Kinverse: Volume One

PATH OF THE EMERALD MAIDEN

A naive young monster’s tale by Moros, aka KinverseWriter

Legal Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise herein mentioned. No copyright infringement is intended. All characters and events in this story are entirely fictional. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental. This work of fiction contains disturbing content.

Reader discretion is advised.

Description:

A young woman from a pre-neolithic society is accidentally whisked away to another world entirely during a raid on a research lab run by alien invaders. Stranded with no friends, badly injured, and no idea where home even is, she’s forced to live off the land and learn how to survive in this strange and hostile world.

There’s only one slight problem, though.

She’s not trapped in this world with them. They’re trapped in this world with her.

Categories:

Adventure, Coming-of-Age, Isekai, Erotica.

Disclaimers:

This story contains sexual elements and disturbing themes. The contents aren’t purely intended to be pornographic, but some scenes objectively are. This is about a giant monster that eats people, so reader discretion is advised. This story contains vorarephilic themes.

This story will have a very slow and intermittent pace to begin with. True stakes don’t really show up until halfway through, though the build-up is always there in the background. This is ultimately not a story of grand adventure and defeating one’s enemies to rise to the top, it is the tale of a lost and naive young woman growing as a person and learning new things. It is a personal one concerning her, and thus this story will be told in present-tense first-person.

Chapter 46: Buffet

---

From the last time I was here, both little and much are different. This part of the human town is like how the tall intruders’ place was: the ground is coated in grey and black rock, the latter with lots of white and yellow coloring applied. Tended trees and dead flowers can be found around to bring color and please the eye, but it’s clearly too cold for them. Unlike the tall-thin ones which dominate this place, these trees have all lost their leaves and seemingly died as a result. They wouldn’t have grown as large as they are if this wasn’t a recurring thing so they must be fine anyway I guess. The flowers I know do not live long anyway regardless of climate and I have no doubt they will be replanted once the weather warms.

The land of the humans seems to undergo these seasons every year. I arrived in the warm late ‘summer,’ journeyed with my Carey through the arrival of the chilly ‘autumn,’ and soon an even colder season will arrive: ‘winter.’ Things will allegedly warm up again with ‘spring’ and all of these dead and dormant plants will surge back to life along with the creatures of the jungles, a buffet for the similarly resurgent predators... like me.

But unlike the wolves, bears, and cougars, I don’t need to get fat and laze around all day in the cold on built-up food to survive it. I have my nice and warm human house to do that in and my pets to bring me tribute, and if I still need or want to there’s whatever else I can take from the humans. Those bears I fought--’Shaggy’ and ‘Laggy’--must have been that fat in preparation for the winter season.

As for preparations, the humans’ own are... odd. Colorful bits of cloth, strange ornamentations, and strings of lights have been put up in some places. Only a few houses I’ve seen have them, but almost all of the stores do. I can only assume that they are a replacement for the trees and flowers, but they’ve been dead for weeks and it’s all only going up now.

Humans and their human things are weird, but I’m the intruder here, not them; they have their ways and I have mine.

The streets are kept visible tonight by artificial trees tipped in lights. Some are literally made from trees while others are metal, the wood ones having black vines and all sorts of other human machinery on them. I see little reason for the lights to exist given nobody is out and about at this time, but regardless they impede my ability to sneak around which might be the point in the first place.

I’ve had to quickly duck into hiding when I’ve heard the approach of a vehicle. Most of the time it’s been the same one: a squat black and white car with a blue and red thing atop it spinning similarly colored blue and red lights. It’s been patrolling around the town and I can safely guess why: I was indiscrete when I was last here and left evidence.

According to Carey, they’ve found a few of my previous kills before, out in the forest. They’ll have no doubt also found the remains of my two most recent victims as well given their being within the town. It doesn’t matter if they know what I am, they will have cause for worry, so this only makes sense. If anything I’m lucky the entire town didn’t converge like a kicked nest to root me out.

