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Karin marched on in silence, with only an occasional glance to make sure Rick was nearby. The pace she set wasn't particularly arduous, but she kept to it with carefully controlled steps. If she broke down and ran, that would be the end of it. Somewhere deep inside, she realized that she'd run and run until her heart stopped and she breathed her last.

You can't out run yourself, after all. So she'd deal with it: the strange changes that afflicted her body, this whole freaked out situation. And she'd do it one step at a time.

First step: a camp site. Self-(re)discovery could come later. "High and dry," she murmured. "Shade, and a water source." There were more tips to finding shelter, but that was all she could recall at the moment. It was good enough for a start.

Karin nodded in mute agreement, not exactly sure what she was agreeing to. A side effect of being unsettled and tired, she supposed. Following suit, she also set her gear down and crouched next to it.

"Uhm," her eyes closed as she riffled through a collection of skills learned a world away. "Set up tents and a fireplace. Figure out a place for a latrine." She paused, not wanting him to think she was trying to weasel out of her portion of the set up, but felt obligated to be honest. He was still here with her, after all. "I'm not sure how much help I'm going to be on setting things up... I, my hands..." Her voice trailed off.

I don't want to deal with this, she thought to herself. It wasn't going to be any better later though. In response to Rick's second question, she answered, "A mirror would be nice. Failing that... no, nevermind." She couldn't bring herself to ask him: What's my damage? How much of a monster do I look like?

(( Works for me. ))

Most of Karin's recollection of camping was from hazy memories of being a girl scout. Likewise, her training in wilderness survival was from the objective of surviving long enough for a search and rescue team to find you. Neither really applied, but between the two, she and Rick made due.

They had a livable camp site. "Home sweet home," Karin murmured, the slightest touch of sarcasm in her voice. Not out of any disrespect for the job Rick had done, but from a source of general frustation at the whole situation. Now that the immediate necessities were taken care of, she was left with one giant question: Now what?

She'd promised to tell Rick all that she knew, but in the end, that didn't really boil down to much. That left finding Alex. When he'd left, he'd also left behind directions to find him. As near as Karin could tell, they were in the general vicinity of where he said he'd be. They'd have to do a systematic search of the area. That could wait until tomorrow, as they'd spent most of the day traveling and searching the forest at night was not appealing.

She squirmed a bit, trying to find a more comfortable seat on the ground, a task made much more difficult by her newly grown tail. "This is karmic payback for that veterinarian comment, I just know it," she muttered, struggling to get her new appendage under control.

Handicapped. That stung a bit and she frowned in response. Of course, she hadn't actually examined the changes made to her fingers, beyond feeling them stretch and twist. There had to be some tasks requiring manual dexterity that she could still perform. It occured to her that he was probably only being polite, but she didn't like to think of herself as lacking, even if it were true.

The bastards behind this all might take her body from her, but like hell she'd give up her idenitity and confidence without a fight. Just thinking about it was enough to get her back up.

"Supplies might be good," Karin replied, focusing back on to more productive things. Like specifically not mentioning that Rick might (probably would) change, just as everyone else had. She spared a thought for the others of their ragtag temporally displace group. God, at least she wasn't the kid stuck here. That had to be unbearable. "But we've got enough for now at least. And the tools to get more. We have the traps and the fishing tackle, but that can wait until morning." She paused.

"I need to... I need to figure out what I can and can't do. What the damage is so to speak." It would be impossible to remain completely covered an unseen now that she'd be living in close quarters with Rick. However, if he didn't want to deal with seeing how inhuman she'd become, she wanted to give him the option to politely be elsewhere. She just wasn't sure how to phrase it.

She exhaled noisily. Her resolve was still a fickle thing, rapidly switching back and forth between to do it or not.

Do it. Do it now. It was the only choice, really. As much as she still held out for a cure and a way back home, denial wasn't going to help. She was strong, she could deal. At least that's what she told herself. She knew the truth though, if she procrastinated at it now, she'd keep on a path of avoidance.

