Nandi clapped his lower hands and rubbed the upper pair together.

“I hope that answers your questions, Lilijoy of the Teeth and Arms. I wish to commemorate this meeting with a boon.” He lowered his voice and glanced sideways at her. “They are something of a specialty of mine, you know. Hmm, let’s see... I can’t help you in the trials. That could get us both in trouble; besides, you will shine brightly, I’m sure.”

He snapped at least three pairs of fingers. “I’ve got just the thing! Something I’ve had for a long, long time; but you might say I outgrew it almost as long ago as I got it."

He made a swirling gesture with his fingers, as if pulling something from the air. The glow of his skin brightened and flowed up his arm, coalescing to a brilliant point between his index finger and thumb. When he offered it to Lilijoy, she could see it was a clear stone, still holding a faint milky glow, glinting where the surrounding light caught in its facets. He took her hand and wrapped her fingers around the stone’s warmth.

“Hold on to this for me, Lilijoy of the Teeth and Arms. It will stay with you at all times; you cannot lose it."

She held it in her hand, and then realized that the stone was flowing into her palm. It disappeared beneath her skin until it showed only one gleaming facet.

“You will find its value later. Maybe much later, when you have grown in wisdom and power. Until then, please look at it and think of me.”

He reached down to the largest of the bells that hung around his neck and took it in his top right hand. He gave it three slow shakes and then stepped to one side, ushering her forward with all of his arms as he bent a knee gracefully. Now revealed was a door of intricately carved wood, filled with rectangular geometric forms, formed between two of the stone pillars she had noticed earlier. As she stepped past Nandi, the door began to open, and before she had taken another step, she was pulled forward by a golden light pouring around its edge. She felt herself stretching, elongating and then she snapped forward, past the door into darkness.

Actually, more like dimness. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the low light, just before wall-sconced torches around the room burst into flames, two on each wall. The chamber felt large to Lilijoy, perhaps four times the size of Marcus’ bedroom in the factory-mine. Each set of torches framed a door, one per wall. The doors were sized smaller than most doors she had seen, as if they were made for her.

In front of her was a wooden door with a huge white lotus inlaid upon it. To her left was a door of silver, inlaid with a large flower bud in copper, while to her right the door was rough stone with a drooping flower of black glass. Behind her was the door she had just been sucked through, still full sized. She had no desire to experience that again, so she turned her attention to the other choices before her.

“Old, young and in between,” she guessed. “I’m young, so maybe I should take that one... But I like the wooden door much more. Plus it has a lotus.”

Done with her comprehensive analysis, she advanced to the wooden door, which thankfully did not pull her through, stretch or otherwise alter her being. Instead, it opened smoothly outward, revealing an outdoor scene, a meadow framed by a long wooden arbor covered in vines carrying bunches of purple flowers.

She walked out into the intoxicating scent between the trellised walls and didn’t notice when the door closed behind her. Emerging from the arbor, a path of white gravel framed by wooden beams led through an open grassy field towards a huge stand of trees.

She skipped through the field, balancing on the beams, first on one side, then the other as her whimsy took her, at times alongside the path to feel the soft grass beneath her feet. The field was filled with purple and yellow flowers and flying, buzzing insects floating from bloom to bloom. She thought they might be the honeybees of legend. She still remembered stories from Timout of these long extinct creatures and their miraculous product.

“I wonder what honey tastes like” she said aloud.

The buzzing around her abruptly escalated, which was a bit worrisome. She remembered something about bees stinging. Or was that butterflies? Either way, the buzzing had her a bit on edge.

“I would never steal your honey!” she yelled to no one. “I wouldn’t even know it if I saw it,” she said in a softer voice. The bees didn’t seem to believe her, if that was the reason for their agitation in the first place. Looking over the field, she saw a cloud of small airborne bodies moving in her direction.

Then she felt her first sting. “Ow!” She brushed her left shoulder where the pain originated. A bee dropped to the ground, leaving a thin barb and a tiny trail of slime on her.

“Hey!” she protested “What did I do to you?”

She looked down at the perpetrator and was about to stomp her foot down on it, when she realized that she had no shoes. She examined it for any signs of renewed stinging activity, but it just twitched and half-flew in an erratic circle on the gravel of the path.