The car completes its loop for a third time around town as I watch it between me and what will be my target for the night. I duck back before the spinning lights can illuminate me and wait for it to leave. With its repetition done I should have my opening for now.

The lights disappear and I bolt across the street to the opposite alleyway. The only sounds are the wind and my claws and plates clacking on the hard ground, but there’s nobody around to hear anyway; there aren’t any homes here so the risk is worth it.

My target is a store fronted with large windows and two doors put together for a larger opening. On the other side of the glass is a display of some vegetables and all the fruits I could eat. I ball up my hand and wind it up before smashing it through the window, the entire pane cracking and falling to pieces in one blow. I shove my way in through a stand of boring glass-strewn potatoes which go spilling across the floor, but who cares? They taste so bland! My Carey and Sam eat them anyway, but that’s humans for you.

Potatoes and glass smush and crackle under me as I go for the much more appetizing fruit displays. Without ado I shove my face in and start feasting!

The apples are good as per usual, the bananas nice as well, oranges provide a bite, and the new yellow fruit that looks like a smushed orange... I spit back out, gagging. Some displays have plastic packages of berries coming in many different colors, each of which I waste no time in popping open and dumping in my mouth. The various tastes all clash but it doesn’t matter to me, they all taste so good. From a big brown box I grab a huge and hard orange fruit and take a giant bite from it, earning a mouth full of seeds along with a particularly interesting flavor.

I crunch and I munch as much I will, which is quite a bit but still doesn’t come close to cleaning out the entire stock. I make sure to leave some room for other goodies I find in here; I can always return to the fruits later.

I begin to wander the aisles of various colored boxes, cans, and packages. I give each a look-over and toss it away if it doesn’t intrigue me. Some have images of fruit and other things--even a few strange animals both real and oddly proportioned--but I give up on them after opening one with berries and finding only strange crunchy things that tasted vaguely of berries. Of note are also odd clear plastic containers of a yellow substance but they don’t have fruits on them so I’m not interested.

Near the back of the store are giant windowed refrigerators and freezers. Some have cartons of milk, others have bins of weird white, brown, and even red foods. I crack a brown one open and give the mass within a lick before quickly tossing it over my shoulder in disgust. The red one has berries on it but I’ve already learned my lesson from that.

One carton has apples on it so I slash it open and pour the contents down my throat. Sweet liquid tasting of apples pours out, marking it as apple juice. I take a few out to bring home after.

Next comes the meats... which are unfortunately all cold at best, frozen at worst. They’re all kept wrapped up in packages and disgusting plastic, but it all tears easily. I can’t read any of the words that cover their wrappings, but they’re not what matters. Red meats, white meats, and strips of uncooked bacon all go down my gullet indiscriminately. Unfortunately it all seems to be simple chunks of meat rather than anything more specialized... I was really hoping to find least a few hearts, perhaps even some muscles and tendons to keep me strong.

There aren’t even any testicles for fertility! Even I don’t need those, they’re still good to have in order to make many strong babies. Mother says the reason I’m so smart is because there was a very successful raid on a jungle trog community when my egg was being formed, and she got all of the relatively smarter beasts’ balls in exchange for future favors to the other hunters with her... though some simply gave up their claims to the parts as tribute.

But then, I see it.

It’s frozen, but that can be changed. I tear away at the packaging with glee and my guess is confirmed:

AN ENTIRE LARGE BIRD, PLUCKED OF FEATHERS. And also lacking a head for some reason.

There are a few of them in its freezer but I can only take the one. I set it aside for now and continue on to the next section. The rest of the fridges and freezers contain bottles of plastic and glass, but none look particularly appetizing.

Past these and back into the aisles are yet more bottles, all of them glass. Some have clear liquids, others have darker ones. Some have few words, others have many. Some have intricate images, and others are empty. Only one catches my eye: a shelf of bottles filled with purple liquid decorated with images of small berries.

