Somewhere, within the bounds of some forest, there was an open area devoid of trees. Instead, grass and other stubby plants took their place, a peculiar occurrence given that this was a forest and not, in fact, a grassest, shrubest, or some combination of the two.

"Plains... They're called plains."

There, sitting among the shortest of the grasses, where trees could only dream of, was the origin of the remark: a young man. He sat facing the trunk of the nearest tree, deep in thought. The train of which was undoubtedly similar to this one. At the base of the nearest tree was the target of his gaze: a cluster of incredibly iridescent flowers. They had caught his attention before he had ended up entering this forest. Upon re-realizing that he had not always been here, his train of thought hit a railway switch.

"What the fuck just happened?"

He stood up, speaking louder than before.

"You can't just end up somewhere else. That isn't possible. Why?"

The young man was of course referring to the large, windy, seamless hole that he had turned around just in time to see close. It left him far more than out of reach from the far more familiar forest he had come from. He drummed the backpack sitting between his legs nervously.

"I've lost it," he said quietly to himself, "I always thought it'd be a slower burn. Or maybe it was so slow I’ve only just now realized…?"

After a brief pause, the forest manic continued:

"No… No, I'm too aware. I'm completely aware of my condition. That's too sane for insane. I'm dreaming."

The dreamer sat back down.

"I fell asleep, somehow. Did I get knocked unconscious? I need to wake up."

He stood up, but quickly sat down again. His seated-ness very clearly indicated where he was along the emotional roller-coaster.

"This is too real to be lucid. That actually just happened. So much for my fuckin' hike."

For a while, the hiker organized his thoughts sitting amongst the grass. The sounds around him were indicative of any forest, but sounded as foreign as they did familiar. Suddenly he patted himself down.

"Keys, no phone… Wouldn’t help."

He swung his backpack around, opened it up, and began pulling things out. One by one, he laid his inventory on the ground: A scuffed looking flashlight, a plastic comb, an old baseball cap, a mechanical pencil with refills, a pocket notebook, and a flat box. Flinging the lid open, he found within the box a folded solar array. It had cost a pretty penny back then, but had just managed to pay for itself and then some. Alongside the paid-for item, sat a multitool with all the typical bells and whistles. Shoving it in his pocket, he reached back into the bag having missed something very important. The hiker fished up the last two items: a magazine and matching handgun.

"Nothin' like havin' a choice…" he frowned.

It was a certified chud gun, a Colt M1911, or M1911A1 to be exact. He didn't care much for what others thought about it, as far as he was concerned, it was pretty alright. Something doesn't stay in service for seventy years for no reason, but if it did, it'd be bureaucracy's fault. The magazine wasn't anything special, other than the fact that it was fully loaded. The ammunition was seven equally unspecial rounds of .45 ACP.

With his full inventory now in front of him, he sighed. A gentle breeze blew through the foliage around him creating the oh-so familiar white noise of leaves rustling. He yawned. It was early after all, probably anyway. The sun wasn't visible through the canopy, but what was visible were all the strange ways green took shape. Staying exactly where he was, the hiker opened his comically small notebook to a blank page and began scribbling something down:

"If I'm really not losing it, this shit's wild."

Frowning, he slapped the notebook closed.

"I wonder if they'll even believe me..."

It almost immediately occurred to him that wherever he was, it certainly wasn't Kansas, or anywhere near it for that matter. The portal that brought him here was going to have to take him back. Whether or not it would show up in any timely manner, he didn't know. Did he win the proverbial lottery, or does it only operate during business hours? Considering portals were fantasy until a few minutes ago, and common usually means non-fiction, the hiker opted with the former. Whatever the answer, he was somewhere else for the moment.

There is a hierarchy of needs—not Maslow’s, the other—that must be met for any human, the foundation of which includes food, water, and shelter. Cataloging his surroundings was neither food, water, or shelter, and thus, needed to wait. Biding his time while waiting for a certain portal themed miracle, the hiker began to pile up anything useful he could find: sticks, rocks, and vines pulled down from nearby trees. After the greater part of an hour, he stood over the fruits of his labor and thought of what exactly to do with it, not having planned quite that far ahead.

