{"sf1_id":521965,"sf2_id":"YnLrQ43e","title":"OtF Ch1 - First Journal","author":"skynero19","words":1435,"posted_at":"2013-04-03T03:30:00.000Z","tags":["Alden","Camp","Canine","Eagle","Fox","Human","Huolo","Journal","Otter","Rekkinard","Soldiers","Theros","War","army"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/521965-otf-ch1-first-journal","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/YnLrQ43e","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/b1/75/b17544d2-6dec-4e0c-b8c3-da5f42bd9c56","description":"#1 of On the Flipside\n\nIf you didn't read the prologue, (https://www.sofurry.com/view/521963,) the person writing this journal is Alden, a human magically transported into a world of anthros. He's just trying to establish a baseline for his new existence. I mean, if you were suddenly transported to another world, the first things you'd talk about are how it's different from the world you're used to, right?\nAside from a few choice scenes, I think this entire story will be written as his journal.\nI think.\n...it could change.","content":"I'm unsure of what I'm expected to write, so I 've decided upon simply making this a journal of sorts.\u0026nbsp; That makes this day five.  \n  \nI could address this to the superiors, but I'll refrain as I feel it would be more appropriate for me to be writing freely.\u0026nbsp; This is the first time for me to ever keep or even start a journal; they want me to write, though, so here I am.  \n  \nIt still shocks me that I'm here, wherever here is.\u0026nbsp; This has got to be a different planet at least, or maybe even an entirely different reality; the facts that I'm breathing and I'm not crushed or stretched by gravity are nothing short of miraculous.\u0026nbsp; And the fact that the days here are (approximately) twenty-four hours long is rather convenient.  \n  \nBut the people here... if I can even call them people.\u0026nbsp; They are certainly civilized, but they're animals.\u0026nbsp; Literally.\u0026nbsp; Fox-men, wolf-men, otter-men, eagle-men, any-critter-you-could-think-of-men.\u0026nbsp; Oh, women too.\u0026nbsp; In fact, many more women than I would expect considering that my current social scenario is best matched to a medieval army within the norms of the Western history with which I'm familiar.\u0026nbsp; Swords, lances, leather armor, and the like - but a fair amount of females as well.\n\n\u0026nbsp;But all animals.\u0026nbsp; Fur and feathers, paws and claws, muzzles and beaks, tails of all sorts, and the occasional bark, yowl, screech, or whatever.\u0026nbsp; Still, they stand upright, have paws more like hands, and aside from looks function exactly like humans, from having language to societal interactions to strategizing and all that jazz.\u0026nbsp; As far as I can tell.  \n  \nI can't tell much, though.\u0026nbsp; Their language completely escapes me, it doesn't even remotely sound like anything I've heard before.\u0026nbsp; If I wasn't so disoriented, I would find it really impressive that they even have a language all of them can speak on understand, especially when some of the soldiers and officers here have beaks instead of muzzles.\u0026nbsp; And they talk so fast, too, and that's when they talk to me at all.\u0026nbsp; No point in really trying to engage in conversation with someone with no allegiance to your side of the conflict, and they don't even know how much better suited I am for a desk job.\u0026nbsp; This is going to be near impossible for me, as languages really aren't my thing.\u0026nbsp; My parents tried to get me learning Spanish in elementary school, and I tried again myself in high school, to no avail.\u0026nbsp; My mind just doesn't work that way.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp;At least I can communicate with these animals (it feels somewhat inappropriate to refer to them that way, but I cannot think of a more \"humane\" word that still applies to all the various species here presently) through gestures and such.\u0026nbsp; That's how I've gotten food, better clothes, et cetera.  \n  \nThe food here seems to be limited to meat, fruits, and vegetables - but I haven't gotten any meat, and the plants aren't any I recognize.\u0026nbsp; I mean, I recognize things that I would call tubers, beans, leafy greens, some Brassica, shoots, bulbs, berries, some Citrus, and others - but they're obviously not the kinds of plants we have on Earth.\u0026nbsp; (The more I think about it, the more I feel comfortable rejecting this place as Earth.)\u0026nbsp; The most potato-like tuber is naturally salty, brown, and somewhat mushier than the Russet potato; something that looks like an orange but tastes and feels like a pineapple; some insanely-strong onion-like shoots; and a blue lemon.\u0026nbsp; I never really knew my beans very well, so I can't make a comparison there, but at least I'm getting my protein now (assuming there isn't any in some of the other plants).