Addison opened her mouth when she reached the base of the tree. The door felt like it may as well be in heaven when she was standing directly underneath it. There was no ladder going up, no hidden staircase. As she began to walk around the extraordinarily thick trunk of the tree, she guessed that there wasn’t a hidden door either.

She placed a hand on the rough bark, wondering at its texture and the fact that it felt warmer than she had imagined.

This is the *strangest** realm,* she thought, even I don’t hate it quite so much.

Nothing was ever quite what she thought it was going to be.

Almost nothing was what it seemed.

So cliche, she thought.

Turning her head away from the hulking plant, she tried to find the fairy that had escorted her through the woods, but there were none that she could see. When she backed up a few feet and looked upward again a few were flying up above her.

They ranged in sizes and colors and one of them didn’t look like a fairy at all from where she stood. Some of them looked down at her but a single one of them seemed interested in cruising down to talk to her.

“Some help?” she called out anyways. There was always the chance that she merely needed to ask and they would fly down and hoist her to the door. She was expected to arrive, wasn’t she?

There were several minutes of silence, where Addison didn’t move, and very few of the fey looking down at her did either. She could barely make out their faces and the smallest ones were blurs when their wings took them even a few inches in either direction.

The quiet descended in from the forest around them, and it was almost easy for her to forget where she was at. The air was cool and the grass underneath her feet was damp in some strange way that didn’t bother her. Every so often an animal would offer its sound from behind the tree line, and the clouds moved up above the creatures and the branches that surrounded them.

Addison felt her lips relax and a smile tugged at the corners. Just as she thought that maybe things were going to return to normal and she could relax here instead of being tugged through more insanity, the fairies all opened their mouths and spoke at once.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Figure it out!” they yelled. They then erupted into a lasting chorus of raucous laughter — it was worse than a herd of toddlers, and Addison shook her head, bringing her palms to her ears. The laughter of all of them together pierced her ears; sending a buzzing shock-wave through her senses. It was a brand new experience.

One she wished she never had and hoped to never repeat. When the buzzing began to fade she pulled her hands, and look upwards once again. The laughter had begun to die down, not long after it had begun, and those above her were scattering back to whatever it was they were supposed to be doing.

She hoped that their tasks did not actually involve staring and laughing at her try and complete her task.

It was an easy hope and an easy assumption since very few of them would even glance down at her now. Addison’s shoulders fell with a heavy breath.

Her heart also fell a little bit lower in her chest. No stairs, no doors, no help from anyone at all. There were no branches low enough for her to grab onto.

The task felt utterly impossible, and it was sinking her morale in the juxtaposition of the peace she had felt just moments before. Peace of the grass and the breeze and the other trees.

Peace that maybe just a few other beings in the world may rest beside her and something may go her way, but every illusion broke with time, and she had A Queen waiting on her now. She wanted to lay down on the grass and stare at the sky like she had been doing before she got the summons.

It was either that or walking into the forest and getting lost for a few hours on some unmarked path. Another heavy sigh left her throat, and Addison felt herself begin to get overwhelmed. She had zero ideas on how to scale the tree. She couldn’t use the bark as handholds; it was old and brittle and while it wasn’t smooth the layers were huge.

She couldn’t use them to climb, and she figured that trying would lead to some nasty cuts and bruises. She moved closer to the tree, and tugged on the corner of one of the trees many veins to test her theory, and felt it give way towards her.

It seemed disrespectful to pull until it fell off, but it was enough of a demonstration. She needed another way to get up to the branches, and maybe those would let her get up to the door.

She didn’t have wings, she would have to pull her self up some other way. Addison began to move her legs again, making a slow circle around the tree. It wouldn’t be a fast circle even if she ran, but she hoped that something would give her an answer.

Would the Queen give her a truly impossible task? Was it a test she couldn’t complete, or was there a resource she hadn’t thought of?

Another sigh escaped her. The bark wrapped around every inch of the tree the same, and the roots seemed unforgiving. Even as she was moving in her circle — nothing was changing. Whatever the answer was… it wasn’t where she was.