The sun had begun to sink below the horizon as she stepped out of the bowling alley. Looking off towards the slowly sinking globe, Kyra was once again reminded of the fact that she was no longer on Earth. The dazzling light hit the peaks of the mountain and refracted off the fluffy white clouds in a dizzying array of rainbow colours that would put an Aurora to shame.

Seeing the sun so low on the Horizon reminded Kyra that the MilkTree from earlier had thrown out all of the Fruits that she had kept for Ihaka, and that he had already eaten the only fresh one that she had gotten from it.

She had a fierce debate with herself as she stood there with her fists clenched. After seeing everyone’s reaction to her bringing in the TerraWolf today, and since hearing about the fate of anyone who went hunting alone, Kyra had become far more reluctant to venture back out through the gates again. She thought about asking Blaize if she would be willing to watch Ihaka for an hour or two as she went out, but even with the slow passing of the day here, she didn’t think she had thirty minutes before the sun was gone. If she went to talk to Blaize, it would be dark before she even made it back to building four.

On the other hand. The MilkTree had planted itself —quite literally, Kyra giggled to herself— fairly close to the entrance of the base. She was sure that it wouldn’t take her 20 minutes to quietly go there and back.

Annie had also mentioned that the Military did have patrol’s out and about. She should be able to get help if it came to that.

Did she want to bet Ihaka’s life on a should? Did she want to face the next 18 old hours without food for him?

Cursing herself for naively thinking that she could pop over to visit the Tree at any time, Kyra started towards the gate.

As Kyra walked, she thought about the stark contrast between how the SpiritRealm had been depicted both in the Medea and her lessons, to the reality of what she found here.

Back on Earth, the impression that she’d gotten was of untapped potential with just a slightly higher level of danger than what you would find on any frontier on earth. Not that Kyra was really aware of what the frontier’s had been like when they were frontiers.

But she certainly hadn’t been led to believe that there may be any possibility of meeting her death on the hike to the base. Let alone that the native beasts might be so ferocious that they would drive the majority of the population to abandon the idea of creating new opportunities for themselves, and that they might decide it would be better to join a corporation.

And however anyone put it, a corporation was what those new groups were looking like.

The shadows stretched long as Kyra jogged through the gate. Just then, she realised that she had left her protective gear back in her cubicle. Cursing, she turned right and broke out into a run.

The canopy of the trees blocked out a lot of the light, and Kyra almost hesitated to go in, but not wanting to waste what little light there was left, she ploughed forward. The nearby trees gave as softly welcoming susurration as she did, and though she told herself that she did not actually know whether or not it had been intended in that way, it did make her feel marginally safer somehow.

Hurrying along the path that she remembered from earlier, Kyra noticed that the grasses and shrubbery were again bending out of her way. At first she was just grateful, and even mumbled thanks under her breath as she ran passed. However, it did not take her long to realise that they were taking her far too far to the left to then where she thought the MilkTree was.

“Am I remembering wrongly? Isn’t the MilkTree that way?” She pointed and seemingly asked the air.

In response, the brushes simply bent further in the same way as they were before. Kyra took a split second to decide whether or not she wanted to trust the directional sense of these plants who were at best strangers, even assuming that they could indeed understand her and where she was going.

Plunging through the opening that they gave her, Kyra snorted at the odd thought of considering plants as strangers.

After running for a good ten minutes, Kyra was starting to get out of breath and to regret her choice to trust these strangers when she heard it.

Growling. Snarling. Coming from behind her.

Kyra’s heart leapt into her throat, and Ihaka was also starting to become scared. Trying to hush him, Kyra took advantage of the newfound energy that suddenly coursed through her.

She saw a large creek through what little light remained from the sun, and though she wasn’t certain the concept of breaking up sent trails translated over into this Realm, she still plunged into the shin deep water to wade upstream.

After a good five minutes of this, the shrubbery on her right abruptly split open. Taking that as her cue, she grabbed Ihaka’s bottle to fill it with water and quickly took a gulp herself.

She nodded to herself as she started jogging through the brush once more. Kyra had time and again proven to be woefully underprepared and under informed since stepping through the portal that morning. But even she could learn. Lesson number one of survival. Have water. Only a small amount, but check.

She had long since stopped hearing the sounds of growling, in fact, she was almost certain that they had never been following her in the first place. She had no idea where she was now, but the path that the plants had taken her on seemed to have completely avoided any of the large predators in the area.

Focusing more now on keeping quiet than on speed, Kyra started to look around, realising then, that she could do so.

The sun had definitely sunk completely over the horizon by that point. The canopy was also thick enough to have blocked any light that the eight moons might refract down on her. Yet she could see fairly clearly where she was going.