I grab and inspect it. More fruit juice? Yum. Unlike the plastic water bottles, its lid is some sort of weird brown thing wedged into the opening. I delicately grip it in my incisors and tug it free! A bit of juice gets spilled but that’s fine. I pour it out onto my tongue and savor the taste. It’s... different, from the apple juice. I can’t quite say what exactly it is, but there’s something to the taste. Oh well--I guzzle it and another bottle anyway.

I take the entire stock, setting them with the headless bird. A shame that I won’t be able to get that cooked else Sam ask too many questions, but I can at least thaw it out. Mindful of my time limit I grab the apple juice, bird, and bottles, and make my escape... but not before stopping by the fruits again and filling myself up. Next the bird goes down but only to my crop along with the cartons and finally the bottles. Swallowing the glass is a risk but so long as I’m gentle in bringing it back up I should be fine. The coldness stings and unnerves me but I’ll have to bear it for now.

The patrolling car is nowhere in sight as I leave the way I came in and run through the streets, my belly sloshing and crop clinking.

---

Last night I felt quite good after my successful--if unorthodox--’hunt.’ I had a pep in my step on the way home that was more than just satisfaction and a belly full of fruits. Perhaps something I’d eaten was empowering after all, but unfortunately there’s no way to know what it had been.

I hid the bird in the sink of the ‘kitchenette,’ which I normally use to get myself water. For good measure I draped a towel over the sink to hide it better. The apple juice went in my fridge alongside my Sam’s odd bubbly drinks. Since they weren’t kept cool, I stashed the bottles in the back of a cabinet.

After a very nice snooze I’ve otherwise spent all morning curled up in bed and thinking with my ‘comforter’--which is the human word for a larger blanket--keeping me nice and warm. To add to the effect I’ve got a few of my pillows clasped within my curl, retaining heat nicely.

Life is good.

I won’t be able to stay like this all day what with my other remaining plans and needs, so I reluctantly uncurl, set my pillows aside, and then untangle myself from the sheets. The blanket would be large enough to keep multiple humans covered side by side or for one to get lost in but for me it’s simply enough to conceal me from the cold creeping in from outside. The fire may have spooked me, but I can definitely see its merit.

I find my Carey in the middle of her room sweating as she does her usual ‘exercise’ movements such as pushing the floor away in vain, half-sitting weird, lying back and almost getting up, and lifting small metal sticks with metal rocks on each end.

“Need talk,” I inform her. “Questions.”

She stops what she’s doing and gives me a glance. “Sure. I’ve got time, what do you need?”

The relatively diminutive woman moves to take a seat on her bed to rest but I beat her to it, slithering across it ahead of her. I may have had to get up but I shouldn’t have to give up comfort. She sighs and does what she can to find space and lean back against me.

“Maybe you’re the one that needs to be exercising. You’ve gotten absurdly lazy these days.”

“Hrmm,” I grumble. “Tired. Long-weak much-sleep, not-eat much food.”

Her look is pensive and... thoughtful, I think? She’s processing my words.

“...You had a long week of sleeping? Or you didn’t get much sleep? Uh, and I suppose you have been eating less...” she eventually tries.

I shake my head and give her hair a rub to her dismay. “Yes, long-weak ‘of sleeping,’” I snort. “Kin do. Sit. Sleep. Little eat. Easy live, others do hard. Big but not-strong.”

Her blue eyes light up in recognition. “Wait, do you mean long-weak? And, you’re talking about some sort of thing you can do. Like, hibernation? It would explain you getting fatter.”

Silly humans and their words. They confuse even her. “Maybe. Not know words. And Carey not ask questions, I ask questions.”

She palms the top of her face and splays her hand away. Weird human expressions, as per usual. “Oh, right! You needed to ask me some stuff. Go ahead.”