“Gotta mark his place…” he mumbled.

With the help of rock, in an attempt to spare his multitool, he stripped the darker bark off of as many branches he felt was necessary–that was all of them, of course–exposing their lighter colored insides. Using the collected vine, he lashed bundles of the sticks to the trunks of trees around the circumference of the clearing, their white insides clearly contrasting against the brown of any tree.

While returning to his pile of valuable forest objects, something caught the attention of the hiker. There, about where the portal had been, the foliage seemed… off. It hadn't been obvious before, but one side of a nearby bush has a very flat side. Nature has never appreciated that sort of geometry, so it stood out. Upon closer examination, it appeared as if it had been trimmed, and so did all the other plants that had leaned over that same plane.

"Was it sharp?"

He found his answer in the form of two stones--formally one--lying beneath the grass, split perfectly in half. Immediately, the hiker pocketed the stones and began examining the foliage around him. He worked outwards in a spiral only finishing after covering an area easily over one hundred feet in diameter.

"Nothing…"

Unless the portal appeared in the same exact place every time, which intuition told him it didn't, then it probably doesn't appear in any one area consistently. Just to be sure, he laid a few sticks across the area where the portal was as some sort of sacrificial indicator.

Things weren't looking well for his chances at making it home any time soon. At the very least, he knew what to look for moving forward.

"Shelter's lookin' like a pretty good investment right about now."

The hiker sat down beside his piles of newfound belongings and sighed. The question came down to whether shelter where he sat, or near water was better. Reality had different plans, however, and a distinct noise hit his ears. A noise whose volume lended itself to a larger creature, and whose other auditory qualities instantly made the prospect of finding another upright biped a non-zero chance. Like the question that any young camper must face--was that Dad snoring or a bear?--the hiker now faced a similar dilemma. Throwing almost all caution to the wind, he shoved his now loaded handgun into his waistband and prepared to follow the noise. The sticks he had worked so hard to strip came too, of course, leaving one protruding out of the ground every couple hundred feet, the sparse foliage keeping them visible.

A new sound, louder and still alarmingly human, updated the bearing of his movement. It wasn’t long before that uniquely human hypersensitivity to motion made itself known. A silhouette rushed through the trees to the left, hundreds of feet out, it was unmistakably human in appearance. Their clothing, which flapped behind them, made it especially obvious. The hiker was simultaneously relieved and worried, another person meant many possibilities, good or bad. It also raised many questions like, why were they running?

Looking over his shoulder a bit more often, he made off after the runner, all while leaving behind trail markers.

The hiker was, of course, a hiker and not a runner, so he struggled to keep up while still being stealthy.

Too out of shape… he thought.

Fortunately for his lungs, the runner slowed their pace. Based on their change in stature our resident stalker figured that it was not a question of who was chasing them--that was just him now--but what they were chasing, if anything. He closed the distance keeping trees between them while taking care not to step on anything loud. For the first in a long time, his light-footedness proved itself useful. Usually all it did was scare the pants off of his father.

Now closer than ever before, he finally got a good look at the runner. Some sort of cloak covered their body making identifying anything besides the superficial difficult. They were, however, rather tall, taller than him. It wasn't as if he was astoundingly tall to begin with, though. Unsure what to do, the hiker bided his time with observation. Now having stopped, from under their cloak, they pulled something out: a cylinder. It quickly became a piece of paper after being rolled out. At this point, for whatever reason, the runner decided to flip their hood back. The shoulder length blond hair and subsequent brief side profile of the face made the formally genderless runner into a woman, probably. The hiker, unsure of how long he could keep himself hidden, decided that it was time to break the ice. He stepped out from behind his hidey-tree, the woman's head perked up.

"So, uhh–

Before he could even finish his half-assed introduction, she whipped around screaming. The paper she held became very bright, and while recoiling from the explosion of stimuli, something hit him in the neck. The hiker blacked out almost instantly.