Without asking, her vision zoomed in on the bee, almost causing her to fall backwards in surprise.

“Jeez...when did I learn to do...” Her voice tailed off. The bee was clearly in distress, and now she could see its tail, ripped and leaking.

“Oh,” she said. “Did I do that to you?”

Forgetting her earlier desire to crush the bee underfoot, she picked it up and held it in her hand. Just then its brothers and sisters arrived in a howl of buzzing wings. She held up the injured bee and yelled into the buzz.

“I think your friend is hurt! I’m just going to put him on this flower and go!”

She knelt to place the bee on a generous yellow bloom next to the path, and at that moment the bees enveloped her. They landed on her everywhere they could find purchase, and on each other when they couldn’t. She closed her eyes and mouth and prepared to run for her life. The massed bees were heavier than she could have imagined, and the countless crawling legs tickled and itched her skin. Though there was a notable lack of stinging going on.

Deciding that staying still would be a better choice than trying to run with her own weight in insects crawling over her, she froze in place. Several minutes of tense standoff followed, with Lilijoy doing her best not to panic, while the bees decided whether stinging was on the agenda.

Then the weight began to lift, as one bee after another left her body and flew off. Soon, all the bees were gone, leaving Lilijoy half crouched, still not daring to move. She opened her eyes after another minute, and saw that the injured bee was gone too. Sitting back on her haunches, she wiped the sweat from her forehead. Oddly sticky sweat.

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She looked at her hand and it was coated in a thick golden liquid. She tried to shake it off, and a few blobs flew onto the gravel. She gave it a sniff. It smelled sweet, floral even with just a hint of… .

Wait… where did that word come from? Did her system insert it into her thoughts? She went back to smelling her hand. She could detect the flowers from the arbor she had passed through. , she felt it was called.

“Is this a new thing?” she asked aloud. “I like it, but don’t do it too much, or I’ll get distracted.” She figured her smelling ‘’ had finally gotten started.

“Was that really necessary, Jiannu?” she asked aloud again. ‘’ her system replied. Jiannu’s voice piped in, “Your integration levels have come far enough to supply identification of sensory impressions. In a day or two the information will be inserted seamlessly, you won’t even notice.”

“The substance on your right hand is honey. This sample is composed of the flowers of wisteria, orange, red clover, purple coneflower and several others. Would you like to know more about the chemical composition and relative proportions of the plant derivatives?”

“Can I eat it?”

“Yes.”

“Then no.”

She tuned out Jiannu, rolled back and sat on the gravel and stuck a finger in her mouth. And then another. Soon she had most of her hand stuffed into her face as she moaned in bliss at the taste.

“Isso gooo,” she managed around her hand. Soon the honey was gone, though the stickiness was not.

She gathered herself up and resumed her way down the path. At the edge of the meadow, the path diverged, one heading into the vast grove of trees ; the other continued to her left around the edge of the meadow. She peered into the forest, shading her eyes against the brightness of the sun. She could see massive tree trunks surrounding the path off into the distance. She moved in, thankful for some shade, and savored the new atmosphere. It was dark. Peaceful. It smelled like... “Don’t do it Jiannu!” she warned, before a label could be inserted into her consciousness.

She wanted this experience without labels and knowledge.

It smelled dark, and musty and somehow spicy. The air was moist and cool. She spent at least an hour exploring the sensations of the forest. Crunchy needle leaves. Sticky, spicy sap running down the trunks. Massive rippled orange shelves sticking out of dead and dying trees. Little rounded balls emerged from the fallen leaf needles on the forest floor. They puffed out misty powder when pressed.

She found a boulder half buried in the earth and marveled at the water droplets condensed on its surface, which was much cooler that the forest air. The condensation fed sheets of tiny green plants that turned into a whole jungle when she inspected it with her new magnified vision. It was a never-ending unfolding of glorious discovery; heart melting, eyes tearing beauty manifest in nature as it was supposed to be.

She spent a moment hating her ancestors, who had destroyed this on the Outside, but that hate turned to resolve.

“I’m going to bring this back,” she said.

“I’m going to bring this back!” she yelled into the towering foliage.

“I’m going to bring this back,” she whispered in a solemn vow between her and the surrounding woods.

