My hands stung even more than my scraped pride. A pair of firm hands helped me untangle the wispy plants from my person.

"Thank you," I said, smiling brightly when I was free. The wattage of my grin turned up when I met the dark brown orbs belonging to Adam.

Lucia's gorgeous blue was also there, but it was less surprising.

"Are you okay?" Lucia asked.

I gave a half-shrug. I was lucky that the scarce plant life shielded me. Also, I dropped Lucia's hand. That meant I didn't take her down with me.

"There's a secret cave!" I said, expecting to see Adam eagerly tackle it and change the embarrassing topic.

Instead of looking at the cave, Adam was looking at where I fell.

"How did you manage to trip?" He said.

I could feel embarrassment heat my cheeks, and my lips thinned.

"Someone yelled and freaked me out," I said, throwing the hot potato on one of the monkey boys. "Wait, why are you back down here?"

"I heard you cry out on my way down with Wyatt," Adam said. Then, his earnest eyes were looking at the cave.

Oh no, Wyatt. As if my premonition abilities were finally working, Wyatt appeared with a literal bang. He was several feet above us, taunting me, of course.

"Wow, Wendy is such a clutz. She took out so many innocent lives." Wyatt's booming voice came from above. I didn't have time to even glower properly up at him.

Monkey Boy jumped off the mountainside ledge. One second, he's making me wish I had taken down the mountain and him on it, and the next, he was on the ground with a thump his knees would remind him about in twenty years.

"Where's Lucas?" Lucia said, looking for her brother.

"He's up there. I think he's making a nest." Wyatt said before running towards the cave.

"I call dibs!" I said, chasing after him. It was my sacrifice that exposed the treasure cove. I get dibs!

Trying to race against Wyatt was an impossible task. The oaf had longer legs and more stamina than me. I opted to cheat, and so I jumped on his back.

He took it like a champ as I landed square on him. It was unfair how he didn't even flinch. He just kept running for it.

I could hear Lucia admonish both of us, but it was hard to focus on her words.

Wyatt tried to dislodge me as I stuffed my fingers into his ears to give him wet willies. Our tussle ended at the entrance of the cave in a draw.

And that was only because of the sight that greeted us.

The exposed hole was only a few feet wide and not even five feet tall. It looked like someone had taken a scalpel and was trying to crave out an eye, only they did it vertically instead of horizontally. That weird shape was barely worth noting.

It was what was inside its depths that mattered. Our bickering stopped just a few steps into it after all.

The expected darkness was interrupted by pale blue dots of light splattered everywhere. What was even more impressive were the teal floating bubbles. The hauntingly beautiful color stole away every sour feeling in my heart and replaced it with wonder.

It's so beautiful. The tension escaped my body, and I slipped off Wyatt's back.

"Mushrooms?" Wyatt said, and for once, I said nothing snarky.

"They look like floating jellyfish."

The two of us were silent when Adam and Lucia caught up to us. They were equally awed by the sight, and we all stared.

Suppose they were mushrooms that makes them like a plant. That meant I could connect or do things with them. It would be cool to control glowing floating mushrooms!

I've seen fungi before. Fall was here, and the forest was bursting with mushrooms everywhere. Those paled in comparison to what I saw here. The mushrooms in the forest were also unnerving whenever I spotted one. They were deeply connected to my trees but didn't respond as quickly to my presence. They didn't need me the same, but I was helping the forest, so they tolerated me. At least, that was how I read their cold indifference.

I poked the closest one to me. I didn't put any energy or thought, just a nudge, and yet it was as if fireworks were inserted. Everything in the cavern grew brighter in color, and spores rained down on us.

The four of us were coughing and gasping for air as we ran out of the cave.

"Let's go clean up," Lucia said. And in agreement, we all returned to the house after grabbing Lucas along the way.

I didn't tell anyone but noted how the spores fell from us and ingrained themselves in my trees on our trek back. The bright glow briefly flickered in the wind as the spores settled.

I bit my lip, unsure of what was to come. It wasn't like the spores were what drove the Evans twins mad.

That familial tale was just a family bedtime story.

..right?

Everyone cleaned up and went our separate ways until it was just Adam and me. We waited for his ride to get him to the clearing outside the Unruly Forest.

"Wendy, about before." Adam started to speak, and I froze.

The day's excitement made me forget that I was trying to escape being alone with him! I blurted out way too much to him!

