Chapter 2: Dreams, Desires, and Digestive Disasters
I had another dream.
It was one of those dreams: strange, hazy, and half-remembered reenactments of a life long gone. These dreams had been happening more often lately, and they always left me feeling... off.
This time, it was about Earth.
And not just Earth… but that day.
You know, the day I lost my virginity.
Not that I could remember every detail. Most faces from my past life had become blurred, like the universe had used a heavy Gaussian blur filter over my memories. The people I once cared about were reduced to outlines and voices muffled by time. But I remembered how I felt. Nervous. Clumsy. Curious. Awkward. Every bit of that, ranging from one synonym to another.
There was a girl.
I couldn't remember her name. Her face was a mosaic of soft features my brain refused to fully render. But I knew she had a kind smile. Her laugh came easily. She was genuine. Gentle. The kind of person you remember with warmth even when the details fade.
We were in our senior year, and I had made more than a few questionable life choices by that point. Bad friends. Worse decisions. But she… she was the exception.
The memory played out like a dream sequence. Sunlight filtered through grimy canteen windows, casting bars of light across our stolen corner behind the vending machines. Oh, the irony.
And yeah, I know… behind the canteen? Not exactly the classiest move.
As we fumbled through our first awkward touches, I could tell it wasn't just about lust. There was something… real there. A quiet connection.
But I didn't feel it.
I mean… I saw the 'reenactment' happening from the first-person perspective. I could analyze it like a story I'd read a hundred times. But emotionally? I was watching from behind a glass wall. My human soul stood at a distance, detached and unanchored.
Maybe that was the scariest part.
Because if I couldn't feel even that memory anymore, what was left of me?
And then…
Something squeezed.
Hard.
It started as pressure around my ribs in the dream… and then pain. Not dream pain. Real pain. Suffocating, breath-stealing, panic-inducing pain.
"Wait… is this me feeling my emotions at the moment of arousal?"
No.
"Uuuh… Post-nut clarity?"
No!
I jolted awake.
And found myself face-to-face with a glossy-eyed nightmare. Thick, coiling muscle constricted around my feathery frame.
A giant. Freaking. Anaconda!
"DAH—DUU—DUUUU!" I screamed in raw, primal terror, squawking like a rubber chicken tossed into a blender.
My legs flailed uselessly in the air. My wings? Decorative. Absolutely zero use in a situation like this. But my beak?
That was my last hope.
"LET. ME. GO!" I screeched, slamming my beak again and again into the snake's scales.
Thunk.
Thunk.
CRUNCH.
I think I may have chipped a tooth. Or beak. Whatever.
The anaconda didn't seem particularly bothered. It tightened its grip, squeezing the air out of my lungs. I could feel my bones creak. I tried to remember how constrictors killed their prey… was it suffocation? Or cardiac arrest? Either way, not ideal!
"How did this even happen?!" I wheezed in my head. "Was this its burrow? Is that why the moss smelled weird?! I should've known!"
I didn't have time to reflect on my poor real-estate decisions.
Because a moment later, the anaconda shifted, opened its gaping mouth wide, and…
I got swallowed whole!
Slippery. Wet. Darkness.
My entire bird body slid past rows of backward-curving teeth and into the warm, nightmarish tunnel of doom. I felt the world compress around me. The slick pressure. The slow, awful journey downward.
"This is it," I thought. "I died once by vending machine. Now I'm gonna die again by snake digestion. What a résumé."
My mind raced as the last of the light vanished behind the snake's closing jaw.
And then everything went silent.
I waited.
Maybe it was a few seconds.
Maybe minutes.
Maybe I had died again and reincarnated into a tapeworm.
Time had no meaning inside a digestive tract.
Everything around me was wet, squishy, and smelled like despair and half-digested rodents. I was squeezed into a stomach that clearly had no respect for personal space, trying to convince myself that panicking would only use up more oxygen.
And then I felt it.
Movement.
The anaconda's muscles spasmed violently. It writhed.
Not the kind of writhing that said "just digesting lunch." No, this was full-on "I've made a terrible mistake" writhing.
I couldn't see anything. But I felt it through the pressure in my bones, through the shiver in the air, maybe even through some newfound dodo sixth sense screaming danger.
Suddenly, light.
Cold air slapped my damp feathers as something yanked me out by the neck. I popped out with a squelch and a gasp that sounded like "HWAAKH!!"
Freedom never felt so disgusting.
I flopped onto the ground, legs twitching and lungs heaving. My vision spun, and the first thing I saw besides the deflated, twitching husk of what used to be the anaconda… was a… paw?
My vision cleared.
A squirrel. Standing upright. Clad in a fitted leather outfit, complete with utility straps and a fur-trimmed collar. In one hand—or paw?—it held a blade. Not just a knife. No, that was a full-on greatsword, at least by squirrel standards. The blade gleamed with faint runes etched into the metal. A trophy from battles past?
It stood there, heroic and slightly twitchy, with a no-nonsense gaze. I couldn't tell if it was male or female, and honestly, I didn't want to assume anything. The squirrel looked… experienced. Its fur had streaks of grey and patches missing, like it had seen a hundred winters and punched every single one in the face.
"...What," I croaked. Or maybe I squawked. I had long given up trying to sound intelligible.
The squirrel said something in a language I didn't understand. The same flowy, ancient-sounding speech the humans used. Its tone was stern and curious, like it was simultaneously giving a lecture and solving a puzzle. Me, apparently.
I just blinked up at it, legs sprawled out like a damp feathered pancake.
Then, the squirrel stabbed its sword into the earth beside me, as if to say "This conversation is important." It circled me slowly, inspecting me like a merchant unsure if the item in front of him was cursed or just ugly. It muttered more foreign words under its breath.
Then… cackling.
