Chapter 2
Morgan
Being ripped from a world that seems very much like the real world, the only world, and being dropped into what seems like a fantasy world but is equally real, is somehow less traumatic and also more traumatic than I would have ever imagined.
Not that I ever would have imagined it. Not saying I was a kid of little imagination, but I was a college junior majoring in Hospitality Administration in preparation for taking over my family's Montana ski lodge.
I never once thought about what it would be like to be driving down a Tennessee country road one afternoon and suddenly land on my ass — hard — in the middle of a cobblestone conjuring circle in the parking lot of a rustic but lively town square.
No one was expecting it. Three dozen of us were moaning and crying, then there were the screams as we started to notice the monstrous onlookers.
Who screamed back. Everyone was scared. Everyone was confused. It took days for the cops to figure out what happened. And by cops, I do mean a goat-legged satyr, a tiny rat sort-of creature they called a shrewkin, and an honest-to-god dragon.
There's no way for us to get back, so we've just had to make our way forward this past year.
The residents of Little Glen have all been really kind and helpful.
There's a hostel just for us, a grocery delivery service keeping it stocked with human-safe food, and even a stipend.
They did a translator spell that's a bit dodgy sometimes but gets the job done, and everyone seems genuinely sorry that we were sucked out of our world and dumped into this one without our consent.
But a girl can't sit around all day doing nothing, and to the surprise of all of us, especially Sienna, the first of us who was brave enough to bang a resident, human women are incredibly susceptible to getting impregnated by monsters.
Which is why I've loaded up my backpack with everything I need for an overnight trip, taken a bus to the suburbs — there are cars here, but humans and monsters alike agreed that we're not good at driving their cars — and ridden my bike through a massive development of gingerbread tract housing.
There are easily a thousand units in five styles, all of them gingerbread.
Some have two-car gingerbread garages, some have gingerbread porches, some have gingerbread gables, but they're all gingerbread houses.
I weave around the sprawling neighborhood for twenty minutes before I find the symbols that are highlighted on my paper.
I can't actually read the words — there isn't a spell for that, but text-to-speech gets us most of what we need — so it's a guess, but I think I'm right.
I ride right up to the porch and slot my bike in the rack there before I knock on a gigantic door, at least ten feet high and six feet wide.
The doorframe is painted in a rich red that complements the aqua door.
The door is arched, the frame scalloped.
As I wait, I notice that on both sides near the bottom of the arch, the door frame is scratched up.
It's painted red still, but I can see deep scrapes, like something sharp and hard got dragged across it over and over again, but someone's been meticulous about painting it whenever it happens.
I get up on my tiptoes to take a better look.
Some scrapes are deeper than others. They're a good eight feet from the ground, so I'm guessing sports equipment.
It's gotta be something passing through the doorway with some frequency.
Hockey stick? Fishing rod? Some sport I've never heard of that's nearly identical to baseball but has some crazy rule requiring the bat be sharpened?
The door slides open, and despite my focus being on the doorframe above, I'm already looking the person behind the door right in the eye.
"Oh," I whisper before I can catch myself.
We've had a lot of time to acclimate, and I've been braver than most humans, even returning to the scene of the crime — that farmers market we landed on our asses in the middle of — but this is the biggest person I've ever seen who's been even remotely human in shape.
His proportions match the doorframe. He has dark fur, a long face, a barrel chest, and arms thick as tree trunks.
Beady black eyes, giant hands. He's dressed in sweatpants and an unzipped hoodie, but he looks about to bust out of them.
He's terrifying, but he looks . . . soft? Maybe not like a particularly well-groomed housecat would be soft, but like a Pyrenees living on a farm. Or like a lion's mane. He's big enough to brush the door frame every time he passes under it, I just don't know how he would gouge it like that.
Oh, unless those tusks he's got sticking out from his bottom jaw actually grow way longer than that, and he's only just shed and started to regrow new ones, like antlers.
I recoil at the image that puts in my head, of just big old gougy handlebars ready to gore straight through flesh at the tip of a head, but I shake the thought away before he notices. I'm sure he's a very nice man.
