Chapter 16: Enter the Ranger

She came from the East, and Andy’s nose knew about her before anything else did. He happened to be grazing, (Grazing! He ate grass now! The indignity was only matched by the fact that grass tasted genuinely good and prior to this he’d been dining on bugs.) in the clearing near one of the speed trials. The fox was nearby, curled on a flat rock.  

They’d grown accustomed to each other after over a week of acquaintanceship and Andy suspected their bond was ticking close toward ‘companionship’. She would help him train his gallop efficiency. He still couldn’t catch her, but he’d made it up to a seventy-eight percent gallop proficiency. 

His nose was proving along with [ACTIVE AWARENESS] to be the most useful instrument in his toolkit. He could smell the fox (warm, musky with a slight scent of magic). The stream (mineral, cold). Deer-like creatures that had passed through several hours ago (two females, one fawn moving northeast). The weather (A lesson he’d learned a few days prior when a storm arrived with  olfactory fanfare an hour before the first rain drop fell.) And now he could smell the woman.

The scent arrived upwind and approaching. It wasn’t something he’d catalogued yet. A warm-blooded mammal overlaid with compounds that were not biological. Tanned leather, treated fabric, metal, something floral–soap maybe. But beneath all of that there was a slightly sour note that Andy identified immediately: a person.

Someone new. A person who smelled of leather and forest and hard work. Plus a clean floral scent. A human woman. 

His head came up from the grass. His ears roasted and locked onto footsteps. Light, steady, practiced. This was not the same as the flat-footed tread of the fisherman who had no care about disturbing the wood around him. Nor, those whom had helped search for Andy as a frog. These footsteps were deliberately quiet. Someone who gained more from not disturbing the forest than by disturbing it.

His companion’s head came up too. She sent Andy an impression. Alert. Incoming. Unknown.  This message was tinged with curiosity behind the alarm. The fact that the fox was not running had Andy waiting as well.  He stood in the clearing with his head up, horn glowing and nostrils flaring. Thirty body lengths, Twenty five. Twenty. Closing from the East along a route that followed the terrain's natural contours. This was someone who knew this forest.

At fifteen body lengths he saw her.

He saw the human shape between the trees and the first detail his brain isolated was her face. She had freckles. A constellation of them scattered across the bridge of her nose. Dense enough to notice but sparse enough to count. Andy’s treacherous brain counted them (eleven, maybe twelve) and immediately associated the number, the freckles with a different face from another world. 

A knife turned gently in a place he thought he’d closed off. No. This woman was not Megan. The freckles were not her freckles. Consciousness finds patterns in everything, especially in pain. That’s all this was. 

She was tall and moved with grace and athleticism. There was no wasted motion. No footstep was misplaced. She was also armed. A long knife at her belt, a rope across one shoulder. She walked with a stick taller than she was. Practical clothing, protective, light and loose enough to not restrict movement but snug enough to not snag on a stray branch in all earth tones . Her boots looked well-worn and a vest with pockets bulging with tools. A satchel at her hip shown the corner of what might have been a book.

A ranger, or the local equivalent. Someone whose job was the forest. His nose flagged an additional compound: adrenaline. It wasn’t fear so much as anticipation. Someone who had been following a trail and getting closer. 

She was looking for him. 

Alarm bells were ringing in Andys’ head, but he was too busy looking at her freckles. She was headed directly toward him, following his magic signature. Following the golden-green breadcrumb trail of a not-yet-horse that could not, despite repeated and sincere attempts stop glowing. His horn was once again drawing attention to itself. 

Her eyes landed on the horn first. Of course they did. Apparently in this life both men and women alike would gaze straight at his horn before anything else. This would become the defining experience of his existence. 

Her eyebrows went up as she stopped in her tracks. Her lips parted. She took a slow careful step toward Andy that Andy recognized. That beast taming body language that said, “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m interested. Let me see you.”

The fox sent, Move. Get out of there.

And still the ranger approached. Her shoulders were relaxed and her center of gravity was low. A typical approach and retreat eye contact that told a prey animal’s nervous system: I am not a predator. I am safe.

Andy’s equine nervous system processed it as intended: she’s not a threat. His human consciousness processed it differently: she knows how to handle animals. She’s done this before. She’s good at it. Very good.

And then she got close enough that he could see her full face in detail, and his human consciousness, his twenty-four-year-old male human consciousness that had been quiet and focused on XP and gallop efficiency looked at the woman walking toward him and went with the comprehensive and catastrophic totality of a system crashing in real time: Oh no. 

She was beautiful. Not sunset beautiful. Not forest beautiful. Beautiful in a way that specific people beautiful to specific other people. The way a face can rearrange a brain’s priorities in he time it takes to blink. Freckles, dark hair pulled back, a face that was sharp-featured and serious and open all at once. Brown eyes looking directly at him and every rational circuit in his brain just–yielded. His horn pulsed brighter, because of course it did. 

