The New Normal

As John opened his eyes, he was surprised he wasn't dead. Well, he did feel like he was dead, but at least he could "feel" something, so that was a good sign!

As he looked around, he realized he was in a forest, full of greenery and birds chirping all around him.

As he tried to get up, he realized he had no strength whatsoever, he was extremely weak, he couldn't even muster up the strength to set himself up.

It was a this moment that he realized he wasn't even breathing. It took him all his force just to cough a bit and return to breathing again.

John used his strength to look around a bit more and started crawling towards a small pink red flower he could see.

The distance was just around 5 meters, but it took him nearly an hour to cross the distance. He didn't know why, but the smells he could sense coming from the flower, was very tempting to the extremely hungry John.

When he reached the flowers, the first thing he did was slowly stretch his hand towards it, grabbed a little flower, pulled to his mouth and took a bite.

At this moment, he couldn't care about poisoning, about taste, about anything. He knew deep inside himself, if he didn't eat anything, soon he would die anyway.

As the flower went down his esophagus, a feeling of warmth started pulsating all over his body, and after it came a lot of pain.

Strangely enough, when the pain subsided, he felt a little refreshed and relaxed.

John spent the entire day eating flowers. He would only pause when the pain was unbearable, and continue eating when he could tolerate the pain again.

When the night came, he was extremely exhausted, he just threw himself in the bushes of flowers and slept instantly. After a week of this new routine, he could stand upright again.

At this point, he decided to explore a little more around here. It wouldn't do to live in this strange clearing of grass forever. He felt that it was already too much luck that it hasn't rained since he woke up, or even the fact that he hadn't encountered any predators.

He looked around himself and found a few rocks scattered around. He picked two of them and started trying to sharpen them. After what it felt like half an hour, he had sharpened them as much as he felt he could do it, with the little experience he had.

He decided that at this point in time, this clearing would be his "home" or at least the safe place he would return if anything unexpected happened.

So, John looked up at the skies and decided to go north.

He would mark every tree on his left with an "X". This was a strategy he used to employ on a maze solving game back when he was a young child. First he would set in a direction and always mark an "X" on the walls to his left. When going back, he only need to make sure all the "X" were to his right.

John was hoping he could find a body of water, although the flowers were pretty wet and helped him satiate his thirst, it wasn't nearly enough water for a grown adult to live with.

As he walked he made sure to keep an eye for anything that could be useful.

He grabbed a few sticks and pieces of vines. As he was collecting a stick on the ground, he saw a white little rabbit about 10 meters away from him, it was rabbit, poking its head out of the best and just stared at John with curious eyes.

At this moment, John knew what he had to do, but his heart was to soft. He was aware that he needed a more caloric type of food, flowers weren't enough for him to survive, but John, was just a student in the past.

Although he had seen his fair share of dead bodies and pictures of it, killing a animal was still to much for him.

John decided to just keep this place in mind for now, he knew this rabbit could become his food if he was desperate, but at the moment, he wasn't willing to go to such extremes. It might be a mistake, but he couldn't muster up the courage.