\u0026nbsp; I wish I could get meat, and there's quite a large amount consumed each day here at camp, but a fair amount of the species here are pure or almost-pure carnivores, so I guess meat is rationed.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp;That was one thing I really didn't like upon first getting here - the \"investigation\" as I called it.\u0026nbsp; They made me take off the tunic I had been given and essentially did a veterinary examination of me, down to moving my limbs to check me joints I guess, and opening my mouth to stick their fingers in and examine my teeth.\u0026nbsp; They even collared me.\u0026nbsp; Well, not collared, tagged.\u0026nbsp; Well, maybe not tagged either - I don't quite know what to call it, but they clasped a metal anklet on me, and it has some crystal embedded in it.\u0026nbsp; They made a point of heating a similar crystal they had, causing a beam of light to connect the two, as well as several others beams that went out of the tent.\u0026nbsp; So, magic, apparently.\u0026nbsp; I'd think more on that if I had gotten over my sudden and inexplicable appearance in a world of animal-people.\u0026nbsp; Anyway, apparently I'm not getting away from these guys.  \n  \nAt least they gave me some clothes of my own at that point.\u0026nbsp; The material isn't all that comfortable, but the fit certainly is nice.\u0026nbsp; The only problem was that I always felt a draft - the pants here are designed for creatures with tails, after all.\u0026nbsp; I tried wearing the pants backwards, so the three-button fly was better covering my ass, but that was just uncomfortable and I went back to have the split for the tail in back.\u0026nbsp; I think someone noticed that I was always trying to tug the back of my tunic down, as some bitch (again, literal, a female canine.\u0026nbsp; She was actually very nice) came to me the other day with a pair of pants with just the one-button fabric split meant for the tail instead of both splits.\u0026nbsp; I use the appreciation of the more comfortable pants to blot out the fact that I'm wearing girl pants backwards.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp;Not much else to say that I can think of at the moment, I guess.\u0026nbsp; The first two days I was here was just the army marching to where we are now, come field with other branches of the army where we've set up camp - which was hard for me, because I'm still trying to get over a \"jet lag\" effect, and it's hard to march when you're barely awake.\u0026nbsp; Anyway, we've been here at camp for the past few days, and I have NO IDEA what's going on.\u0026nbsp; (And I just noticed I'm already using \"we\".)\u0026nbsp; It happens when you can't talk with anyone around you.\u0026nbsp; So I've been rather bored, even if the higher-ups have been paying more attention to me since we stopped moving.  \n  \nInterestingly, I think their interest in me and the lack of communication has let me overhear/oversee things that I think are potentially sensitive.\u0026nbsp; Not that I can understand any of it, but whatever.\u0026nbsp; At least, they seem more guarded when surrounded by regular soldiers than when they're standing around observing or trying to communicate with me.\u0026nbsp; And they write/dictate notes to send around or out from camp around me, which I haven't seen otherwise.\u0026nbsp; Heck, they've even had me deliver notes around camp, just to give me something to do I guess.\u0026nbsp; At least names were some of the first things I learned, and I think I know \"thank you\" now.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp;Anyway, just this morning I guess someone got the idea to try to get me to write.\u0026nbsp; The called me over mid-morning and a fennec handed me a sheet of parchment - I started folding it up, assuming it was another delivery, when the fox stopped me and made sure I saw what was written there.\u0026nbsp; Or, rather, drawn there.\u0026nbsp; It was a crude comic of sorts.\u0026nbsp; First was an image of a canine giving paper, a quill, and ink to a human, followed by a picture of the human sitting down somewhere and writing.\u0026nbsp; Next was the human handing the parchment back, except with a series of shapes on it.\u0026nbsp; The fennec copied the shapes onto another sheet, then gave the original back to the human while taking his copy to a group of other animal-people.\u0026nbsp; They appeared to talk a lot over the copy, and after that image there was a chart of sorts \"matching\" shapes to characters I recognized from their writing system.  \n  \nSo I guess they want me to do this writing in an attempt to translate English.\u0026nbsp; Why, I'm not sure.\u0026nbsp; Maybe they think my appearance means a huge flood of English-speakers is going to randomly appear?\u0026nbsp; Anyway, that's why I'm writing this journal.\u0026nbsp; And I can't think of much else to say at the moment.\u0026nbsp; Day Five.  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"On the Flipside","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/521968-otf-ch2-second-journal.json"}}