stop myself.

I've read plenty of stories where the main character is transported to another world. In fiction, that typically means time-travel or space-age technology. In derivatives, the main character is usually dropped onto their favorite canon character and things are a lot less believable (and remarkably more convenient). There's some haphazard magic portal and a brief moment of "is this a dream?" and then she pinches herself and decides it's real. I don't have that problem.

I am apparently the only person in the world who can read in dreams. I can taste in dreams, smell in dreams, get hurt in dreams, and sometimes convince myself that they're real. If I fall out of a tree in a dream, I do not bounce.

As I am twenty feet up in a tree, that is not comforting.

The sunlight fades. The night comes. I curl up on my tree branch and wonder what happens next.


I woke slowly, lulled to my senses by the melodic chattering of birds. Ooh, birds, my thoughts mused. I must have left the window open. My eyes drifted lazily open. What was a deer doing in my bedroom?

I jerked upright, managing to strain my back painfully. I was still in the tree. Still wearing my coat. Still not home. There was a flicker of brown as the deer saw me and leaped away. I rolled my eyes, feeling strangely comforted. That's right, animal lover, the more cynical side of me commented in flat amusement, see some wildlife and feel your troubles melt away. Don't hunt for food or anything, either. Food. Breakfast.

I collected my stuff and climbed down to the ground to play scavenger hunt. I knew I had seen wood sorrel by the stream, and with a little luck I'd find some watercress. Or clover and violets, as it happened.

Every day, I woke up at dawn and foraged until dusk. It wasn't easy—I lost thirty pounds much faster than any diet is supposed to work. Half of that I shouldn't have had in the first place, but if I had not had it, I would have died. Funny how being a bit overweight isn't really a bad thing. What was a bad thing, though, was that I couldn't seem to regain the other fifteen pounds, no matter how many edible plants I remembered and harvested.

Still, I settled in easily enough. I hadn't seen any predators yet, but I slept in the trees as a precaution. When it rained, I slept under my coat. If it was dry, I slept on top of it. I used the crepe for toilet paper (the forest seemed to be fresh out of plants I had been told to trust, like mullein, bigleaf aster, and the darling lifesaver sphagnum moss) and stored my food in the plastic shopping bags.

The best water system I could think of involved drilling holes in the ping pong balls, submerging them, and filling the holes with chewed bubblegum. The process did not seem appealing and I wasn't planning on doing it. Additionally, the bubblegum had been melted by a rainstorm. I was keeping the candy, but I really didn't want to touch it.

I was slowly traveling upstream. Hopefully, I would reach civilization and find out where I was soon. If the weather started dropping, I wouldn't last long. However, the acorns were still developing in the comfort of the oaks—I wasn't too worried.

The last, possibly most important aspect of my new existence was the colors. They started on the fourth morning. With no other intellectual options, I experimented with the colors and heat. The more I pushed down the heat, the less I could feel the delicate swirls of individuality. On the other hand, if I left the heat alone, the range decreased. As did the molten feeling.

The colors were like breathing. Your subconscious controls your lungs, but the second you think of them, that control rests fully on you. You have to figure out how much air to take in—or stop breathing and die. The colors were useful, but it's really hard to concentrate on them when you're fifty feet up in a tree, reaching for pinecones on the only pine tree you've yet seen.

And I liked the detail, but it was not worth the pain.

And no, I do not care to explain them in detail when at the time I had no feasible explanation. They made no sense.

Eventually, the neat trick of staring at my own ribs scared me into entering the natural world of kill-or-be-killed, because while I might not have remembered every lesson from my woodsy father, I did know that animals have body fat and that they were the only way I'd keep any on me. I steeled myself for an entire week, and my first "kill" ended up being some lazy bobcat's half-dead leavings.

I was carefully rotating my rabbit on its spit when I first felt the disturbance. It was subtle—the only warning was the squirrels taking to the trees. Well, there was a bit more to it than that.