Eventually, she asked Jiannu to help her identify the marvels all around. She learned about conifers, and moss, puffballs and shelf fungus. She learned about the striding proudly on the forest floor with their long legs and tiny bodies and the , little mobile pills placidly scurrying within the forest floor, and dozens and dozens of other amazing plants and animals.

The birds were another revelation, from the haunting melodies of the thrush echoing through the tree tops to the enormous owl who eyed Lilijoy coldly before spreading soft luffing wings to find a perch farther from the riffraff wandering about the forest. She lost herself in all of it.

Much later, after climbing a tree to watch the sun set over the forest, she was back on the ground making her way down the path. It was quite dark, which bothered her not at all, and the forest had come alive with new sounds, crickets and frogs, katydids and owls.

Here and there were patches of glowing moss, hanging from the tree branches over the path. She thought she saw other lights hiding among the dark boles, but was never able to catch whatever it was, no matter how fast she ran. She never felt any danger of losing the path; she seemed to have an instinctive sense of navigation, whether thanks to her system, herself, or some new quality of the Inside, she couldn’t say.

After another half an hour of peripatetic travel, the path split, the left way continuing into the forest, the right heading down a steep hill into a hollow of fallen trees and rock. She saw threads glimmer between the branches.

Spiders! she thought joyfully.

Until she saw the spider webs, she had been considering skipping the descent into what seemed to be the beginnings of a cave, but earlier in the day she had seen an orb web shimmering in a beam of sunlight, its resident hanging still in the center like a tiny, fuzzy ball, forelimbs testing the silk for vibrations. She had watched it for a while, enjoying the pattern on its body , seeing it react ever so slightly to a passing breeze.

Reaching out with a single finger, she had poked at the strands, only to see the spider rotate in place nimbly and retreat to the edge. It must know when something has come along that’s too big for it to handle, she thought. Later still, she had found fuzzy, disordered funnel webs here and there among old fallen branches, and peered inside, hoping to get a look at the shy inhabitants. She found it amazing that these tiny beings could weave a house to live in that also served as a larder and a trap and was excited to see more of them.

The path had washed out on the hillside, resuming as simple packed dirt at the bottom. She scrambled down the loose dirt and rocks of the hill, then among the branches of the long-fallen trees. Bending and weaving, she made her way, careful not to disturb any webs, until she passed under two boulders propped on one another, forming a triangular entrance just large enough for her to pass standing.

The webs were thicker here, though she had yet to see any of the builders. She moved along the narrow passage, and nearly jumped out of her skin when she bumped into a desiccated bundle hanging from a thick web with her forehead. It looked like a rat had become someone’s lunch. After that, she kept a closer watch for hanging squirrel mummies, and managed not to run into the next few she found.

It’s almost like decoration, she thought to herself, as more and more of the withered gray bundles surrounded her, hanging at a variety of heights, twisting gently for no apparent reason.

When she finally found one of the living inhabitants, she initially mistook it for a black rock wedged up into the corner of the steadily broadening ceiling. Until its spiky legs unfolded gracefully and it maneuvered to watch her, head down, with four large and four small eyes pointed in her direction.

It’s really hard to tell where a spider is looking, she noted.

With its legs extended she was almost half Lilijoy’s size; her body was perhaps head sized. A pattern of five thick yellow lines, radiating from a point on her back, extended around her abdomen, curving around until she couldn’t see them on the other side.

“I wish you would turn around, so I could see your pattern,” she said to the spider, hoping to break the tension she felt in the strange standoff.

The spider startled a bit, raising its body off the cave ceiling, as her voice cut through the silence, louder than she had intended in the echoing cavern. Lilijoy watched carefully, ready for any signs of hostility, as she wasn’t totally sure she wasn’t on tonight’s menu in the spider’s mind. The spider continued to move, slowly bringing its abdomen under and through the arc of its legs, until it was belly side up, the horned notch at the point of its belly pointing directly at Lilijoy.

“That’s better!” she exclaimed in pleasure, now seeing how the pattern’s lines converged and coiled around each other into a complicated knot.

She was less pleased when the thick strands of silk shot forth from the spinnerets and the spider leapt onto her faster than she could react.