Chapter 4

Adair was rather baffled to have come out of the wormhole so quickly. Given the length of the previous wormhole, she had expected the whole process to take quite a bit of time, yet in merely the blink of the eye she had been transported to someplace entirely different from the stone castle she had lived in for the past two weeks.

The first thing that Adair noticed was that for some reason she was no longer with the burly man. This was rather surprising given that he had literally tied her to his chest before they had been sucked into the piece of paper. It worried her quite a bit because there was nobody else around her. Even if there had been someone, as of right now, she was unable to communicate.

From what she could tell, she appeared to be in the wilderness. As a baby who was unable to walk, move or even crawl for that matter her surviving chances were minimal to non-existent.

'I have to keep calm! Panicking won't help me at all! I should see where exactly I am at the moment,' she thought to herself.

As far as her eyes could see there were only trees. However, they looked vastly different from the ones they had in the Galactic Empire. The ones surrounding her were so round that they resembled a wooden wall more so than trees.

One in particular stood out greatly, which coincidentally was the one closest to where Adair had appeared. Its bark and branches had a dark blue hue to them. She made a mental note that although similar, this blue was not exactly the same as the aetheric blue that had come out of the ground by the underground pyramid.

The green foliage above her prevented any sun from directly piercing through, which caused the whole forest to be covered in greenish light. After looking above her, Adair finally looked down and discovered that the ground below her was completely clear. No leaves, no rocks, or anything else one would expect to see in a forest, instead there was a perfect circle, with the same dimensions as the expanding paper before they got teleported.

Adair also detected that the symbols that had been on the paper were now barely visible on the ground around her and were furthermore quickly fading. She wondered if the fading was the forest's doing or if it was just part of the teleportation process. The young baby thought about this for a while but eventually stopped when she realized that it didn't matter either way, because her young body was informing her that she was getting thirsty.

At one point in her school life, Adair had learned that the average Galactic citizen could last roughly three days without water. Unfortunately, that knowledge was not really helpful to her current situation. Adair had no idea how much her being a baby would shorten this timeframe and she was pretty sure that her race had changed after the reincarnation, although she had yet to find a way to verify that.

A few hours passed and her thirst and hunger became unbearable for her baby body. Although her instinctual reaction was to cry out for help, Adair's consciousness inside the body had reasoned that making any shrill noises would more than likely result in her getting the attention of a wild animal instead of someone helpful.

In the past five hours, she had tried everything she could do to move away from her spot, but as a two-weeks-old baby, she was practically immobile. Eventually, after roughly ten hours, Adair heard loud stomping footsteps and concluded that this would be the end of her journey.

It had practically been a miracle that no animals had come out earlier to enjoy the defenseless and tasty little treat that had been waiting for them in the middle of this forest. As the footsteps came closer, Adair closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable outcome… but nothing happened.

At first, Adair assumed that the approaching animal was just overly cautious. That or perhaps it had decided to toy with Adair before killing the baby. Nevertheless, after half a minute of cowering in fear, her curiosity got the better of her, and so she opened her eyes. 'At least I'll know what gets to eat me,' she had reasoned internally.

The origin of the loud stomping footsteps turned out to be a giant bear, if it could be called that. It was easily over 20 feet tall and 50 feet long. Maybe even larger. It was hard for Adair to tell since sense of perception was a bit skewed on account of her being so small.

Adair wondered why the bear had not gotten around to eating her, until she noticed that the reason for the bear's tardiness was him being busy nudging a bag along. It took her a moment before she recognized that it was the same one that the burly man had packed beforehand. The realization confused Adair.

'Did the bear eat the burly man? But would a normal animal loot the bag of that man? Well maybe the animals on this planet do that… However, why does it seem that the bear wants to bring the bag over to me?' Adair would scratch her head right now if she was capable of such an act, but since she wasn't she just continued to watch the bear.

'Could it be that people on this planet have the ability to assume animal shapes? No, that seems unlikely, otherwise why doesn't he just change back into a human instead of struggling as a bear? So, does that mean that he's somehow become a bear? Or could it be because of the wormhole?'

'But then what about me? Why am I still a baby? Could it be I'm immune to it, perhaps because of my reincarnation? Or maybe it has something to do with the forest? Did Mommy even intend to send us here, or was all of this some kind of mistake because she rushed it for some reason?'

The bear was becoming aggravated with its task. The fact that Adair appeared to be blankly staring into space, instead of helping it out, only worsened its mood. It stopped being so careful, and forcefully shoved the bag with his giant paw sending it flying. Judging by its own shocked expression it was not a desired outcome.

Nevertheless, the bear was lucky enough that it happened to land only on the feet of baby Adair and not her whole body. When that happened, a whole bunch of things got released from the pack as if they had been spring-loaded. Suddenly there were two dozen bottles filled with milk around Adair.

When the bear saw the milk bottles, it tried to grab one but ended up crushing it in the process. The bear then attempted to do the same thing with another bottle, yet more carefully this time. Alas, instead of crushing it, his claws ended up scratching the bottle so hard that it cracked under pressure and shattered as well. This repeated several times until Adair was surrounded by shards of glass and only a single intact milk bottle.

At this point, the bear stared at the bottle menacingly. From her point of view it appeared as if the bear had met its lifelong enemy that had killed its whole family. It would have been quite the funny sight, yet she was internally cursing the bear, since she was forced to watch it destroy what had clearly been meant as her food supplies. Still, she was too scared to complain out loud.

Just when she thought that this situation could not get any weirder, one of the giant trees let down a branch, which coiled around the lid of the bottle and gently unscrewed it. It then brought the bottle to Adair, who opened her mouth and let the shockingly cold substance flow down her throat.

Eventually, after she had consumed the contents of the bottle, the tree set down the glass container and retracted its limb. It looked no different from a regular tree the next moment. Adair took a moment to note that the helpful tree turned out to be the one with the dark blue bark. 'Does that mean all the trees are alive or just those who have blue bark?' she wondered.

Adair was not completely sure that what she had seen had actually happened. The ongoing hunger and thirst had made her slightly delirious so she could not completely rule out that everything since the appearance of the bear might have been a dream.

However, there was no doubt about what happened next to her. Adair clearly felt the paws of the bear pick her up and somewhat carefully flip her onto its back. After it had determined that Adair had landed safely, it began a slow walk deeper into the forest.

Adair was astonished by how soft the bear's fur turned out to be. It was even more comfortable than her crib had been, although not quite as nice as the bed of her mother. As the bear walked deeper into the forest, she got rocked up and down which helped her fall asleep in a matter of minutes.