Sariel whistled a tune, its pure notes deepening to a dry moan as she pulled herself onto a rocky ledge, allowing the song to soar once more while she hopped over the little tree roots in her path. It took five hours to reach the base of the ancient foothills, and as she sized up her opponent she looked back to the rolling hills, squinting to see if she could make out Maddison and Horse anywhere in the distance. The hills had rolled enough to cover most of the trail they had been on, but she could almost make out a distant structure peppered with some soft smoke.

It was in the right spot for Bervolt.

Sariel's tune died as she scrabbled up another ledge, digging her thick nails into a dirt-filled crevice and scuttling along the unforgiving terrain like a crab. When she reached the twisted roots of a massive tree she latched onto it with a tight hug, shimmying up the bark with a couple grunts and near-death slips before reaching the edge of a flatter clearing. "Right then." She took in a deep breath to steady herself, staring at the small oasis of a forest, furnished with a thick carpet of grass. She felt the soft surface, looking around at the emerald expanse with a grimace. "This don't look right." She traced her critiquing squint up one of the trees. "Ain't no self respectin forest gonna be spaced out like this."

Crow dived out of the trees to catch her shoulder, looking around at the clearing with a couple inquisitive head tilts. "Water!"

The oasis remained stilled, its unnatural atmosphere soothed by the soft chitters of bugs and whistling birds. These sounds, although calming and capable of masking any danger, still managed to paint a frown on Sariel's face. She pushed onwards, stopping at a convenient butt-sized rock to sit on and splay out the map. She showed Crow where they were, pointing deeper into the forest. "First blue dot's a little ways in."

Two bunnies hopped by, oblivious to the world as they scuttled into a bush to hide from a mother deer and its limping fawn. The scene was as picturesque as the start of a fairytale about Bombay and his magical friends, but there was no Bombay, no giggling elves, and no mundane problem easily fixable within the span of fifteen minutes. This forest, a picture of adventure, was a hollowed symbol, a representation of repetition and the numbing normality of suspended belief. It had no purpose, no chaos. No boot-snagging shrubs, no hoards of poison ivy, no dead leaves.

Even with Sariel's strange sense of the world, she knew something was wrong.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Water! Bath! Leave!"

"Right, I agree with ya, Crow," Sariel said, rolling her map back up. "This don't seem like a good place to be sleepin."

She kept on her journey, her steps slowing when she caught a floral scent in the air. The culprit could be tied to a well-kept bush a few steps away, bursting with a colourful array of roses. She had never seen anything like it in her life, and immediately thought of the little girl she had met this morning. The individual flowers were far too large to fit in the journal the man had, but a petal or two couldn't hurt.

She plucked a blue petal, and then an orange one. As she reached for a white rose something whizzed by her corner vision, startling her with a loud buzz. She frantically tried to find it as it buzzed around her head, Crow flapping its wings to beat away the mysterious object. When she had given the bush a few feet she finally saw it. A winged creature a little bigger than a dragonfly, beating a set of wings like a hummingbird as it swooped and zigzagged around in the air. It had almost humanlike limbs, covered by a plating of leaves and petals that shimmered with a glittery substance that was constantly falling from its wings.

The creature buzzed up to Sariel's face, watching her curiously as it flapped inches from her nose. Instinctively, she swung out her hand to swat it. With a loud clap, the buzzing creature was now a glittery splat on the tree trunk to her left.

Crow shrieked as Sariel clapped the stray sparkles off her hands. "Big bugs here. Lots of snacks for you." she plucked the white petal, carefully packing them up and carrying on her journey.

━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━

Cody tilted his book up to the starlight, squinting to get through a page in the settling darkness. He closed his eyes, listening to the trickling waterfall near them as Hord'anne munched on a burnt length of bark.

"It's a nice night," he said, taking in the strangely perfect forest. "Don't you think so too Hord'anne?"

Hord'anne let out a gurgling growl, spitting out the charred bark like a blob of tobacco.

"Yeah, I know we don't have food..." He rubbed his stomach as it interrupted the quiet scene with a grinding moan. "At least you had that hut full of charred villagers, I haven't eaten for two days."

Hord'anne ripped a chunk of dirt and grass out, offering it to the man as he grimaced.

"I'm not a Cobble Hord'anne, I can't eat grass."

Hord'anne grunted, pushing the dirt and grass forward.

"I can't have dirt either! I have standards!"

With a soft whimper Hord'anne clambored to his feet, moving towards the still edge of a lake they'd settled beside, slapping the water a couple of times and looking around.

"You'll get worms." The man stuffed a blade of grass in his book to keep the page, gently hiding it in a pocket on his coat. "We'll find food in the-" A splashing reached his ears, somehow catchable through Hord'anne's subpar method of fishing. He quickly silenced his friend with a shush, waiting for the splash to come back.

And surprisingly enough, it did.