“If not-long-weak, if food get- blehk,” I stop myself to think and plan. “If- I- get- food- from- the- forest, you get money? Need buy other food.”

She lets out a long sigh and idly rubs my side. “No, Emeral. I can’t sell meat you bring in. We have rules and we’re technically already breaking them by feeding you the way we are, but you aren’t a human. Selling meat to others to buy you more fruit would be noticed and get us all in a lot of trouble, and people would find out about you.”

She makes a good point, but she’s wrong about my intentions. “Not fruit,” I shake my head. “Things. Hearts, others, of strong animals. Keep me strong, not get sick... again.”

Her rubbing stops. “...Sorry, what?” she asks.

“Hearts. Keep in fridge, or Sam cook, and I eat. Healthy, no sick, strong.”

She splutters and scoffs before finally crafting a response. “That’s... well, first of all it’s possible for me to find a cow heart or two, but they’re expensive and not worth it when you could just eat an elk one if you really wanted, though you’d also really need to sweet-talk Sam into handling that and learning how to prepare it. Second of all, I need you to be a bit clearer; what exactly brought on this craving?”

Aw. I don’t like it when my humans have to be convinced instead of just doing what I want like good pets.

“Could eat elk hearts, but do. But not cooked. Very good food, not very good taste, very chewy. I telled you, I want hearts and other parts to keep me strong and healthy.”

“Emeral, it’s good that you’re actually caring about your health, but you already seem pretty healthy and that would be a very expensive way to go about it.” She smiles eagerly. “I can talk to you later about proper nutrition if you want.”

I give her another tousle. “No. Wrong. Eat, get strong. Healthier. Already eat what I need, need to eat better,” I emphasize. “Heart make healthy. Muscle make strong. Brain make smart. Boy parts make better mother.”

She chuckles and gives my side a playful slap. “Jesus, I knew people used to use every part of the animal when hunting, but you’ve taken it to an entirely new level. And some women think that a body count in bed makes them better lovers, but it certainly doesn’t make them better mothers,” she snorts.

I give her a glare. Does she think I’m making a joke? Why did she laugh? This is serious.

“...Not that that’s the problem here,” she continues. “And eating a cow’s brain would certainly not make you any smarter, Em. If anything, it’d dumb down the clever girl you are, so maybe it isn’t such a bad idea. Heh.”

“What funny?” I demand.

Her face scrunches in confusion. “Wait, you’re not joking? Do you... actually believe that whole ‘heart of your enemies’ bit?”

I give her a slow nod.

“...That’s... not a thing, Em. It feels like every time we talk I have to shift back how undeveloped I thought your home is. No offense.”

“No fences,” I agree. “No house. Just forest. My ‘home’ warmer than your not-house, outside-of-home.”

She sits gaped in shock for a moment. “You live in tents and caves?!” she exclaims. “Fuck, no wonder. A lot of things make sense now.”

“What a tent? And no, not caves. Too small in jungle, but Mother used to live in big caves when my age.”

“Ohhhh-kay... so, I think you might have seen a human tent before you met me, but they’re portable shelters made out of cloth or animal skins. You do have those back home, right?” she almost desperately asks.

But no, we don’t. “No. Did not need. Dug holes, that it.”

She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Okay then. Yep, that’s fine. Moving on. Emeral, eating the hearts of your enemies does not give you power, real or magical. You wouldn’t have the human cultural knowledge about it being a historical myth, but I really shouldn’t be surprised that your people would think it’s real. I have no idea how the hell you got here if you don’t even have tents to live in, but that’s a headache I’m not going to get into right now.”

“So...” I begin. “You say eating hearts not good?”

Once more, a sigh. “That’s not what I said. It’s still good for you because it’s healthy food, but it just... doesn’t make you stronger the way you think it does.”

To think that humans, despite all of their knowledge and all of their things, would remain ignorant of this is just... well, it’s baffling.

