The Beast's Contracted Pet (1)

Like toothpaste being squeezed out of a tube, Bai Xueli popped out of an opening in the side of the wormhole. She had thought she was going to be both squeezed to death and ripped apart by the chaotic space of the Void.

Just when she thought she was about to breathe her last, she had been squeezed out a tiny opening and gotten stuck, before something had slapped ber buttocks so hard that she had finally managed to be birthed into stable space.

But now she was falling, tumbling through the sky from a height impossible to survive without a parachute.

Cold air whooshed past her face and stung her nose. Xueli's tattered clothes flapped and fluttered. The icy air billowed into her most inner layer of clothes, causing her to shiver and shudder at the unexpected intrusion. Xueli only had time to glimpse a bird's eye view of a beautiful snowy forest on a mountain range before it rushed up to meet her with heart stopping speed.

She was going to die.

After all the effort and trouble and years of hard work, her research into spatial dimensions was coming to a splattered ending. It was fine. She had tried her best. Having the research funding cut off just before the final experiment hadn't been unexpected. Just completely disappointing. Because she had refused her rich rival's advances, he had decided to utterly destroy everything she had cared for and loved. Their destruction could be said to have been mostly her fault.

It was fine. She could go join the rest of her family now. Peng Geng, her evil suitor and rival, had already crushed all her will to live anyway.

He had kidnapped her and made her watch as he had destroyed the lives of each of her family members. One by one he had driven them to despair and suicide, or to death under the hands of either the opportunistic vultures of the ghettoes or their enemies. Then he had slowly but surely torn away any of the social or material support and funding for her research until she had been left alone in a laboratory that was about to be demolished together with all the equipment she and her family had fought so hard to obtain and build. Her family's generations of research had ended with her.

With the demolition charges in place within her family's laboratory, Bai Xueli had escaped from the 'golden cage' Peng Geng had locked her in during her daily 'walk'. She had run back to her own familiar territory, temporarily reconnected the electricity to her lab and commenced the final experiment, using herself as the subject to be sent through what her great-great-grandfather had detected to be a flaw or hole in the fabric of space that the laboratory had been built around. Whether she lived or died, at least she would be able to experience for herself what the Void outside of stable space was like and whether there was a chance that her world was really connected to any other worlds out there like the theorists theorised.

The moment she had entered the gap in space, she had more felt than heard the explosion of the lab behind her. The radiating heat and pressure of the explosion had propelled her in and through the gap of space into the wormhole at a far higher speed than she had expected.

Perhaps that speed was what had also protected her from being torn apart by the waves and unstable currents she had brushed against. There had been pockets of air and non breathable gasses. It had been difficult for her to keep her eyes open because of the sharp cutting strings and currents she had fallen through, lacerating her body but thankfully not cutting her up. She had bounced off whirling walls of gravity and power that she couldn't identify with just her own weak human sensory suite.

Random items had been falling through the wormhole with her. She had caught glimpses of car keys, chairs, and myriads of socks. There had been all kinds of unexplainable junk travelling with or past her at various speeds. They had further battered her body and torn her clothes.

After bouncing and falling for an unknown period of time but what had felt like an immeasurable age, she had coincidentally been bounced into that tiny hole in the side of the wormhole and gotten stuck. She had been squeezed by the wormhole walls like toothpaste until that heavy slap to her backside had produced enough energy to force her out the other end of the tunnel hole.

Bai Xueli shut her eyes at the oncoming ground and hoped that the snow would be soft. Or hard enough to kill her in one blow. Hopefully dying in this way would be painless. Hopefully.

What a way to enter another world - if this was indeed another world. It was a pity she wouldn't have the chance to explore.

The growl and roar of a beast made her open her eyes in surprise. There were wild beasts here? Maybe they would eat her body after she crashed into the ground.

A blurry shape leapt up off the ground toward her. Huge furry paws caught and reduced her terminal velocity, so that when she fell, she fell into a warm, furry embrace that smelled distinctively male and somewhat bloody and sweaty. There was also a surprising hint of cinnamon and cloves in the scent that reminded her of spiced pastries with clotted cream.

Xueli felt her body roll in the embrace of the huge creature that had caught her until they came to a halt. She could feel the icy snow on the injured skin of her bare legs. She could see her hair caked with blood spread out like a fan below her, while she was partially wrapped in the protective embrace and scent of this enormous creature.

The moment they stopped moving, Xueli wondered if she wasn't going to die after all. Perhaps, she was going to live.

If she didn't die of all her injuries.

The huge furry creature gently released her and that was when Xueli realised that she truly might die from all her injuries. Suddenly, all the pain sensors in her body kicked in. She hadn't had the time to pay attention or to feel anything earlier, but now pain screamed through her entire body like white hot lances. It burned, cut and pierced her all over. Xueli felt her body convulsing at the intensity of it all before everything thankfully cut to black.