Loud, wheezy, mischievous cackling that echoed through the trees and sent chills down my spine.
Now that was a language I understood.
I twitched slightly, eyeing the trees behind me. I could run. I probably should run. But let's be real here, the squirrel had just carved a snake in half like it was peeling a banana. If I couldn't outrun a bunch of mortal kids in a village, I sure as heck wasn't outrunning Squirrel Zoro over here.
So I stayed.
Out of curiosity, respect, and sheer survival instinct.
Then, it happened.
A voice echoed in my head.
"Congratulations, you strange bird. I have chosen you… as my disciple!"
The voice was masculine, wizened, and filled with unbridled glee. Like a retired war general who'd just found an apprentice worthy of inheriting his absurd legacy. It radiated excitement and the kind of energy that said, "This is going to be a wild ride."
I blinked.
"Uh," I said out loud, trying my best to communicate in the only language I knew, the one I grew up with, from Earth. "What? Just what the fuck is going on?!"
"I sensed your potential the moment I saw you flailing in that snake's gut. Truly, a spirit unbroken by death! A survivor! A beast of fate!"
"Sir," I mumbled, still lying half-digested on the ground, "I'm literally covered in stomach acid."
"That matters not! From today forward, you shall follow the path of cultivation!"
And just like that, my life took another strange, screeching turn.
The squirrel wasn't done. Not by a long shot. As I sat there, still damp and slightly traumatized from being partially digested, he launched into what sounded like the full pitch of a seasoned cult recruiter. He spoke in a tone filled with grandiosity and passion. If squirrels had stages, this one would've had a spotlight, smoke effects, and maybe a drumroll in the background. He talked about power. About how birds of all kinds—glorious phoenixes, elegant swans, even beautiful peahens—would flock to my side if I only rose high enough. He painted a picture of feathery paradise, where I would glide across the skies with a harem of exotic avians admiring my cultivation aura, and where food would no longer be a problem because it would come to me, ripe, roasted, and begging to be eaten. He even mentioned spiritual fruit that increased your power with a single bite. The imagery was so vivid, I could almost smell the grilled fish.
More than all of that, he emphasized the holy grail of any reincarnated beast with half a brain: longevity. He said I could transcend the pathetic lifespan my dodo biology limited me to. While normal dodos might only live a couple of decades at most—if they weren't hunted or swallowed by snakes—I could live hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. Immortal, wise, powerful, and well-fed? Sure. That sounded amazing.
I mean, I already knew the general deal with cultivation. Even with my memories growing fuzzy, I could still recall the old xianxia tropes. I knew how this worked. Strength, women, wealth, long life… those were the staples of the genre. And yes, I did want those things. The women part was a little questionable, though. My twenty-first century Earth sensibilities made the whole multiple wives thing feel more like a walking disaster waiting to happen. Emotional entanglements were messy enough with just one person, thank you very much.
Still, as I nodded absentmindedly at his speech, my curiosity drifted elsewhere. We were speaking. In full, coherent thoughts. Telepathically! That part bugged me more than anything else. Sure, he was a squirrel in leather armor wielding a greatsword which was bizarre enough, but somehow, our minds were in sync like we were old friends texting without words. I decided to ask him directly about it.
"Hey," I said, or rather thought, because my actual dodo squawk wouldn't have communicated a thing. "How are we doing this? The brain chat thing?"
He paused mid-rant, then tilted his head. "Ah," he replied, the voice in my head taking on a knowing tone, "I'd be happy to explain all that… if you accept my offer and become my disciple."
Now, that gave me pause. It was a classic hook. Dangling knowledge in front of me like bait. A part of me wanted to say yes right away. I mean, let's be real… what did I have to lose? I was a three-foot-tall bird who nearly died inside a reptile. My options were limited. Still, I'd seen enough shady masters in fiction to know better than to dive headfirst into a master-disciple relationship with my eyes closed.
I glanced at him again, taking in the oversized sword, the confident stance, the tiny twitch of his fluffy tail. He honestly looked like an adorable toy you'd find in a high-end fantasy-themed gift shop. But cute didn't mean safe. So, just to be sure, I asked the question that had been bugging me.
"Are you going to nurture me for years just to harvest my essence when I reach my peak?" I asked, tilting my feathery head with suspicion.
The squirrel froze. "What?! No!" he said in my mind, scandalized.
I tried again, with a slightly different concern. "Are you planning to indoctrinate me with a cultivation technique that secretly erodes my will and turns me into your loyal puppet?"
The squirrel actually dropped his jaw… literally. "Why in the heavens would I do something like that?!"
Third time's the charm, right? "So you're telling me there are absolutely no strings attached? You'll teach me freely, without exploiting me, and not secretly feeding me pills that turn my bones into spirit batteries or something?"
This time, he looked genuinely offended. "That's the whole point of a master-disciple relationship!" he said, flinging his tiny arms wide. "To pass on one's knowledge to the next generation so it doesn't die with you! That's tradition! Legacy! Honor! So yes, no strings attached!"
I stared.
Was it actually possible… for this squirrel to be… nice?
It felt unnatural. Unreal. Too good to be true. In every story I'd read back on Earth, kindness always came with a catch. But this squirrel looked so earnest. So proud. So sincere. It was hard not to believe him.
And yet, that was what made it even more intimidating.
Was I really that lucky? Or was I being reeled in by an incredibly sophisticated scam?
Still, even with the doubts gnawing at the edge of my mind, a louder voice whispered over all of them… what if this was real?
What if, just this once, I had stumbled onto something good?
I scratched my head with one wing, though I couldn't reach said head. "So… what now?" I muttered, more to myself than him.
The squirrel smiled… or maybe smirked. His eyes twinkled with something ancient and slightly unhinged.
What could possibly go wrong?