“Brains too?” I ask. This one would make sense for them to not know since they’re the smartest creatures they know of, and from what I’ve seen they don’t eat each other. According to the television they instead bury their dead, which is odd--we get the meat off the bones first.

She simply puts her head in her hands. “No, Emeral. Eating brains does NOT make you smarter. Zombies aren’t real either, if that’s why you were wanting to know.”

I shake my head in response. Dead and rotting people able to still move around? Of course they’re not real. They’re still alive when the fungus gets to the brain and they instinctually shamble towards you to try and get help. Now that is a situation where ‘too much fire’ would actually be a good thing.

“Now, some people do eat cow brains as a delicacy, but that’s just for the taste and probably the novelty. Uh, that word means ‘interesting’ with the implication you don’t do it much for other reasons. Delicacies are things that people eat as novelties, but are also probably difficult or expensive to get.”

I nod along with her explanation. I love learning new things. I suppose tall intruder captives would be our delicacies.

“...Actually, that reminds me of something. Across the ocean there’s this group of people who used to eat the brains of their dead family members, but, uh... that didn’t go so well.”

My interest is piqued. Do the humans know something? Is eating a human’s brain actually dangerous?!

“They got really sick so they started to die and had to stop. Oh, and speaking of weird stuff people do over in Asia, some people do actually eat animal penises because they think it makes them more fertile. And no, it doesn’t. It just led to over-hunting by asshole poachers.”

“Back,” I order her. “Eating human brains bad? Why?”

She gives me her usual Carey look. “Well aside from the obvious, there’s prion diseases. It’s more likely the older someone is, but a misfolded protein--called a prion--can get to your own brain if you ingest it and it’ll start doing all sorts of awful things to you.” She stops to consider. “Well, not you you. You’re not a human.”

Ah. Good. That also answers why they wouldn’t eat each others’ brains to become smarter. It would actually make them dumber if their own brains stopped working. If it’s fine for humans to eat cow brains, surely it’s fine for Kin to eat human brains. Nobody ever got sick back home no matter how many aliens they gobbled up, anyway.

But if there is actually something unhealthy about it... well, all the more reason to secure a supply of hearts if I can.

“Thank you Carey.” I begin working my way off the bed, displacing her as she scrambles to get out of my path.

“Hey, careful! Also, I’m serious about the exercise and diet advice; we already buy you healthy food but it would still be good to understand it for yourself, and if you’re burning more calories every day then maybe you won’t grow as much?”

I snort and whap her side with the length of my tail as I leave. Learning is all well and good, but that can come later. I’ve got things to consider and think about. I also need to figure out what a ‘calorie’ is and why she seems to care so much about her weird exercise thing. If she really does have some method to slow my growth, then that sort of knowledge could change everything for my people.

---

A/N:

Gold River is quite small. So small, that I'm fairly sure it has a single-digit number of stores. Much of the setting is inspired by real locations but aren't actually those real locations, by and large. I don't even actually know if our Gold River even has a grocer! I've never been, just driven past the turnoff to it and Strathcona Park.

I was actually originally planning to set the story somewhere in inland British Columbia rather than the edge of nothing on Vancouver Island. But, none of the provincial parks suited my needs: a lake, a nearby town, mountainous ridges, and general isolation enough for plausibility that a giant alien roaming around isn't instantly spotted.

Thus, the Gold River of Emeral's universe was born: a bit bigger than reality, but ultimately still a tiny town in the ass-end of nowhere.

The real place also lacks aliens, so there's that too.

Oh, and as for a throwaway line in there: back on her homeworld there exists a fungus which resembles the idea of a zombifying fungus, like cordyceps on steroids but not entirely. The infection eventually spreads to and starts devouring the brain, which instinctually leads the infected animal to seek out more of its own kind. Mushrooms growing on them then release spores when disturbed and the infection spreads. This isn’t relevant to this book at all, it’s just a bit of worldbuilding.