Damnit

        Elliott sighed, running his fingers down the spine of one of his favourite books. Books had always been there for him, when others weren't. When he read, he could pretend that he wasn't a mousy little loser with zero social skills, extreme social anxiety and no friends. He became the main character of the book, fighting evil alongside other awesome people.

        But, of course, he wasn't. He was just him. Elliott sighed again and placed the book back on his bookshelf, grabbing his bag and steeling himself for the outside world. He hadn't been out of the house in weeks, and just as he ran out of food, the city had a blackout. Wonderful. Now he had to go out and buy food in person, rather than ordering it online. He swallowed hard, forcing down the mass of anxiety curling in his gut, and stepped out the door.

        Okay. Wow. That was severely anticlimactic. He didnt know why he was so nervous; it was just the store a few blocks away. Not for the first time, he cursed the fact that his parents had homeschooled him. Homeschooling had worked great for his siblings but he, who was already a shy kid, had been around no other kids his age and his social anxiety had grown increasingly worse over the years. Maybe if he hand gone to school, he would have had at least a few more social skills...

        Elliott shook his head and kept walking, slipping earbuds into his ears. With a click of a button, Nirvana was blasting into his ears and his gaze was fixated on his phone as he switched to his book-writing app. Yeah he wrote on his phone, so what? It was only when he was out in public and needed to get his mind off things...

        As he was approaching a street, he wrenched his eyes away from the words on his screen, shifting his attention to his surroundings. It was a nice day, he'd admit. The sun was shining; 29°C today, not too hot and not too cold. The birds were singing, though he wished the corellas would shut up. Bees were buzzing, a kid was running along with her friends and laughing. He stared wistfully at the group of children, wishing he could have had a group of friends like that when he was younger. A crease formed between his brows, though, as the children got closer to the streets. A car was coming, and one of the children wasn't stopping. He stepped forward hesitantly. The child was in no danger yet, what if he stepped in and looked like an idiot? But what if he waited too long and she died?

        But she didn't slow, and neither did the car. Elliott took a few more steps, then he was running. The thought that he could die entered his mind, but left just as quickly. What did he have to live for anyways? He'd published three books, that was good enough of an achievement, and he was sure the half-a-book he had on his computer wasn't great anyways. He felt warm flesh beneath his hands, heard the girl screaming as she landed on the other side of the road and realised how close she had come to death. Then there was the screeching of tyres, a thud, then a blinding pain for a split second before everything went black.

        Elliott gasped as he sat up, hands shaking. Wow, what a nightmare. The relief that that was a dream faded quickly, though, as he took in his surroundings. A forest? There were no forests near his hometown. The outback, yes, but that was sprawling expanses of desert with a few Eucalypts scattered around. This was... large. Damp. The first thing that came to mind was that this was some sick prank, but he waved away that idea. He had nobody who would prank him. He swallowed hard, feeling around his body to make sure he was okay. Everything seemed normal, except his hair - short, chocolate brown and exceedingly messy - was long now. Like, really long. It reached his waist when he stood. Also, his clothes were weird. They felt right though, like he was meant to wear them.

        He looked around for his bag and, to his relief, there it was. He grabbed it quickly. Rummaging around inside revealed that his phone and earbuds were gone, much to his dissapointment. He hadn't gotten to the good bit of 𝘚𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘛𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘚𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘵 before he... what, died? This didn't seem like heaven, nor was it filled with the flames of hell. Not that he believed in that stuff anyways, but where else could he be? Elliott shook off the shoughts and rummaged a bit more. A pack of beef jerky - his third favourite snack, sue him - a bag of nuts, a notebook and pencil, and his pocketknife. His wallet was there too, but he doubted that would be much use here. Wherever here was.

Okay. Alright. He could do this. What was the first thing he had his characters do when thrown into the wilderness? Look for fresh water. Luckily he could hear the tinkling of a stream somewhere nearby, so he headed towards it on shaking legs, wishing he had something to quell the anxiety that was threatening to make him cry. He was always a crybaby, but in this situation he felt completely justified. After a weirdly long time walking for water that had sounded so close by, he reached a creek. It was, again, weirdly loud for such a small creek. The thing shallow, but lead to a small pond. He was hesitant to go near it, as that pond could have any number of crocodiles in it, but he inched closer. He doubted there were any crocodiles in it anyway; it was too small.

Looking down at his reflection, he was shocked by his youthful face. He hadn't been exactly old before, at twenty-seven, but now he looked more like a twelve-year-old and all his stress lines were gone. His - now button-shaped? when did that happen? His nose had always been crooked before - nose wrinkled at the thought that he'd somehow de-aged, but hadn't noticed a height difference. He consoled himself with the thought that he had been panicking at the time, so he'd missed some things. Sighing again, he sat down at the edge of the pond and curled his arms around his legs, tears rising to prick at his eyes. He had experience hlding them back, though, so they never escaped no matter how big the lump in his throat grew.

After a solid five minutes of self-pity, Elliott sniffled and moved up to the stream to sip at the running water, putting all thoughts of death and starving out of his mind. He'd had a phase when he was a teenager where he'd desperately wanted to go out into the wilderness and survive all by himself, so he at least knew what to do a little bit. He mentally patted teenager-him on the back, though the learning had come from a place of frustration with humanity rather than anything noble. Still, knowledge was knowledge.

He grabbed his pocketknife from his bag and grabbed his hair, deciding to bring some normalcy back into this situation. With one deft slice, all hair from mid-neck and down was gone, falling to the grass in soft curls. He nodded at his reflection, tucking one strand of hair (quickly forming soft ringlets now that it wasn't held down by the weight of being so long) behind his ear. His... pointed ear. His heart sank and he touched the other ear. Yep - pointed. Oh, god. He was totally in a wattpad fanfiction, wasn't he? One of those Lord of the Rings fanfictions where the main character gets transported into the books. He quickly consoled himself again. He wasn't a girl, so the chances of this being a fanfiction were already reduced by three quarters. He was aro/ace, and therefore not going to fall in love with Legolas or Aragorn, so that sliced some more doubt into the theory. And he absolutely, under all circumstances, was going to stay well away from anyone he happened to one across.

Elliott stood, took a deep breath, and packed his pocketknife away. His ears picked up a sound, the rustling of a bush. Maybe it was just an animal... but no, as it got closer he could clearly hear the sound of boots crunching dead leaves underfoot. Nimbly as a cat, Elliott sprang into the nearest large bush and curled up, terrified. He wasn't even scared that it was a bad person; he was just terrified of people in general. With shaking hands, he grasped the trunk of the bush and buried his face in it, heart pounding in his throat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is my first fanfic. Not my first time writing, but first fanfic or whatever. Please go easy on me 🙏

Also it's one in the morning and I just had this idea and ran with it. I have no plot set out, no plans for the rest and no beta reader, so this is likely going to crash and burn. It'll be fun while it lasts, though, and it's free writing experience. ̶A̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶e̶x̶t̶ ̶t̶w̶o̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶p̶t̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶l̶r̶e̶a̶d̶y̶ ̶w̶r̶i̶t̶t̶e̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶c̶h̶e̶d̶u̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶u̶p̶d̶a̶t̶e̶;̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶T̶u̶e̶s̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶W̶e̶d̶n̶e̶s̶d̶a̶y̶.̶ 

EDIT: I went on a writing spree, so I'm just going to upload like, multiple chapters. Then I'll schedule the rest of the pre-written ones to be uploaded every day.