and the rivers were none {Red}

[Red Riding Hood]

"I could," Red wasn't exactly comfortable giving what was basically her life story at this point, but the guy just looked so helplessly confused and she wasn't a monster - despite what so many people back home thought - just because she didn't like getting close to people didn't mean she wanted to leave him floundering around in this weird place.

"I was bitten by a wolf when I was a little girl," she told him brusquely "Ever since then, every full moon I turn into a wolf, and the rest of the time I can do it voluntarily, if I want." she was kind of enjoying being able to do it here without quite as much worry she would be accused of attacking people's sheep.

"What were you before?" she asked, it might seem like a strange question but she had been lucky enough to meet Olaf already and was prepared for the situation. She wondered if all these confused, newly-human people running around was something to do with the disrepair of the school, surely if it was properly up and running somebody would be explaining the situation to them? They wouldn't just thrust them into the unknown, would they? She remembered how confusing and strange everything had been when she first shifted, the first time she had to navigate paws instead of hands, the first time she'd had a tail, she could understand the disorientation.

[Nick Wilde]

She was bitten by a wolf. And now she could turn into a wolf. Nick had never heard of such a thing in his life, and he was not any less confused than he had been before he'd asked the question. But she was asking him a question, too, and he knew the answer to that, which made him feel just a little bit better, even if she would probably think he was crazy for the answer.

"I'm a fox," he said, but was immediately dismayed to find that he felt just as crazy saying it as she would think he was. He wasn't used to this body yet, but the longer he spent in it, the more he forgot what it was like to be a fox, what his senses were like, how well he could hear, how keen his sense of smell was when he was a fox. He felt a little sick. At least he wasn't telling her that he was a snowman, so maybe this wasn't the weirdest thing she'd heard yet. "I was asking about your...situation, because I thought maybe if you can turn into a wolf, you'd know how I could turn back into a fox. But I guess you started out...like this, huh?"

It seemed like a silly idea now. Like asking a butterfly if it knew how you could turn into a caterpillar because it used to be one. Nick was a little embarrassed. "Sorry for all the weird questions, I'm still figuring this place out."

[Red Riding Hood]

Red wasn't surprised to hear that Nick used to be a fox, there was something about him that she could sense - the same way she'd been able to with Will. She couldn't explain it, it was just a wolf thing she was pretty sure, she probably would have had something similar with Olaf if she'd ever encountered a sentient snowman before. Maybe. She didn't really know how it worked.

"Sorry," she said, her tone blunter than she meant it to be considering she did feel genuinely sympathetic to his plight, it must be pretty strange for him. She tried to imagine being stuck as a wolf, unable to change back, and she found the thought to be rather unpleasant.

"It's fine," she shrugged "I think most people here are doing the same thing, it's a weird place and a lot of people didn't even choose to come here..."

[Nick Wilde]

Nick wasn't put off by her less-than-effusive "sorry." Honestly, he was still surprised when people apologized to him at all, regardless of their tone. He had spent most of his life being told that he deserved pretty much everything he got, unless it was a good thing, in which case it was a darn shame or a stroke of luck.

People didn't choose to come here? That was news to him. Judy had chosen to go through the portal, and Nick had chosen to follow after her, although neither of them had known where it was going when they'd gone in. Maybe that was what she meant.

"Do you mean people just...didn't know where they were going, or they were someplace else and didn't mean to leave at all?" He didn't mean to ask her every single question on his mind, it was just...she was the first person he'd come across who wasn't Judy, and after the way that whole situation had gone down, he had even more questions than he had when he'd gotten here. "That's my last question for now, I promise. You can ask me questions instead, or slap me or something, because I probably deserve that, too."

[Red Riding Hood]

"As far as I can tell, the latter," Red replied with another shrug "The portals just kind of... sucked them in. I came looking for it, so did a couple of other people I've met, but others were just dragged through when the portal appeared. Some people have been here before as well, though I haven't met any of them yet." It was amazing what you could hear just by keeping your ears open and not drawing attention to yourself, and it was a novelty to be in a place where she was able to not draw attention to herself.

"I take it you meant to come here then? Why?" she asked, he had offered to answer her questions after all, and even though she didn't normally show so much curiosity to other people, those she had encountered here were kind of interesting "And when you say you were a fox... do you mean like a talking fox, or just a regular one?" she'd encountered her fair share of talking animals after all.

[Nick Wilde]

Dragged through. Well, at least Nick had decided to come through to this place, although he had been convinced for the first few hours he'd been here that he had actually just launched himself into a tunnel of death straight to the afterlife. He was about sure now that he was not, in fact, dead and in the great beyond, but only because it was just too weird to be the afterlife. There was no reason the afterlife should have such terrifying experiences as running away from a jello monster but also have such reassuring and pleasant things as feeling the warmth of the sun on your weird furless skin.

"I came through on purpose," he nodded. "I was coming in after my partner, she went through when that...tunnel thing showed up in our city, and when she didn't come back, I came in after her." It was funny how she said talking or regular fox as if talking foxes weren't the norm. "I was...a regular talking fox," he said, smiling in spite of the oddness of the situation. "Where I come from, we're just...there aren't any of these." He gestured down at his human body. "We're just animals."

[Red Riding Hood]

"I did too," Red nodded "Come here on purpose, I mean." she didn't elaborate onto the why, she didn't exactly want to get into a conversation about what life was like for her before, she'd already skirted on the edges of it far too closely with Elsa, and spilling her secrets to everyone she met was hardly conducive to leaving her life behind - even if she had already told him about the werewolf thing instead of just leaving.

