You can't risk it

Naked, cold, and vulnerable is far too risky a way to meet a group of people. You'd rather risk dying alone in the cold wood than get used like a hole in the lumber-pile, and windup scrubbing some landlord's floors with a belly full of illegitimacy.

You turn to look up the road and see nothing, dejected you move into the forest instead. You take your time, conserving your energy as best you can. It's just you, you have to rely on yourself.

You keep pushing, having no-idea where you're even going. You rue your foolishness, as your feet get waterlogged enough to lose hunks of skin on rocks and stumps. The cold making your bones shake. You stop at the edge of a clearing, thinking perhaps this might indeed be your end. Foolish individualism, as good of an end as any; you figure.

Just as you're about to slip into the cold sleep, you hear a snap that makes you summon something more from within. And when you turn your head you see a large, tusked creature lumber forward on two legs. He carries what must be a whole tree, lightly trimmed and sculpted over one shoulder as if it was a small sack of grain being brought up from the mill.

It looks down as you look up at it's never-ending abdomen, abs going as far as the eye dare look. A simple loincloth drips with rain water, and does little to lend him any modesty. "Humne, in these woods? During the wet-time?" he swings his free hand and presses it to your chest, rubbing across your breasts mindlessly, "Humne, very cold. Humne in much trouble. Why would a humne let them-self get this way?"

You summon courage to answer back through chattering teeth, "I'm lost, my clothes were lost. I need warmth, or I will die." He looks down and considers shifting it's re-curved legs to better support its weight, you're not sure it can understand you. "Humne seems safe, not like other humne who cut the living wood and disgrace the rest."

He bends down scooping you into his hand as you limply attempt to have any say in it, " Humne can come with me, find warmth in the moss at the making of the ash bonfire." He presses you against his shoulder until you grab onto his neck for dear life, thankful for his body heat.

With this, he shambles off deeper into the forest. And you can do nothing but hold on.