Preface

“No one has ever explored the entire thing, you know that right?” “I know but sometimes I just like looking at it, trying to figure out what would be in it.” Johnny said standing up trying to get a better view deeper. Johnny and Venesa were sitting on a rock high up above the sea of trees, even higher than their cliffside town of New York, it was a small city that usually got it’s stores from the much larger cities inland.

Only the wild people live so close to the sea, as many people who lived inland said about the coast dwellers. There was even rumors about nasty creatures that come out of the sea at night to terrorize the towns. All of those stories were in fact false, there was no knarbucker that tore town whole buildings with one beat of his mighty wings. Not one of the “coasters,” as they were called, had ever seen a knarbuckle, or deporna, or any other crazy thing that the inlanders made up.

The sea of trees is vast and large and protected by deep seeded magic, no pun intended, within the trees, many people have tried to cross it or cut it down, many coming back very soon telling tales of pure black darkness, others with stories of entire cities and new people down there separate from the people on highland. There is even the case of Hilford Berry II, who went on his sea journey calculating the shortest distance to cross, only to niether arrive at his destination, nor come back out of the woods from which he came. In other words, he was never seen again. It was mostly inlanders who went into the woods, Hilford himself was an inlander only moving to the coast when he decided he wanted to attempt the journey. The coasties were too smart to attempt that journey, they knew the stories, heard the screams from the sea at night, and usually never wanted anything do with them. But, with the sea being quiet the past twenty years, with no one going in or out, nor any screams or shouts at night, much of the youth were getting very brave when coming into contact with the trees. Some would even go out to host parties in the deeper known parts of the sea, that was until a boy went missing and turned up days later with no recollection of who he was where he had been or what he did the in the sea for that long. From then on, going into the woods was a highly punishable offense, that being said some kids still went in but those were few and far between.

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