"There's got to be something here somewhere!" Sunny dodged a long-reaching flower and scrambled up the sloped side of a boulder to peer over it -- but there was nothing to see except the fluted white trunks of ferny trees, flowers the size of horses leaning sideways by their own weight, and curiously spiraled stone structures that shone like the night sky, looping up out of soft and squishy moss like statuesque serpents. The air here was thick with moisture and the pungent aromas of the heady flowers; sunlight filtered and flickered through the canopy, casting a golden dappled glow on the shifting grasses.
This was the place on the map -- their next destination, finally reached after days of hiking and hitching rides with friendly wagoners, camping under the stars or in a gracious farmer's barn. Finally -- their feet sore and the sun hot on their skin -- Rymoln Wood was all around them, but it occurred to Sunny that they had no idea what they were looking for.
"Helloooooo!" she called into the dense forest, hands around her mouth. Sunny turned suddenly, certain she'd just seen something move -- but there was only a tree. She was certain that tree hadn't been there a moment ago.
There was something about these woods that constantly felt out-of-place, but she never actually saw anything moving.
Sunny felt something tugging at her hair, and she waved away a little orange flitterdid -- pudgy, squeaky, buzzy things the size of dragonflies that liked to steal whatever they could get their tiny paws on. A lazy swarm of flitterdids had followed the coterie since they entered Rymoln Wood, and Sunny had warned her companions to keep close anything small and valuable.
There was no birdsong here -- no sound of toads or insects or wildlife. Apart from the flitterdids, there was little wildlife to be found at all -- just the hush and creak and rustle of the trees and flowers in the breeze. It was as if nothing lived here at all.
With a yelp, Sunny leaped suddenly while a stray vine snapped away from her feet. It would have caught her ankles if she'd been any less vigilant.
"Watch where you step!" she called to Laphi and Nyte, and she stopped in a grove of spiral-stones to turn and check on the others.
"Find anything yet? I get the feeling these woods are trying to catch us or eat us." The sentiment was said with a grin.
"Is it just me or are these trees moving?"*CRACK*
The trees shook and shuddered with a sound like the strike of lighting or the split of a gigantic egg; the ground beneath their feet shuddered from a sudden impact. The flitterdids scattered and zoomed in all directions, spooked. Sunny smiled wide.
"There!" she shouted, speeding off in the direction of the great noise, crashing recklessly through the mossy brush.
"This way!"Meanwhile, Aro would find herself laying in soft pale grass, bathed in a pool of sunlight that only reached her through a new split crevice in the rock high above. All around her, wherever the sunlight didn't penetrate, was darkness -- but she would get the feeling, by the way the space smelled and the way sound echoed faintly whenever she moved, that she had stumbled into a cavern that was far more enormous than it at first appeared.
Should she explore the place where she had fallen, she might find that the grassy spot where she stood was only as big as the floor of a small cottage -- beyond that perimeter it dropped off suddenly into a dark abyss. She had been lucky to have fallen upon this little island of safety.
On one side, shadowed by the thick darkness, was the beginning of a precarious staircase that spiraled down ... and down.
Aboveground, Sunny skidded to a stop when she spotted the crevice in the ground; it was the shape of a hungry mouth, or a hollow eye, gaping dark among the heavy flowers and shifting trees.
"Helloooo!" she called again -- this time, hopeful.