I was leaning against a rock, lazily humming The Stars and Stripes Forever while suppressing the heat (not the fire's heat, just my body's new talent). I was trying to keep an even level, but every time I reached over to rotate my supper, my subconscious took over and the precarious control slipped. So I actually didn't notice the problem until it was too late.

Too late to put out the fire, too late to grab the rabbit, too late to snatch my bags and dash off without a trace. Just enough time to scale a tree and flatten myself against a branch.

I had felt a lump of colorless energy moving toward me. The only colorless energy I knew of was me. So whatever was coming wasn't wildlife.

The heat (again, the most confusing, powerless, powerful problem—but it seemed to locate life energy) flared sharply, causing me to shove it and my sensing away. I tilted my head to the side and watched a cloaked form walk up to my fire. It was wearing a giant hat, which was distinctly unkind.

The giant hat tipped back as the person under it looked directly up at me. I could see eyes, reflecting in the firelight against the backdrop of the failed sun. "Come down," said a male voice. Human. Male.

And me, a defenseless girl all alone. I shrank back into the leaves. The heat returned with a vengeance.

Below me, the guy sighed. The energy in his top half moved. I pushed the pain back and peeked down again. He'd taken his hat off.

He'd . . .

He was . . .

Itachi Uchiha.

I am dead. I am so dead. I am— The heat swarmed through me greedily, replacing the panic with pain. The fictional character watched blankly. I glared at him defensively.

If he'd felt like it, I would have been dead a hundred times over already. I rolled off the limb and landed in an easy crouch. Itachi's eyes followed me. I scowled (not meaning to annoy him) and stared right back. And stared. And . . . walked closer to turn the spit.

"So, um, hi," I said eventually. This is awkward and ow burning burning leg I don't appear to be dead yet, entertaining. Ugly hat.

Long silence.

"Would you like some rabbit?" I offered instinctively, hinging on my generous spirit and Mom's sage-like advice to always appeal to men with food. By which I did not mean appeal. "There's more than enough." Which was a lie, actually. The longer the meat lasted, the fewer animals I would have to kill.

He was silent. I turned the rabbit until it seemed done and set it on a clean rock to cool.

"You have strange chakra," said Itachi, and okay, I will finally admit it: he had a moderately distracting voice.

"I don't have any color," I replied unthinkingly, busy slicing (hacking) a leg off of the rabbit.

"Chakra," corrected the ninja.

"Whatever. Rabbit?" He took the leg and sat down across the fire. I hacked enough meat for my own meal and settled against the rock.

A bearable, if not comfortable, silence filled the air, lasting past my "I'm going to find more wood" and up until sunset. Itachi found a tree to lean against. I wrapped myself in my coat and curled up in a maple. "G'night," I mumbled sleepily, accidentally comparing him with one of my brothers.

I woke once to see him feeding the fire from the base of my tree. "Go back to sleep." My eyes blurred complacently.

He was gone by sunrise. Unsurprisingly, my sleepy, apathetic search showed that he was out of range. Well. I tugged the warmth around myself and let the colors flow.

Wait, warmth? Since when could I stand the heat? Since you learned it was chakra, stupid. Remember, chakra? Source of the fabulously, ridiculously over-powered Naruto ninjas?

I rifled through my rusty array of memories. Chakra, a life energy that focuses in the stomach and essentially mimics veins. With practice, it can be used to walk on water or blow fireballs. There are several genetic traits and abilities and sub-types as well, such as the Uchiha Sharingan or the Hyūga Byakūgan.

So far as I knew, there was nothing about colors or molten lava, so I was nearly back to square one. Nearly. I had a foothold. I knew where I was. And I knew that I really, really did not want to travel to a town.

I packed up my things, scooped some dirt over the remains of the fire, and shook myself like a dog. Chakra, eh? I may or may not have laughed giddily and danced around for the entire morning.

