8

Wanting to keep yourself as inconspicuous as possible, you avoid the center of town as you move and take care to keep out of sight as you race down quiet streets that turn into narrow lanes that eventually fade into open land. All the while you're watching, looking for the best route, checking behind to make sure you know right where you are, and always keeping your head up as you close the distance between you and your destination—

After what feels like hours, you reach a turn, panting and blinking through pouring sweat—and you stop dead in your tracks.

In front of you, spread out across the horizon like a vast green cloud billowing up from the earth, is the forest.

Almost instantly, the smell—the feeling—of the place hits you like a shower of rain, heady and sweet and damp like soil and moss and magic. It's not like the dark, whispering place you've dreamed about, but a place full of life and color and undeniable magic. You suddenly forget all about the pain in your body as you realize you're here—you're really here. In joy and relief, you find yourself laughing out loud.

You're home. And, somehow, you think the forest knows it too.

You run towards it, and before you know it, the trees are reaching up over your head and swallowing the rest of the world. All the sights and sounds of the outside are gone, replaced by the forest's own breathing lungs and beating heart. Maybe it's just your own blood roaring in your ears, but coming back to the forest feels like visiting another place—another thing—altogether.

And more than ever before, as you move between the trees, you feel: