You are feeling very scared in this situation. Patrol? Explore a strange world you don't understand? Your soft, vulnerable furry body shrinks coyly. You start shaking and sobbing softly. "I just want to feel safe," you feel yourself say shamefully. "I want my mommy and daddy...any mommy, any daddy." You start crying openly like a little girl, knowing you are too young to be making these decisions on your own. You're just a kid. No...a scared, little girl crying for her daddy.
It's what you had feared for so long. It's what had kept you in the closet as gay when you were male, wasn't it? You feel helpless and scared, and being in a body made for being...taken...used...just makes your anxiety come welling up all the more harshly in your gut as a thousand shameful dreams come haunting you again, dreams you had locked deep in the dark recesses of your mind. Your hands first and then your whole body start shaking.
As you start the waterworks, Grawnad gets a scared look. "Okay," he says quickly, pacing about. "Jeez, you wouldn't be the first one that cried, but I can't have you going into a coma," he says. He punches keys on a small device in his hand. Or they look like keys on what looks like a device...the "device" is dried and pressed parchment, though, and the "keys" are what looks like some relation to cuneiform. It's a curious sort of arcanotechnology.
"Yes," he continues, "putting you with one of the more aggressive males would be a bad move." He looks at the readout with a troubled look, but it quickly clears up as he seems to find a safe candidate in what seems like it must be a brutal land. "Okay," he exclaims hopefully, "so we have one here that has been very non-aggressive, and he's been living alone in a small cottage in the Dreaded Highlands. It's a hardscrabble life up there, but he does well. He might appreciate a companion." He shakes his head uncertainly, but he punches in the command. "Anyway, Vixie, good luck with your new, uh, mate."
You are lifted up in a teal-colored magical whirlwind that seems to be ripping away pieces of your body, leaving glowing white over the places that have been stripped away. Your body hangs limply as you resign yourself to whatever is happening. So this is it. The end. You try to imagine it's the end as you whirl around, pretending in your mind that everything will go away. And everything goes black for a while.
~~~
You are plunked to the floor in an unceremonious heap, and you freeze as you find that a fox-man has a spear pressed against your throat. "One false move, and I cut the lights out on you," he says.
You say nothing, your voice stopped in your throat as you stare stupidly at the creature. He is extremely thin, probably slightly lighter weight than you are. What he does have there is all business. He is really quite handsome, his fur being a little rust-red but mostly silver in its winter coat...and surprisingly clean. His face doesn't look vicious, but instead, it seems to be set permanently in an odd pensive expression, in spite of his deadly threat. In his cabin, he obviously doesn't seem to see a need for clothes, or maybe he goes out routinely in the nude.
Since you are not accustomed to the cold yourself, though, and with your fur apparently being in its summer coat, the freezing cold hits you immediately in spite of the fire, and your teeth start to chatter against your will. It can't possibly be above freezing, although perhaps the outside is worse.
With a curse, the fox-man lays his spear aside immediately and grabs for a blanket made from what might be his own fur, which he tosses over you and then bends to tuck in around you. He growls, "the bastard just had to send you here in your summer coat. He acts smart, but he doesn't think." He finishes tucking you in, and he starts throwing a few bricks of some stuff on the fire, which seems to be made from a mixture of composted manure and grass. The place starts to warm up immediately, testifying to the sound construction of the fox-man's domicile.
Somewhat relieved, you pull the blanket in around you, which keeps the cold a little bit at bay. After your teeth have stopped chattering, you lie there and watch quietly as the fox-man starts going about several chores that seem to absorb much of his attention. The wiry creature's movements are efficient in motion but continuous in application. First, he seems to be grinding up some sort of root with a primitive-looking mortar-and-pestle, and then he is oiling some metallic-looking instruments that have the appearance of being homemade. He takes a charred poking-stick and picks up a couple of small pieces of meet out of the ashes, shaking them off and putting them into his stone cauldron. You seem to have caught him in the middle of making dinner.