At least she wasn't alone. Karin was still grateful to Rick for that. Even if these next few moments might change that.

She peered at him tentatively. "Help me up?" She squeaked, voice high-pitched and nervous. And with that, she unwrapped the blanket she'd been wearing like a shawl and slid out her hands, her deformed fingers impossible to miss. She flinched slightly at the sight. God, how creepy.

She took a measure of comfort from the close contact as she slowly stood with Rick's help. He didn't run off screaming and she wasn't scaly or slimy, so... She inhaled. Right. She could deal with this.

Karin straightened, slowly disentangling herself from Rick's helpful embrace. She needed room to stretch and to survey. She frowned as she stood to her full height, noticing for the first time the extent of the changes in her rib-cage. Barrel-chested had always been a term that applied to her elder brothers, never to her self. And of course, her shirt was ripped. Way to rub it in. A sigh, and then she moved on, flexing her arms and fingers wide, the way a child might pretend to be a bird. Subconsciously, her tail stretched out along with the motion, twitching and extending in time with her arms.

Ignoring the fact that there was now no place on her back she couldn't scratch with those spindly fingers, all seemed to be in good, if slightly unusual and uncomfortable, working order. Her legs didn't feel odd and she'd been able to stand, so minus the tail, it seemed all the changes were above the waist.

Karin dropped her arms, and held one hand at eye-level opening and closing her fingers repeatedly. A fist would be impossible, but if she were careful, she could still grip and carry things. The look of distaste she'd been wearing evaporated at that discovery. The idea of being coddled and hand-fed had rankled. She wasn't crippled or incapable, just... different. Changed.

Not a lifestyle choice she'd have made of her own free will, but one that was turning out to be livable. That alone was enough to buoy her spirits. She could do this. She would do this. And she didn't have to do so in solitude.

She paused, giving her fingers one final flex before slowly turning to Rick. "I'll be okay, I think. It's so... freakin' weird." She waggled her fingers at him, then ran her hand over the bumps on her crown before trailing a thumb cautiously over the pointed shell of her ear. Her tail twitched inadvertantly, just another indicator of all that was strange.

"Just what the hell is all this for?" Karin wasn't being philosophical, really not caring why or for what purpose these changes were being inflicted on her. She just couldn't envision what these small starts would become. Her repertoire of monster knowledge came mostly from Hollywood and bad made for TV movies. Insects came to mind with her freakish fingers, but she was pretty sure the hard growths on her head weren't going to turn out to be antennae. "Really hoping I don't end up as something that eats..." Her lip curled distastefully as she decided not to finish that sentence. Some things were just better left unsaid.

Karin exhaled a frustrated sigh. "That's the problem. I don't really know all that much. And all the people who might have the answers will probably go hostile on sight- well to me at least." Rick still might be able to head back to town and ask around, as unblemished as he was.

She tilted her head back, trying to get her thoughts organized. "We should probably find Alex, the pilot. I think he went to the church and got some more answers than I did.

"Most of this is really speculation," she cautioned. "It's mostly that message you got from that cat." The message that Alex had sent, she remembered. Yet another reason to go seek him out. "From it, it's pretty easy to infer we were all brought here for a reason. I mean look at us, modern ordinary people, plucked down into something out of the middle ages, given a sack of gold to shut us up and told to stay in town.

"The note, it said we were all going to change, which wouldn't have meant jack to me, if I hadn't seen Alex go through those changes that night." Before her own changes, was a thought she didn't add.

But that thought spurred another line of questioning in her mind. She raised her hands, to stare long and hard at them, as if another look would reveal some unforeseen clue, a detail previously overlooked. "Alex's changes were nothing like mine..." Struck with the sudden horror of her partial transformation, she hadn't really considered beyond the concept of being forced into something against her will. "I guess we're all turning into different things."