# OtF Ch1 - First Journal

Author: skynero19
Tags: Alden, Camp, Canine, Eagle, Fox, Human, Huolo, Journal, Otter, Rekkinard, Soldiers, Theros, War, army

#1 of On the Flipside

If 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?
Aside from a few choice scenes, I think this entire story will be written as his journal.
I think.
...it could change.

I'm unsure of what I'm expected to write, so I 've decided upon simply making this a journal of sorts.  That makes this day five.  
  
I could address this to the superiors, but I'll refrain as I feel it would be more appropriate for me to be writing freely.  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.  
  
It still shocks me that I'm here, wherever here is.  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.  And the fact that the days here are (approximately) twenty-four hours long is rather convenient.  
  
But the people here... if I can even call them people.  They are certainly civilized, but they're animals.  Literally.  Fox-men, wolf-men, otter-men, eagle-men, any-critter-you-could-think-of-men.  Oh, women too.  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.  Swords, lances, leather armor, and the like - but a fair amount of females as well.

 But all animals.  Fur and feathers, paws and claws, muzzles and beaks, tails of all sorts, and the occasional bark, yowl, screech, or whatever.  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.  As far as I can tell.  
  
I can't tell much, though.  Their language completely escapes me, it doesn't even remotely sound like anything I've heard before.  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.  And they talk so fast, too, and that's when they talk to me at all.  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.  This is going to be near impossible for me, as languages really aren't my thing.  My parents tried to get me learning Spanish in elementary school, and I tried again myself in high school, to no avail.  My mind just doesn't work that way.  
  

 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.  That's how I've gotten food, better clothes, et cetera.  
  
The 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.  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.  (The more I think about it, the more I feel comfortable rejecting this place as Earth.)  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.  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).  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.  
  

 That was one thing I really didn't like upon first getting here - the "investigation" as I called it.  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.  They even collared me.  Well, not collared, tagged.  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.  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.  So, magic, apparently.  I'd think more on that if I had gotten over my sudden and inexplicable appearance in a world of animal-people.  Anyway, apparently I'm not getting away from these guys.  
  
At least they gave me some clothes of my own at that point.  The material isn't all that comfortable, but the fit certainly is nice.  The only problem was that I always felt a draft - the pants here are designed for creatures with tails, after all.  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.  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.  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.  I use the appreciation of the more comfortable pants to blot out the fact that I'm wearing girl pants backwards.  
  

 Not much else to say that I can think of at the moment, I guess.  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.  Anyway, we've been here at camp for the past few days, and I have NO IDEA what's going on.  (And I just noticed I'm already using "we".)  It happens when you can't talk with anyone around you.  So I've been rather bored, even if the higher-ups have been paying more attention to me since we stopped moving.  
  
Interestingly, I think their interest in me and the lack of communication has let me overhear/oversee things that I think are potentially sensitive.  Not that I can understand any of it, but whatever.  At least, they seem more guarded when surrounded by regular soldiers than when they're standing around observing or trying to communicate with me.  And they write/dictate notes to send around or out from camp around me, which I haven't seen otherwise.  Heck, they've even had me deliver notes around camp, just to give me something to do I guess.  At least names were some of the first things I learned, and I think I know "thank you" now.  
  

 Anyway, just this morning I guess someone got the idea to try to get me to write.  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.  Or, rather, drawn there.  It was a crude comic of sorts.  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.  Next was the human handing the parchment back, except with a series of shapes on it.  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.  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.  
  
So I guess they want me to do this writing in an attempt to translate English.  Why, I'm not sure.  Maybe they think my appearance means a huge flood of English-speakers is going to randomly appear?  Anyway, that's why I'm writing this journal.  And I can't think of much else to say at the moment.  Day Five.

Source: https://sofurry.com/s/YnLrQ43e
Part of the series On the Flipside
Next: https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/521968-otf-ch2-second-journal.md