Itachi came back three days later, this time from the other direction. He was less obvious—his form was more . . . transparent than a colorless shape ought to be—but I had grown more wary. And also, I was taking a bath. Baths in the middle of nowhere make me very observant.

I jumped when I sensed him coming toward me. The back of my head collided with the rocks of the waterfall I was crouching under. Ye gods! I cried, yanking the last few twigs out of my hair. Why now?!

My coat was back on in mere seconds, regardless of my soaked state. Augh! I thought. Hidehidehidehidehide. He was still thirty seconds away. I had time. I could slip into my filthy pants (okay, I hadn't thought through this whole cleaning thing) and avoid the problem of a mid-thigh-length coat.

Or not. "Hello," I muttered, scowling.

"Hnn." His flat eyes took in my soaked skin (mostly my legs, which are uniquely paler than the moon) and hair (the legend of Medusa came to mind).

I blushed like a fire hydrant. "I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't try to sneak up on me." There was no reply, just a bland expression. I blushed even more, my face on fire, and turned to go to my nightly tree.

Itachi followed me like a tangible ghost, sitting beside my stack of firewood while I knelt carefully and sorted through my bag of grazings. I had a few handfuls of wild blueberries, a pile of mint leaves, and a sawed-off branch of sassafras. Hilarious.

He was reading a scroll, to all intents and purposes completely at ease. I pulled one of my kunai (I forgot to mention those, but discarded weapons are worse than litter here) out of its sheath and watched him twitch. Still alive, good.

I left the campsite and went back to the waterfall, painfully aware that he was following me. There were deer and bird tracks in the banks of the stream. I sat down beside it and closed my eyes.

The energy was incredibly bright and cheery today. It rippled through the minnows, darted through the squirrels, possessed the birds. I sorted through them, finally settling on a quivering shape that I took to be a rabbit. I liked rabbit. It was easy to clean and simple to cook.

I focused on the pretty mixture of green and blue and stirred gently. When the color changed, I dipped a mental finger in it and tugged carefully.

My stomach churned when it hopped into sight a minute later, a fuzzy brown thing. I could practically smell Itachi frowning at us.

Well, see what I cared.

I hooked more fingers into the animal, leading it within grabbing range. "Sorry," I whispered to it sadly. The color flooded away as I slit its throat. I picked it up and set it on a rock to bleed out.

"Wanna skin it?" I asked the air.

No answer.

"Fine. Then could you go light the fire?" I took it as a yes, because his chakra headed off in that direction. Pity. Although I could finally remove my clothes from the bushes.

It was when we were eating the hot, juicy meat that I made my move. "So, um, I'm not dead." He raised an eyebrow. "I was wondering why?"

"Hnn," said Itachi, and I was about to huff and stalk off to my tree when he continued. "You have an odd chakra presence." I cocked my head and waited. "Thank you for the meal. Good night."

I narrowed my eyes at him, letting him know I wasn't satisfied or pleased. "Night."

He tried to sneak off an hour before dawn, but I forced myself awake. "Where are you going?"

He picked up his hat. "That's none of your concern."

"All right, when will you be back?" He put the hat on and walked into the woods.

Oh, no. I was through with playing the patient, nonabrasive girl. I pulled at the heat, grabbed his chakra, and yanked.

He tripped.

And then he was right in front of me, holding a kunai to my throat. "Don't do that again." I froze. But not for the obvious reason. The colors were gone.

I stared into his eyes (he seemed a bit angry) in disbelief. "What did you do? Where are they?"

He withdrew the knife and stepped back. "Where are what?"

"The colors! I can't feel them."

"Hnn," he frowned. "I didn't do anything." This time, I didn't stop him leaving. I couldn't feel him, anyway.


I didn't promise not to write cliches, but we'll steer largely clear of them, I promise you that. The visible plot will come, shortly. Until then: Who's your favorite anime character, and why?

Until next time: I leaned forward, wrinkling my nose elaborately. "Did you get hit by a cheese grater?"