"I saw the spores settle in the forest!" I said quickly as I tried to ensure the conversation didn't go to world escaping and witchy abilities.

"Spores?" Adam said, following my conversational lead.

"The forest is going to change with them. If the survivors can beat the other fungi."

The conversation lulled; there wasn't much to add to that. Adam opened his mouth to bring up my slip, but his ride appeared before I could rudely change the subject again.

Stolen novel; please report.

"Wendy, we'll talk next time." He said, giving me a firm look.

I bit my lip and nodded. I wish Adam would laugh at me and not treat what I said seriously. Clearly, I was just a deranged kid! But Adam was kind, serious, and way too observant.

I watched him leave, waving at the sleek car as it soundlessly disappeared down the bumpy road.

I entered the forest, trying to spot the bright invaders. The air didn't taste any different, but I could sense only so much. I all but ran to Originis.

With a touch of my hands on her rough bark, I instantly connected to countless lives. I expected a battlefield to be ringing clear and throughout the forest.

Instead, what I got was the quiet before the storm. I only understood how connected a forest can be once I received this power. To most people, it was quiet, with the occasional animal sounds, but every inch of the forest was alive. The cave spores had slunk into this peaceful equilibrium, and I had to warn my forest.

Only time will tell what the changes will bring. For now, I couldn't see Jack diddly shit.

And while I waited for the war of the fungi to begin, I had to take how I would start my own battle by keeping my mouth shut to Adam.

After that slip, I feared meeting Adam for the first time since I knew him. This was worse than my witch slip-up or any other embarrassing thing I'd done in front of him. I barely got away with that line of questioning, and only because he let me.

How would I explain what I meant by leaving this world? The truth was harsh because this is a fictional world. I agonized over how to solve this to no avail. As luck would have it, Adam didn't come by the following week. Yet again, there was another mysterious family emergency. There were three more until a month had passed, and no Adam.

Now, I was no longer worried about what to tell Adam but what the heck was going on in Adam's family. Was his new sister severely sick?

That month, the weather moved into December, bringing frost and changes.

Grandpa Evans could use complete sentences, and the trio of kids had moved in. All three lived upstairs. The unabashed joy on their faces humbled me. For all my gripe about this world, I'd never had to share a room with another. How did that feel? Wait, I take that back in case Gus reads it somehow.

I couldn't make the trip to see Mary every other day like before. Morning dew turned into frost traps that weren't safe for me to walk or bike to her place. Mary didn't have time to be a hostess anyway. She was buckled down by all the work at her own farm. During spring, I would make more of a point to visit, but like Mary, I would be boggle down by snow soon.

Everything was going as planned. The kittens were growing up strong and left the treehouse. Lucas seemed the most attached to them and always had at least one perched on his shoulder. Lucia took over the household chores and made me feel obsolete. Wyatt, of course, had Nips shadowing him, so I took comfort in Molly.

The forest was still deadly quiet, with undertones that were hard to decipher into human language. The spores had spread undoubtedly, but they weren't hostile. There was no murder, and try as I might, I couldn't connect or communicate with them well. Either I was just a lousy conversationalist, or they were being purposefully obtuse and speaking a different language to me.

Only the latter made sense. I used my free time to study fungi but did not return to the cave. I know my friends made their way into it and safely returned without attached spores.

If I went, it would only spell trouble. Fungi reacted to me, and they entered my forest thanks to that. The decay of fall and winter was also perfect timing for their invasion. In spring, there might be even more changes to my forest.

I checked on my forest every day, and when I started going out at night, I saw that the mushrooms lit up my forest with endless, unique colors. The glow began as tiny specks on the ground, on some bark and bushes. But now, almost mid-December, they were like tiny jellyfish buds hanging off whatever surface they could linger on.

What would happen to the rest of my forest's plants and animals?

Is there such a thing as a peaceful fungi takeover?

The routine I created was disrupted as the first snow fell.

I woke up in a foul mood that day and was utterly exhausted. This was rare because my body was always primed upon waking up.

A combination of growing pains and the damn midwife show Grandpa Evans wouldn't stop watching created a nasty morning funk. I lay in bed, delaying the inevitability of getting out of it. As my day started, the dark sky looked like an inky blank slate. It was too early for Grandpa Evans to be watching that damn show.