Her heart sped up, but with excitement this time. She knew what this was.

Not wanting to scare them away she focused on the path ahead, but was unable to suppress the tiny whisper that escaped her lips, “Will-o’ the-Wisps,” She grinned down at Ihaka.

Seemingly relieved at the change of her mood, Ihaka squirmed and inquired up at her, “Isps?”

“Shh. Yes. Wisps. They are lighting our way.” She grinned at him, keeping to herself that the lighting of their way was probably not intentional on the Wisps side. Although. With how aware and intelligent the rest of everything in this Realm was proving to be, you never could know.

“We should thank them later.” She added, figuring it couldn’t hurt to do so.

Ihaka nodded enthusiastically, “Tank Isps!”

“Shhh. We don’t want to scare them away.” She said, still moving at a steady pace.

A horrified look crossed Ihaka’s face as he hurriedly used both of his fingers to create a shushing gesture over his mouth. “SHHHH!”

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“Exactly.” Kyra affirmed softly, “Shhh.”

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh………..” Kyra just about jumped right out of her skin. The light surrounding them dimmed slightly, as the Wisp that had apparently been floating close to Kyra’s right shoulder abruptly fled.

Ihaka’s eyes were wide as he stared at the spot where it had disappeared from. “Isp ‘one?”

Kyra cursed herself mentally for not having seen that coming. “Not too far I don’t think, or the light would be gone.” She smiled down at him, “We both gave each other a fright, but maybe if we keep quiet,” she huffed, “it’ll maybe, possibly, come back.”

Ihaka gave her another wide eyed look as he silently pressed both of his index fingers down over his lips.

Kyra nodded back at him as she pressed on as quietly as possible.

After about another thirty minutes or so of trekking, Kyra came to a large clearing that had formed around the gigantic fallen log, of what had evidently been a truly massive tree in its time.

The diameter of the log was twice the height of Kyra, and the lights of the Wisps lit up the area enough so that she could tell that, even if it had been bright, she wouldn’t have been able to make out the length of the thing.

For the first time since passing through the gates on her way out, Kyra stopped to take a proper breath.

It was quite possibly the most enchanting sight that she had ever seen.

A huge array of wildflowers and different grasses blanketed the fifty meters or so of space between the tree line and the log, different mosses grew up and patterned themselves over its sides, and thousands of tiny, myriad coloured lights, flittered over, in, and around the entire space. In this setting, the Will-o’ the-Wisps looked more like tiny little fairies flying around their meadow home, than they did their more ominous namesake of floating lights that appeared in the forest to lead travellers astray.

It was as Kyra was turning her body to the side to allow Ihaka to take in the sight that something even more magical happened. A golden crack appeared down the side of the fallen trunk, and a small opening, just big enough for her to slip through, showed itself to her.

Oh, my Goddess, Kyra thought to herself, I am literally stepping into a Fairy Tale. Let’s just hope that it’s not of the Grimm kind.

“Shall we go see what that is?” She whispered to Ihaka with some apprehension.

Clutching at her shoulder straps, his eyes wider than they’d ever been before, Ihaka made a little “Mm” sound.

Taking that as a yes, Kyra stepped forward into the swirling lights of the meadow. The Wisps danced and swirled around her as though curious about this strange creature that was intruding on their home.

Ihaka let out a soft gasp of delight as Kyra put one foot in front of the other, not entirely sure what to make out of this scene. One thing was for certain, and that was that she could definitely understand now, how these little glowing lights, so much like tiny little spirits darting around her, had inspired the name of the Spirit Realm itself.

One Wisp seemed to be particularly interested as it bobbed half a meter in front of her. It’s light flashing a different colour with each bob.

Slowly, hoping not to scare it off, Kyra extended her hand palm down towards it. The Wisp made one circle around the proffered appendage as if wondering what she was trying to do, before it lit very briefly on her forearm, then started bouncing on that instead.

Kyra let out a very soft laugh, to which Ihaka responded with a very shrill giggle. Clapping, he then reached out to try and grasp the Wisp. Predictably, it zipped off into the night to get away from the grabbing hand.

“No!”

The rest of the Wisps around them undulated with surprise.

“Shh, baby. Nobody likes being grabbed ok?” Kyra whispered, “You have to be gentle and let them come to you if they want to.”

Not seeming to grasp her sage wisdom, Ihaka made a pleading sound and pointed off in the direction that the Wisp had disappeared to.

Sighing, Kyra gently grasped Ihaka’s pointing hand in hers, “No baby. You scared it.”

“‘Ared?”

“Yes, scared.”

Still pouting slightly, but seemingly resigned to not getting to pet a Wisp right then, Ihaka turned his attention to the rest of the swirling lights around them, and Kyra resumed walking towards the golden crack in the bark ahead of her.