The fox sent, Please. Let’s go.

Andy’s horn sang. “Oh no,” Andy thought. “Oh no no no no no no.”

Ten body lengths and closing. Her eyes were on the horn. Her hands were visible, open, non-threatening. Her voice, when she spoke (in a language she did not understand, in a tone that was the low calm register people use with animals), was a warm alto that his human brain categorized  a “voice I would like to hear say literally anything, forever” and his equine brain categorized as “non-threatening noises from dumb animal.”

“She’s beautiful,” Andy thought, his internal monologue shifting registers. XP and gallop ratings entirely forgotten. “She’s beautiful and she’s looking at my horn with those eyes and I am a small ungulate. Not even a horse. Barely a mammal at all. I have three toes and a stupid glowing horn and she is a person. And I am having feelings that are inappropriate because I am not-yet-a-horse and she is a person and the gap between those is not a gap that feelings should cross  and yet here we are and my horn is getting brighter and louder because my horn does that and she can probably see that and she definitely hears that and that is the worst.”

Five body lengths, still approaching. Still watching with fascination. Professional interest shading into genuine awe. A person who had been studying magical creatures and had just found something they had never seen before. She was shaking with nervous anticipation. 

“This is the second time,” Andy thought as his brain caught fire with the gathering momentum that was neither fight nor flight but when your body and mind are no longer in sync and you know you should run but you can’t. “The second time the universe has put a beautiful woman in front of me while simultaneously making it impossible for me to do anything about it. Dear System, I would like to lodge a complaint. Every time I encounter an attractive woman I can’t have my forehead glowing and singing. Please patch. Sincerely, the not-horse.”

The fox had given up trying to get Andy to leave and was quite entertained by Andy’s emotional state which he was broadcasting quite loudly. You’re losing your mind. Anyone with any telepathy can hear you for a long long distance. This may be the most ridiculous thing I’ve witnessed since I met you.

“Shut up.” Andy sent, but with affection, because the fox had been right. THe woman was now almost within arms reach. He could see her fingers, all ten articulated and dextrous. The sight of human hands was doing the same thing to his consciousness that it had done with the fisherman except exponentially worse. The fisherman’s hands had been attached to a person Andy had no feelings about. These hands were attached to a person Andy was developing feelings about at a rate his cardiovascular system was marking with an elevated heart rate that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with the freckles.

She extended one hand, palm up. A beast-tamer’s opening move. Her voice produced sounds in a language Andy did not know, but the melody was the same one Andy had used with frightened dogs and defensive cats and one particularly hostile parrot: I know you’re scared. Look at my hand. Look at how I’m waiting for you to choose.

He wanted to go to her. The human part wanted to press his nose into her palm and feel a human hand on his face for the first time in his second life. The equine part was broadcasting discomfort, skin twitching with prey-animal alarm. The rational part pointed out that being approached by a beast-tamer while being a beast could end with him in a pen, tagged and collared and studied as a specimen rather than a person.

The rational part won. But only barely, and only because it cheated by invoking the image of a leash. Which just so happened to be draped across her shoulder.

Andy bolted. When his hindquarters engaged and his seventy-eight-percent-efficient gallop kicked in, the result covered the clearing in three seconds and put him into the trees at a speed the beautiful freckled woman with the beast-tamer hands could not match on foot.

He ran through the forest, his horn’s golden-green trail streaming behind him like a coward’s banner. Behind him, growing distant, the woman’s voice called out, the sound of a professional who has just watched a specimen of unprecedented interest sprint away.

His fox kept pace, running beside him with the easy loping stride of a canid for whom sprinting was a default, and her psychic impression communicated a single, sustained, deeply felt emotion: I am going to remember this forever. You froze when you should have run. You dumb dumb boy. 

They ran until Andy’s stamina bar protested. Adrenaline was generous. It did not distinguish between “fleeing a predator” and “fleeing the emotional implications of freckles.” When he finally stopped, sides heaving, horn flickering, he was deep in unfamiliar forest.

Far from the woman. Who was still back there. Probably writing notes. Probably measuring his hoofprints. Probably following his magical trail, because his horn was still glowing, was always glowing, and a ranger with books, professional focus, the determination of someone who had just found a career-defining specimen, was exactly the kind of person who would follow a glowing trail through a forest.

She was going to find him again. The horn guaranteed it. His horn had never met a situation it couldn’t make more visible. “Fantastic,” Andy thought, leaning against a tree and breathing hard and trying very hard not to think about freckles. “Absolutely fantastic. I ran away from a beautiful woman. At this rate, by Tier 7 I’ll be running away from beautiful women as a unicorn, which at least has more narrative dignity than running away as a horse, but not by much.”

