Tess couldn’t begin to speculate as to how long she had been unconscious.

When she awoke, she seemed to still be in the clearing, but the other girls were gone. She found herself naked and alone… floating in a shallow pool of water where the boulder that Tobi had been sitting on had been.

There was no nephormed beside her, no desmosouls above her head… the only sounds were her own panicked chokes and thrashing limbs in the water.

After a brief period spent desperately trying to reorient herself, she began to calm and noticed that not only did the pool of water that she was floating in not feel quite like water, but that her body seemed different as well… perhaps like her body, but sharper.

Instead of the squat, soft build that she was accustomed to living in, this body jutted like a wooden puppet controlled by thin strings at every joint. Upon closer examination… she knew that it must be her body.

Her freckles, scars, and blemishes were all in the correct places and her hair was her own, only longer… much longer, in fact… long enough to cover her breasts and brush her stomach.

To be continued…