Feeling more and more like a character out of a Fairy Tale, Kyra peered through the opening and couldn’t help but let out a gasp as she did so.

Inside was a cosy little room. Calling a hollow in a fallen log a room, would have seemed like a stretch to her any time before then, but really, the space was too, too deliberate —for want of a better word— for her to call it anything else.

It was an oval space. Just over a meter wide, two meters or so long, and just high enough for her to stand in without hitting her head. The floor was blanketed in a thick layer of fresh petals, and in a nook on the wall to her left, was a small pile of MilkFruit, and a couple of the bamboo/celery stalks that she had eaten earlier.

Taking off her shoes, she stepped into the petals, which proved to be a lot fluffier and softer than she had believed it possible for them to be. Kyra then bit back some tears as the warmth of the inside hit her and she sank to her knees.

“I don’t even know who to thank,” she muttered as she ran her hand down the wooden wall nearest to her.

It was then that she saw where the light was coming from. Gasping, she first let Ihaka out of the carrier as he was squirming to be let down. Then she again pressed her hands to the walls, bringing her face so close that her nose almost touched it. Following along the grain of the wood were tiny streaks of golden light that were flowing through the grain of the wood.

Breathing deeply, Kyra leant back and looked at the space that she was in. It did not look like a hollow in a dead log at all. If anything, it looked very much alive and healthy.

Even though it was getting well past the “time” for Ihaka to go to sleep, the circumstance and the adventure left him far too excited for Kyra to even think about laying him down just yet. Honestly feeling more than a bit excited and adventurous herself, she didn’t need much convincing to; First, treat the petals as a play/sandpit, where Ihaka would go diving and crawling wobblingly amongst said petals, between building “petal castles”, and the occasional screaming laughter as they would just throw them up into the air to watch them cascade down around them.

Then, after what was probably about an hour or so of such shenanigans, Kyra whole heartedly supported Ihaka’s curiosity about taking another look outside and exploring the long meadow where the Wisps stills danced.

She was careful to introduce the concept to him as a solemn affair, however. For one, she really did want him to settle down to sleep before he got tired enough to throw a stroppy, but also just because she wanted him to remember that the Wisps weren’t toys for him to grab at.

Wanting to give him a chance to get some exercise as well, Kyra brought out Ihaka’s floor blanket and laid it down in an open area not too far from their hollow, intending to give him a little challenge.

Sitting down on it, she called him over from the entrance to the hollow. “They’re so pretty Ihaka, come watch them with me.”

He came, as babies his age were want to do when in an unfamiliar environment and being called by an adult they trusted.

Occasionally he would call “Kai!?”, in an uncertain voice when a particularly long clump of grass would block his view of her. She waved her arms up into the air and called back to him.

He got semi-lost and panicked a couple of times, to which Kyra would persistently call out to him until he calmed down. She also noticed the Wisps reacting and worriedly hovering closer to him when he did.

Eventually, he found her. Screaming her name in triumph as he crawled onto there edge of the blanket. Kyra grabbed him up as if it was the most exciting thing in the world. Kissing his little face all over, and gushing about how proud she was that he had found her.

As she did, she slowly started rocking him from side to side, talking more slowly as she started mentioning how even the Wisps were proud of him as they really did seem to be swirling around him in exited congratulations as he made it to the blanket. She described to him in a low voice how they had been watching over him the entire time, and how she had never let him out of her sight.

By the time she had moved on though wondering just what the Wisps actually were and where they came from, and had started talking softly about how pretty the flowers were in the light of the Wisps, Ihaka’s head was drooping on her shoulder and he was yawning heavily.

It didn’t take much longer for him to nod off completely.

“I really am proud of you sweet heart.” She smiled, “That was a big distance for such a little guy in the dark, through an untamed meadow no less!”

Supporting him with one arm, she grabbed the blanket with the other, and in less than a dozen strides, she was back at the hollow.

Settling Ihaka down into the petals, Kyra took a seat in the entrance, and finally, let the events of the day hit her.

She had no idea where she was. This place had ended up being a lot more foreign and dangerous than she had anticipated, or been led to believe, and she hadn’t been expecting a walk in the park. She had NO idea where this was, and it was unlikely that she’d make it back alive without the help of the plants. She had no clue where the base was, and the plant life was apparently more sentient than animal life here. Maybe, who knew? Animals were apparently way smarter here than on earth too. And. She. Had. NO. CLUE. WHERE. SHE. WAS!!!!!

Finally exhausted with her own inner turmoil, she let out a long heartfelt sigh, and leaned her head up against the entrance.

“It’s so beautiful.” She murmured.