Addison finished a second rotation around the tree, finishing underneath the door that held the queen’s real court.

Supposedly.

There was nothing she could find during her time inside the clearing that would help her up. A childish sigh made its way out of her mouth, and she sat down on the ground, leaning her back against the tree trunk. The rough bark poked through the thin cotton of her shirt, and the ground felt damp underneath her. She was uncomfortable.

It didn’t make sense; why would the grass near the fairy village be cozy, and here it would be harsh? Should the palace clearing be inviting? She had no answers to the questions, and no one was around to give her answers. Noises were filtering down from up above, but it was whispers and muffle wings and the tinkling sounds of fey lamps.

They weren’t doing anything to help her reach the door. It was aggravating.

Her head leaned against the bark of the tree. It wasn’t any more comfortable on her skull than it was on her shoulders, but it gave her neck a break. It gave all of her a break.

Somehow doing nothing at all that day had been mentally and physically taxing. A little lost, her eyes stared out at the tree line in front of her. From the middle of the clearing, she could see the curve. The shape of the thing arose when she looked long enough, even more so as her eyes unfocused with drifting thoughts.

Addison could see between the trees, darkness and light fighting and leeching space from each other as the sun moved, shadows creeping this way and that. Rustling sounds drifted as animals and fey moved around, going about their daily business.

After sitting for a few moments, thoughts jumping around from train to train and not guiding her towards finishing her tasks, she watched as a small white rabbit jumped into the clearing. It came halfway between the forest and the great tree she leaned against. She could just make out its features; the little legs it sat on, his little face that must have had a twitching nose as he looked around.

The rabbit stared at her for a second before scampering around the bend where she couldn’t see anymore. The whole 15-second scene brought a smile to her thoughts, and her eyes focused on the forest again.

Before another thought could form and get away from her, however, she watched as the tops of a large chunk of trees rustled. She assumed a murder of some type of bird had rolled through, sending leaves and twigs and other loose foliage flying into the air. Her thoughts tried to churn, to start up again when a voice came barreling down from the top of the queen's tree.

“Human! Child! Whatever you are; The queen is waiting.”

Addison moved her eyes upwards as far as she could without actually moving the rest of her body, which wasn’t far enough to see whoever had yelled the unnecessary and confusing statement. She liked this place…most of the time.

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That day seemed to be the exception, however. Not wanting to incur some sort of wrath, she pushed herself off the ground. The only thing there seemed to be left to do was walk into the forest. She stood, and wiped her legs and back off as to not walk around with too much dirt stuck to her clothing — and her stomach growled.

“Perfect,” she grumbled.

There would be berries in the forest if she got desperate, which was where she was going anyways, but it wouldn’t satisfy her. It merely got added to the expanding list of things that were annoying her. Her feet trudged through the damp grass, bringing her closer to the treeline.

A few minutes and zero events later, she was staring back at a path between the trees. There were no markers to tell her if it was the path that she had taken to walk in.

There were no markers of any kind save for the tree and the door upon it. She had no idea about anything at all, but she had to start somewhere. So in she walked, feeling the ground underneath here change from lush grass to compacted dirt and forest floor. It was less pleasant, but also dryer and more familiar.

Taking a deep breath in, she looked around the path. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but she was mildly disappointed. The berry bushes didn’t seem to grow in this part of the woods, and the other trees didn’t immediately give hints about how to tackle the big one; so she kept moving.

She moved along the path. Her toes curled around roots that had gone toward the surface of the earth instead of digging down into it. They landed on leaves in varying stages of the life cycle. Some crunching, and some green and cool, and some mushy underneath them both. Time moved so strangely here in the Fey realm. Sometimes it felt like it was all seasons all at once; other times it was like summer sat for a year or two at a time.

She could never get a grip on it, and sometimes she wondered if that wasn’t the point. This Earth had a mind of its own, and when her toes caught underneath something instead of over it, she thought its mind just wanted to screw with her that day. She went flying forward, unable to control her body well enough to keep her balance.

The thing that her foot had slid over came with her partially, pulling one leg down to the ground faster than the rest of her body. Her knee hit the dirt path a few seconds before the other, forcing air out of her chest. She saw stars even as she closed her eyes, and her hands stretched to wrap around her knee as she tried to turn on her side.

In her attempts to protect her wound, she caught her ankle up further in the trap that had caught her, putting pressure on a second part of her body. It forced her to open her eyes to try and see what had tripped her, to begin with. It a moment to see clearly as her eyes welled with tears, but once she had blinked them out of her vision, she saw it.

A thick rope of green vine; it had caught some of the other foliage, but the shape of it was what had her attention. It looked exactly like a rope — the only thing like it she had seen on her walks through the land. Her thoughts were fragmented as she tried to shift her knee, getting comfortable would take a little while, much less standing and moving around. But her eyes remained frozen on the vine.

If a thing like that could wrap around her ankle, maybe it could wrap around other things as well. She didn’t think herself an expert on making pullies or reconfiguring vines to make a proper rope, but the idea was planted in her head. Sitting up and leaning over as softly as she could, Addison moved her hands from her knee down to her ankle. She twisted and pulled; grimacing as it put pressure on her new injury.

The pain was real and was going to make everything more difficult, but her ankle came free without much more difficulty. It has only slid underneath.

A small miracle.

With both of her feet free and pulled closer to her, she looked to both sides of the path. If the thing was going to be of any use to her…She had to figure out how long it was.