"It was all just animals who talked? No humans at all?" Red asked, interested. "Were there... I mean... if it's not too weird a question, what did you eat? If the rabbits are talking too, did you eat them? Did the wolves eat sheep?" she hoped she wasn't overstepping but she couldn't help but be interested, were there other animals who didn't talk, like there were back home? Non-sentient creatures that she didn't feel so bad hunting (as long as she wasn't anywhere the humans would get angry with her for doing so), or did none of them eat meat at all?

[Nick Wilde]

Nick shook his head slowly. "No humans at all. I didn't even know what a human was before I got here, and let me tell you, that was a shock." He glanced down at his body again, then back up at her with a rueful grin. "We ate...protein stuff. Insects, that kind of thing. We definitely didn't eat the rabbits. Everybody in Zootopia kind of lives together in...well, I'm not gonna say harmony. People like to say it's this perfect place where everybody is happy, and it's not, really, but it's better than things were before when predators ate prey animals and went around brutally killing them and all that. We evolved past that is all."

He shrugged. "Animals here, though...I haven't seen any of them talk. So I guess here, the animals are wild, like we used to be, before we all settled down and shacked up together in the city." He gave her another smile, finally feeling like he might not be about to say something offensive each time he opened his mouth. "I don't think anybody would have a problem with you hunting here, if that's what you're worried about. And...if they do, I can keep a secret."

[Red Riding Hood]

"I can imagine," Red agreed, trying to hide her amusement, not that she thought he would be offended, he seemed to be quite relaxed about things in general - apart from the whole not really knowing what was going on thing, and there was something about him, a little edge, that made her think he probably had a good sense of humour - a sense that was only confirmed at his comment about her hunting. She laughed, and that was a rarity in itself, slight smiles or a softer expression were usually the extent of her positivity, people were usually too nervous around her to make jokes, but he didn't care, even knowing what she was, and in turn that made her feel comfortable enough to laugh.

"I suppose you would, if your prey could plead for its life," she nodded "I had the dubious honour of accidentally catching a talking goat once, that hadn't been fun." she pulled a face. The encounter had left her feeling horrid and guilty for a month, to the point where she amended her hunting tactics so that any prey had a chance to speak before she killed them. She fought against being labelled just like the big bad wolf, the creature that had cursed her and nearly killed her grandmother, but sometimes she felt dangerously close to the edge.

"Thanks, I appreciate your discretion."

[Nick Wilde]

Hey, he'd gotten a laugh out of her, this wasn't going so bad after all. They'd gotten off on a weird foot, what with him refusing to look away when she got dressed and all, but for the first time, he felt like he might be making some progress here. "Yeah," he added, "I uh...I'm still not sure what I'm doing with...all of this." He gestured down towards his body. "Just...trying not to break any of it mostly so far," he grinned, sticking his tongue out slightly.

He could only imagine how traumatic it would be to eat a talking being. Sure, he'd been dealing with people's preconceptions about predators and foxes specifically his whole life, but he had been born in a time long after anybody of his sort was running around eating any prey alive, let alone those who had learned to have conversations. "Woah," he said, a little in awe, "that must have sucked. One time I had to pretend to eat my partner, but that was for...a work thing."

He reached up and scratched his head, still feeling a momentary flash of panic at the absence of large pointy ears, and then looked over to her again. "Hey," he said, a little cautiously, "do you want to go and like...see if we can find some coffee around here somewhere? I think there's supposed to be some people in the dorms, and I bet they've got coffee."

[Red Riding Hood]

"They're sturdier than most people give them credit for," Red said with a slight smirk "just don't try and bend it too much or hit it too hard and you should be fine."

"You had to.. what?" Did he just say he had to pretend to eat his partner? What did that even mean? She was going to need him to explain that more comprehensively, and while it was a strange feeling to want to know more about someone, she was starting to get used to it, the people here were so interesting, they had stories she'd never heard before, and she'd rather get lost in somebody else's story than think about her own.

"Actually, yea, coffee sounds good. Let's go find a place and you can tell me about this whole eating your partner thing."

[Nick Wilde]

"Yeah, I'm getting that sense," Nick agreed, doing a bit of an undignified flapping thing with his arms, like he was demonstrating how much flapping they could tolerate. "There's some stuff I can't do anymore that I could do when I was a fox, like...I miss my sense of smell, and I can't hear nearly as well, but...I'm stronger, and taller, and..." Well, that was just about it that he'd figured out so far. This body seemed pretty inferior to his fox-self in just about every other way.

"It's kind of a long story," he said, grinning. "But sure, I'd be happy to tell it over coffee. I wouldn't mind eating, too, I had a bad experience with a refrigerator not too long ago and I've been kind of afraid to go into a kitchen since then." He gestured back towards the school. "After you? Unless you want me to lead the way. I don't know much about the lay of the land but I know what direction I came from, at least."

[Red Riding Hood]

"I can understand that. The further away I am from the full moon the worse my sense of smell and hearing get, it's frustrating." she couldn't imagine how it would feel to get it taken away entirely, even the difference between being human and wolf forms was disorienting enough at times.

"Food sounds good, and... I also want to hear about this bad experience..." apparently he had a lot of interesting stories to tell. Besides, if that one had happened here she wanted to be forewarned.

"I think there's a cafe around here somewhere," she dimly recalled having seen it in passing "come on," she motioned him to follow and headed off through the grass towards coffee and food.

(fin)