"Good, there! You must be Morgan," the giant hairy man says with a quick squat.
Hello and good are the same word in the language in this world, and the translation spell can only do so much of the work for us.
A big part of our language classes has focused on retraining our brains to recognize words correctly, seamlessly, the way I inherently understand when right means the opposite of left and when it means the opposite of wrong, but I like being greeted with good. I let it stay that way in my mind.
Even if I have accidentally said good to the other humans when I meant to say hello and gotten funny looks for it.
I squat back. It's what they do here instead of waving or shaking hands or bowing, as all can lead to injury, depending on who’s greeting you.
"I'm guessing you're Crusher?" I'm understanding the name better now.
Another quirk of the language spell is if a name sounds like a word, it's hard to tell if the name is actually that word or if it's a coincidence.
Plus, some people seem to just be named Bob. Priya. Miguel. Tiffany.
"Oh, not me, I'm Frank. I'm Crusher's submissive."
He says it proudly, which, rock on, I guess. Not sure how to respond to that, though. At least I now know why they put out that ad for a human to be their surrogate.
In the slightly awkward silence that follows, I hear footsteps approaching. It's a soft clopping sound, so it's hard to tell what species Crusher is or even how big he is.
Oh, until Frank steps out of the way and I see another man nearly as big as him, but unmistakably bovine.
Minotaur.
With horns the perfect height and width to hit that doorframe.
I have seen minotaurs before. They're a fairly common species in this region, I'm told.
Any time I explore Raven City or its suburbs — we landed in Little Glen; this is Wellensbee — I see at least a couple, and one of our social workers is a female minotaur.
Pendy. Nice girl. But this is my first time seeing a male minotaur up close and . . .
Oh, dear.
Not as tall as his, err, submissive, and not as fluffy, but the russet fur is sleek on his body, defining every line, whereas his shaggy .
. . sub . . . is more of an amorphous blob.
Crusher is unquestionably the sort of build that human men in Man Pageants, whatever those are called, attempt to have.
The thrice as wide up top as around the middle build.
The thighs thick as my torso, Gaston arms to hoist up three pretty color-coordinated ladies on a bench build they attempt to have.
Plus those horns that have to be nearly as wide as my armspan at their tips, atop the head of, well, I've never seen a bull up close to know how big their heads are, but I'd wager that's the head of a pretty fucking big bull. I doubt any bull rider would take him on.
Well, I guess I’m going to ride him.
Everything is au naturale here. No artifical insemination, no IVF.
The researchers have all commented on how naturally elastic humans are, that it was a pleasant surprise that we could accommodate such a wide range of male genitalia.
Still, I'm definitely second-guessing how accommodating I actually am, especially when my eyes drop down to his pants and I see the shadow of what I know better than to think is a pet boa constrictor in there.
My eyes pop right back up to Crusher's giant face.
My eyes must be wide as saucers, but I doubt they've got anything on his. For as many times as I've been shocked at what I see in this world, it's still jarring when the scariest, most threatening monsters out there are just as shocked about me as I am about them.
"Oooooooooooooooh. That's what he meant by head hair."
A strange statement, considering he's got a mop of blond hair on his head hanging too low over his eyes. Paired with a colorful woven shirt with big wooden buttons, reminiscent of a Mexican Baja hoodie, and baggy sage pants, he has a distinctly stoner frat boy vibe.
Then he points a single, absolutely gargantuan finger, one of only two on his hand, its tip encased in a hoof, at my feet. "You see these, Frank?"
Frank peeks back around and down. "Aww, they're small."
I don't really get it, not when Crusher's on hooves, but then I lean to the side to see Frank's feet and gasp. "Oh my gosh, are you a bigfoot? Or a yeti?"
Frank sniffs like I've mildly offended him. "I am a sasquatch."
Crusher grins, I think — the elongated muzzle so close to my face makes it hard to see — and throws an arm around Frank's shoulder.
"Yeah, he's a squatch. Come on in!"