The fox sent an impression: the psychic equivalent of crossing one’s arms and saying: you are an absolute disaster and I am so glad I chose you.

“I’m glad you chose me too,” Andy thought back, and her tail wagged once, involuntarily, which Andy chose to interpret as affection, because a disaster of a proto-ungulate with a glowing horn and an inability to stand within ten meters of an attractive woman without short-circuiting was allowed to interpret tail wags generously. His horn sang. 

[XP: 697/3000]

[GALLOP EFFICIENCY: 79%]

[NOTE: ELEVATED HEART RATE DETECTED. CAUSE: NON-EXERTIONAL. BIOLOGICAL STRESS RESPONSE CONSISTENT WITH SOCIAL ANXIETY IN PREY ANIMALS.]

[QUERY: ARE YOU OKAY?]

Now the System was asking if he was okay. After four tiers of deflecting his questions with “query not recognized,” it wanted to know if he was okay. Either genuine concern or a new method of trolling. Andy, standing in unfamiliar forest with his dignity in ruins and the memory of freckles burning in his visual cortex, did not have the emotional bandwidth to determine which.

“I’m fine,” he thought. “I’m a not-yet-horse who ran away from a pretty woman. I’m fine. This is fine. Everything is fine.”

[QUERY NOT RECOGNIZED.]

“There it is.”

His fox curled up at the base of a nearby tree, tucked her nose under her tail, and sent one last impression before settling in for a nap: the emotional equivalent of a slow, luxurious, deeply satisfied smirk.

Andy stood in the forest, his horn glowing, his heart rate normalizing, his equine body cooling down from a sprint that had been motivated by panic rather than predation, and thought about the woman in the clearing.

There was a woman tracking his magical signature. She’d found him. She’d seen his horn. The expression on her face had been wonder. The look of a person seeing Santa Claus. Something she’d heard tales of but had given up hope on a long time ago.  She looked at him like he was significant. Something worth being wondered about.

He was going to see her again. His horn would make sure of that, because “being found by a beautiful ranger in a magic forest” was exactly the kind of complication that the horn, the System, and the general narrative trajectory of Andy Snodgrass’s second life were apparently collaborating to produce.

“I need a plan,” Andy thought. “I need a plan for the next time she finds me. A plan that doesn’t involve running. A plan that involves standing still and being impressive and showing her that I’m not just a weird horse, that I’m a person, that there’s someone in here, that the horn means something and I mean something and I ran as a tactical retreat, not a personality trait.”

The fox sent: it is a personality trait.

“You’re supposed to be asleep.”

The fox sent: I’m multitasking.

Andy snorted and began the long walk back toward his territory.

The woman would come back. He would be ready. Or at least readier. Or at least less likely to sprint into the deep forest at the first sign of freckles. Which was a low bar. But the thing Andy’s brain was trying to get him to consider, but he wasn’t was, What could a woman be doing so far out in the forest with a rope. 

[PARTY MEMBERS: 2]

[HERD BOND: ACQUAINTANCE (VULPINE ADEPT)]

[NEW ORGANISM CATALOGUED: HUMANOID (RANGER-TYPE). THREAT LEVEL: LOW. INTEREST LEVEL: HIGH.]

[XP: 697/3000]

Interest level: high. The System had added a relationship tracker to his status screen. They were going to need to have a conversation about boundaries. 

[THE SYSTEM HAS BOUNDARIES.]

Apparently not. 

[THE PROTO-UNGULATE TRANSMITTED TO HIS ENTIRE PSYCHIC RANGE THAT HE WAS INTERESTED IN FRECKLES. I WAS JUST CATEGORIZING IT.]

I am not having this conversation. 

[THEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING?]

I’m ignoring you.

[NOTED. THIS IS IGNORING.]

System, what even is this?

[IGNORING.]

Andy screamed internally. Birds flew off in all directions and the fox turned and looked at Andy. Why are you screaming? It’s loud.

“The System is getting on my nerves.”

“The System?”

“Yes The System, you know who gives you abilities and evolution tiers.”

“You misunderstand, I know what the System is. But how could it get on your nerves?”

“It’s arguing with me.”

“The System… is arguing with you?”

Andy groaned. “Yesss. And I am tired and embarrassed.”

“That is interesting.”

The rest of the walk home was quiet. The fox dozed on her feet. Green and gold surrounded them. A safety feature that now was starting to draw attention. What if one ranger brought more rangers? Maybe more rangers with less freckles. The freckles that, he noticed, were not leaving his memory. They’d installed themself on his visual cortex with the permanence of a load-bearing wall. No amount of thinking about XP or hunting, or gallop efficiency was going to remove them. The fox sent a smirk, so sarcastic and faint that it barely registered.

One crisis at a time. Forward.