Over time, your original shock of chill upon being teleported here begins to subside, and slowly, you work up the courage to speak. "Grawnad has named me Vixie," you say meekly. "I...am to be your..." You can't bear to say the words.
"My what?" he growls. "My mate? My slave? My bitch?" The fox-man shakes his head in disgust. "That's what I thought of myself coming into here," he said.
You pause for a heartbeat as it strikes you. The words "so you're gay, too?" come tumbling from your lips before you can stop them.
The fox-man starts to let out a frustrated sigh, but he seems to sense your regret, some of his scarce social perception coming back to him. "In this life, you would call me that," he says. "I was bisexual in my past life or at least thought I was, but in this one, I thought for a while I preferred males." A bitter expression passes over his face. "Now, I prefer nobody," he concludes.
You feel like a stupid, defective gay boy, trying to talk to a girl. You realize it's hard to see the fox as a man, now that you remember he was born a girl, which makes you feel...ignorant? That's troubling. And here you are, stuck in a female body, and you feel like a dumb teenage boy, still, with "man-boobs" on his chest of the kind that gym-coaches like to pinch for a truculent source of humor. It's just another humiliating, weak, defective body.
Seeming to read your mind, the fox-man chuckles softly. "Don't worry, you'll get used to it." He snorts and blows a lock of head-fur out of his face. "Give it some time, and you'll be a lean and sinewy vixen, at least if you stay living up here instead of going down into the valley to become some overfed harem slave for some territorial lord." He lowers his head. "Not that I would mean to judge you...I kind of did for a while because it was...safe...and I thought I was happy a while..."
You feel upset at him for saying that. "How could you be happy that way?" you say, affronted.
"You don't know this land," he says. "If you are 'free,' it's a fight for survival and a battle for territory and control over the submissive males and females...and hordes of despirited, often castrated labor slaves. In a harem, there is no pain except being used sexually once in a while and also childbirth if you are female, and the only thing hunting you is probably someone that wants to do more of the same, although maybe someone will finish off what's left of your soul and reduce you to being a laborer." He shakes his head. "The world down in the valleys is savage and despicable, although it does look like paradise."
"And you left," you say.
He nods numbly. "My last master was a dragon lord," he says. "He tried to teach me magic to make me into a warrior-apprentice, so I was being trained abusively besides being an outlet for his sexual appetite. In his last training session, he was zapping me repeatedly with magical arcs like freakin' Emperor Palpatine, and I finally got a shot back at him. It struck something vital, and I took to running before he could recover." He seems to blink away tears. "It's sick, but although he mistreated me, I sort of loved him. I don't want to be a warrior, though. I don't want to be objectified as some thug, the way he did me."
He breaks off from his story as if to avoid becoming too emotional, and he smirks suddenly. "So what name did that dummy Grawnad try to saddle you with, eh?" he says humorously.
"Vixie," you hear yourself reply. You try to make yourself accept the name...the name of a toy. You feel hollow.
He scratches the side of his neck as he cocks his head to the side, and he says, "Hey, you might look like that now, but if you let me get you into shape, you might be wanting to rethink accepting that." He chuckles. "He called me Tod. My old name, well that's none of your business. I earned my real name or rather what I accept as my real name, and I call myself by something more respectable and less childish...Reynard. You don't have to change your name, but you know, maybe think of it...Vixie."
You don't know why, but you think he's right. His new name seems to have an aristocratic ring to it.
Well, you have several options available to you, four of which are the most obvious. You could take up Reynard's offer and become a rugged plateau-top survivor, or you could let him lead you down into one of the valleys, where some warlord might take you on as one of his possessions. Also, Reynard did say that he was bisexual in his past life, not gay, and perhaps he still has feelings left for a vixen. Finally, there is always the idea of trying to reconcile him with his old lover, and perhaps volunteering to be their house-servant would be more interesting than spending your life as some rape-pet. Choices, choices.