Rita's eyes, staring into the reflective surface, seem to ease with the gentle strum of music softly plays from a portable radio in her hand. Letting her mind wander, she thinks of how tribes in days past, and even today despite not saying which god it was for, human kind has always used music as a means to commune with greater forces. "I wonder if the music playing in the dream before everything went to shit is what partially alerted the gods to my..." With a sigh, she lets her arms dangle for a minute as she tries to simply stand there and enjoy the music to calm herself more as her eyes wander.

Enjoying the atmosphere of this primordial woods with the ambiance of the solo banjo playing, Rita tries to embrace the moment, and begins breathing deep the clean air of the forest. With each breath, she begins to notice her body feels a little lighter over time, as if the fatigue built over the years of cram school and recent days was leaving her body with each exhale. The lively nature of the forest air seemed to fill her lungs with a renewed vigor as she idled peacefully.

Achieving a meditative state, her senses felt awake and aware as her consciousness began to feel the world around her, causing confusion at the sight of something she did not expect. Opening her eyes to look once more at the radio, a semblance of intent could be felt, like a single spider thread swaying in the breeze. Staring in the vague direction it seemed to come from, she felt a weariness in her heart.

"I wonder...", holding up the radio, she shook it around in varying arcs as she saw the string seem to shift as if it lost it's ability to hold together as she swung. Staring intently as she held it to her eyes, she could see it pulsing when held still. Observing the changes for a while she began to realize, "This strange light... It's changing in time with the music? ...maybe it IS the music."

The playing song, feeling inviting to sit and listen continued to play as, with no better idea for the time and the words of the cat on her mind, began to follow the string.

As time passed with each step, the forest around her slowly began to shift imperceptibly at first, for one, the walkable terrain became simultaneously wider and smaller at the same time. The forest was spacing the trees farther apart as she walked, but shrubs and tallgrass were filling the gaps quickly, along with few gaps here and there between those. She also began to notice some other things, for one, on no path, save for where the string brought her, seemed passable.

Maintaining some awareness as she traveled, the forest was beginning to show more variety in recognizable species of wood, to her surprise as she wasn't actually expecting to see any. As she walked, she started seeing Pine trees, Spruces, Firs, Hemlock, Larch, and other arboreal giants scattered and bunched about, making it harder to navigate the forest, even with a guide.

Although the nature around her was marvelous, it did practically nothing good to the visibility of her surroundings. She found it close to what she hoping out of this trip at least, a nice walk through the mountainous forests of the Appalachian mountains. Still, that helped little in trying to decide whether to try maintaining her walk along dirt with scattered plants or trying her luck with varying sizes of root structure throughout.

As she began to put the instrumental music into the back of her mind and try to focus on the path the glowing line was giving her, she was further distracted by other things coming into view. At some point she noticed an alarming variety of smaller flora like Aster, Trout Lilly, Arrowhead, and much more that she didn't recognize.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

And through it all, was animals, more than she'd ever expected to come across in fact. There were some she recognized as different species of bear or deer, some of foxes, and squirrels, and a great variety of birds overhead with their own conversational tweets, caws, and chirps. What puzzled her most, was how they seemed to get along, predators amongst prey. However, as she herself was one to some and far more so the other to the rest, she counted her blessings as she tried shuffling along, trying not to antagonize the much larger creatures or accidentally crush the smaller ones.

As she passed, many took notice of her in their own ways. Some twisted their ear towards her and the music, supposing the ones who didn't turn their heads used their wide vision to have her in their sights already. Some of the flying variety took to doing a few loops around her to observe, some floating in a hover, before they each on their own time darted away back to their own business.

Taking her time wading a bit here and there through this strange place, though she felt wrong to admit it, she was having a good time, all things considered. Wandering through a forest well-populated by an astonishing amount of animals is a particular kind of exciting not many ever enjoy. In any and every direction there's wildlife, strangely cordial with each other, but all majestic creatures, meandering with unknown purpose.

And in the rough middle of it all was Rita Carter, Student of Psychology and Parapsychology, lost in the woods, being led by radio waves, to what she hoped was some kind of salvation. Though it was kind of grating ironically, to hope for salvation when she knew gods were real, with whims and opinions unknowable to mortal kind.

It made her wonder about the many times Zeus' infidelity was written down, curious as to how much of it was true. Maybe marriage, defined by his wife Hera, was just different then, and in fact everything the gods are about changes over time.

She'd been born into a time when the imaginary like fairies and powers gifted by those beyond was becoming as or more real than taxes, and the need to have a job, a job your parents won't skip over during Christmas for that matter. And it began, of course, as she was going to college, she'd picked psychology as it seemed interesting.

The mind seemed like an interesting topic of discussion regardless of occupation, and it was good money whether you became a psychiatrist or made a living fooling people into thinking they needed a weekend getting high in an overpriced BnB, and were better for it. In highschool, she decided to take Parapsychology as a bit of a joke for her minor, it paired with her actual Psychology degree she was working on, and thought it would be good fodder for some future assignments.

But as life goes, a man literally found "a" god, some people prayed a fish into god, someone found a real way to talk to the dead, a lot of things were being discovered that could only be described as paranormal.

And with that, and a lot of pushing from her parents to "ride the winds and waves of progress and change," she, with great reluctance, switched majors. Now, she suddenly has to take statements like, "this 8-year-old house that no one has died in is so definitely super haunted," a lot more seriously. All the sudden, a lot, way too much for her liking in fact, is changing in the world before her very eyes.

Being part of the Parapsychology department before this mess has it's perks, we suddenly have a bigger budget than we know what to do with, and Rita hoped she could just do menial tasks...

Focusing back on the present, it surprised her how much she really hadn't sat down to properly contemplate her life and it's recent changes. Almost as much as when she realized she did that thing again, where she got side tracked and everything around her became different, again,