I threw off the covers and opened my door to go mute the damn tv. The living room was empty, and the TV was dark when I exited. I blinked, my mouth falling open in shock. I heard a baby crying. I know I heard it. Was it just a dream?

This funk of not knowing what was a dream and what was reality went on as the day grew long. I made breakfast to chop up some fruit and take my emotions out on the veggies.

The old tradition of sitting around the TV didn't go away with the new faces at home. We all made room around the TV, and everyone enjoyed their meal as the Finnish Dance Competition flashed on the screen. Well, everyone but me. I glared at the TV as my brain tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

More than once, whenever I had a wacky dream, the TV had a starring role. I'd take it apart if I was alone in the room to see why it was messing with me.

"Are you okay?" Lucia's gentle voice broke through my mental funk, and I blinked as I met her warm gaze.

"Yeah…I just had a weird dream last night." I shoved a spoonful of oatmeal into my mouth and averted my gaze.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Lucia leaned in to whisper even quieter.

Before I could tell her no, a knock at the door gave me the perfect excuse to hold up a finger and rush to the door.

I opened it and was shocked to see a very pregnant woman looking down at me rather impatiently.

I'd like to think she simply had the wrong home, but one doesn't mistakenly enter the Unruly Forest. Let alone navigate it on a simple whim and find the home tucked away inside it. How in the hell did she get here, and who is she?

"You've grown so much, little Wendy!" The woman erased her frustration off her face and replaced it with a more repulsive, sweet expression.

I blinked, my gaze going down to her belly. My father didn't have a second wife, right? I mean, Wendy's dad didn't, right?

"I'm your cousin, Sunny!" My confusion was clear as day on my face, so Sunny supplied this fact.

I stared blankly at her, unable to process this. I looked her up and down and saw we shared the same brown locks. But that was as far as the family resemblance went. Sunny was so plump I couldn't make out her features.

"Can you help me bring my bags in?" She didn't wait for a response after she asked and simply brushed by me and entered the home.

"Who are all these kids?" Sunny said as she looked at the trio with disapproving eyes.

"My friends that came to help on the homestead," I said, ignoring her bags, and followed her into the home.

"Are they living here?" Sunny said as she went to the kitchen to grab herself a bowl of grub. Everyone watched her brazen attitude with varying degrees of shock. Even Grandpa Evans turned away from the TV to look at her.

"I'm going to need my old room back," Sunny said after she grabbed a bowl and moved Wyatt out of his seat. She plopped down and started digging into the bowl with gusto.

"Wait…" Her old room? I scoured Wendy's memories and recalled no such thing.

"You were a toddler when I stayed here, short stack," Sunny said around yet another mouthful of food.

Shortstack?! I'm a growing girl! I puffed up my chest but was interrupted by Wyatt holding up a picture frame.

A younger Grandpa Evans, stood next to Grandma Carol. They were both holding onto a little bundle that looked just like me. Next to them was a man who was clearly an unjaded Uncle Benny. Next to Uncle Benny was a younger Sunny.

So she was my cousin? Wait, she's so far along…the dreams I've been having where I didn't have enough food and could hear a baby crying…

Shit.

So, all my thoughts and ideas around winter were again changed. Sunny took over Lucia's room. I tried to fight it because it was the second biggest room upstairs. Lucia was too nice. The boys gave her the third biggest, and then they took the last to share.

Sunny was strange but interesting. Grandpa Evans smiled at her when he saw her but didn't say much in the way of words. Sunny was unbothered by this and quickly made herself at home. She never did anything except for eating and became a permanent fixture in the TV room alongside Grandpa Evans. She gabbered to him like I did in the early days, and I felt a ping of jealousy.

"What will we do if the baby pops out during a snowstorm?" Wyatt asked me, and I paled at that imagery.

"Have you ever helped an animal give birth?" I asked; it was essentially the same thing, right?

Wyatt nodded, "We should still ask Mary for advice." He said as he stroked his chin.

For once, Wyatt had a good idea. Mary sent over a bunch of tips, but other than that, there was only so much else to offer. We had to wait and notify the midwife and then wait for the baby to come.

The only good thing to come from all of this was that babies stopped screaming in my dreams. Now, I had to wait for it to happen in reality instead.

Days passed with Sunny grating everyone's nerves like a nail file on a lime. She slowly chipped away at our sanity while eating all of our food. Sadly, the dreams were right; there just wouldn't be enough with this glutton.

Worst of all, still no Adam.