Narrator here. You know what they say about the best laid plans. Something always goes wrong, some tiny little snag here, a little trip there, and suddenly your being chased by a monsterous crab lobster hybrid. Poor Justine, I barely knew her. Such a shame. Characters like her don't come around very often, and it's always a joy to narrate their travels and shenangians.

...

Oh. She's still alive? Wow. Okay. That's surprising. I thought my task here was going to be finished early. Well then. Don't I look rather silly. Sigh. Alright well, you can't exactly start things off with exposition like a monster and then not explain how things got to that point. That would just make me look bad. So lets narratively turn back time to see Justine at the start of her delv into the odd red forest.

Justine stared at the forest. It fortunately didn't stare back because none of the tree's were monsters and Justines mind definetly wasn't trying to play tricks on her to force herself to stay at her camp where it was "safe". Yup. Just an ordinary forest where each tree had bright red leaves and the air smelled of spices. Totally normal. Hence why crossing her arms and giving the forest a dirty look was a way of telling herself that she was absolutely up to this task and wouldn't die alone and scared without ever seeing another human being.

"Not really helping me out there, brain. Could use some positivity, or courage!" Justine gave an expectant look at the sky. "Or something like the voice of the world? Eh? Ehhh? No? Damn. Scratch that one off the list then." She put both her hands on her face in a double facepalm and then slid them down. "Okay. I can do this. It's just a forest. Without water and food, I will die when I run out. So what's the first step?" It was time to bring out the handy dandy survival guide that had come free with her hiking equipment.

She sat down on a fallen log near the edge of the forest, and pulled the manual out. It looked quite outdated, probably because it was. But Justine just could never bring bringherself to get rid of it. The manly guide of manliness of manly wilderness survival. It had been a gift from her father on her fifteenth birthday. The bare chested man suplexing a tree on the cover had always given her a chuckle. Giving her finger a lick, Justine started flicking through the well worn pages from all the numerous times she had read through it.

"Defending yourself from bears, no. How to make a proper campfire? Useful, but no. Ah. How to find water. Blah blah blah, lakes and ponds bad for drinking. Okay. Blah blah blah, large rivers bad because possible pollution. Okay." Ah, there it is. "To... go about finding these bodies of water, first, use your senses. If you stand perfectly still and listen intently, you may be able to hear running water, even if it’s a great distance away." So she just had to listen? That's it? Well that didn't sound particularly hard. Wouldn't mean jack if she couldn't actually hear anything though.

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"Guess I'll test it." After trying to fold her legs into what looked like a mockery of the lotus position, she closed her eyes and focused on the sounds of the world around her. First was the wind blowing through the tree's, it reminded Justine of that one scene from the Pocahontas movie she saw as a kid. Twirling, swirling, breezing and blowing, the wind stopped for nobody or anything. It blew through the tree's from east to west on its unending journey. When it finally stopped, she tried to listen harder. Fine tuning her focus to the sound of running water.

Next came the sound of insects, the buzzing moving and crawling that never stopped in the backround noise. Something was off about it though, and not that the sounds of the insects being completely unfamilaiar. That was to be expected! What was weird is that they all sounded so far away. Justine opened one eye and looked around her at the ground near the treeline. Nothing. No insects, no critters climbing the tree's or nesting in the shade around them. No birds making nests and feeding their young who were all screeching for food. Nothing. Maybe the silver tree was making some kind of barrier that's keeping everything but plants away? No, that would mean that the silver bird and she herself wouldn't be able to stay in the barrier.

"Gah! C'mon. Focus." Justine knit her eyebrows together and tried to focus even harder. Past the sound of the wind blowing, past the unknown sounds of the insects and critters occupying the forest, and heard...

Something. It sounded like; something rushing or crashing. An endless noise that was-oh It's a waterfall. Duh. The rushing, the crashing, that was obviously tons of water endlessly falling over a ledge. The sound of it was coming from northeast. The book was right! Thank you tree suplexing bare chested man! Perfect. Justine wanted to give a yell of triumph but kept her mouth shut. Instead she did the super awesome "Hell yeah I did it but i'm trying to dance quietly so that nothing hears me!" dance. It wasn't a good dance. One would best describe it as unskilled bodily flailing. But she didn't care. This was Justines second triumph in this land. (The first being that she made freinds with a bird.)

From here on out, she was going to have to be stealthy as hell. The stealthier she was, the less things would notice her, and the less things that noticed her, meant that there was less things that might be likely to want her for lunch. "Ah. I should bring weapons. This isn't some kind of rpg where I can just slap slimes with a tree branch and collect coins that fell from their dissapearing body." That would be pretty cool though.

"...Personal Display." Still nothing. Damn. "Guess i'll cross that one off too." Justine stifled a laugh. The time for yahoo's and yippee's would come later. She had to show this world how a fantasy nerd gets geared up.