The tunnel through the door opened up into a garden. Blaze wasn’t sure if the garden was miniature or if somewhere along the way everything had flipped back to normal--- but nonetheless, it was a garden. The garden was wild, flowers growing outside their beds and weeds overtaking the path. Blaze followed the path through the garden, winding away through the brush.
As he turned a corner, he finally caught sight of the girl who was the reason he was here in the first place, in this strange realm underneath the willow tree. She was trotting along ahead, her carnation coloured hair loose and fluttering in the wind.
He started forward at a brisk pace. “Oh, finally. Hey!” She turned at his words but didn’t stop, only speeding up more.
Blaze sped up to match her pace. It seemed as though he should be able to outrun her, but she was light on her feet and vanished through the weeds once more.
When he eventually reached the spot where she had disappeared from, he was greeted by a sharp turn in the path, which had been steadily transitioning to a true road. The road turned abruptly into the forest, which looked dark and spooky, but also had trees, which Blaze was rather fond of.
He reckoned that the first year girl had probably followed the path into the woods, and also that she was definitely out of her mind. Blaze wasn’t trying to be a hero, but she was also the only other person he had seen since landing in a hallway at the bottom of a hole. He wasn’t sure if he desperately wanted to meet someone else or desperately didn’t want to.
Slowing to a walk as he entered the forest, he took in the scraggly scenery and rocky ground. Oak trees towered above him, their branches mostly bare and crooked, and yet they somehow blocked out most of the light, leaving the forest blueish and gloomy. Fungi in unusual colours climbed up the sides of mossy trees, purple and blue and red mushrooms dotting the forest floor.
He travelled deeper and deeper into the woods, slowly becoming uneasy as the foliage became denser and yet the forest quieter. Coming to a fork in the road, he paused to consider which way would take him home and which way would lead to certain death, as was the case with most forks in roads.
From behind him, a crack split the air like a twig breaking under someone’s foot. Or something’s foot. Blaze wished he knew the peculiar girl’s name, wished he knew something more about her or where he was or what was going on.483Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ32suWebq48
He didn’t know whether he should call out or not, but if whatever was near wasn’t the girl then he didn’t want to risk being eaten by a wolf or a bear. If it came to that, he could probably fight it off, however.
Luckily he didn’t have to make a decision after all, because when he scanned the undergrowth his eyes landed on a smile, just a smile, floating above a thick, low hanging branch just off the right side of the road.
Gradually a body formed to accompany the smile, misty shadows moulding together until Blaze could make out the form of a boy around his age with black hair and a scar over his right eye. He was dressed in dark robes with a purple cape, perched on the branch with his head propped up on his upturned palm.
“Hello,” Blaze said cautiously. This only made the boy grin wider. Strangely, there was no emotion behind the smile. It didn’t reach his eyes, the black globes like a soulless abyss. There was nothing happy about his person. “Would you--- would you have happened to see a girl pass through here? With pink hair? Like really bright, pink hair.”
“Oh, that girl. Amber,” the boy scoffed. “Don’t bother yourself with her. She’s trouble.”
“Okay,” Blaze swallowed dryly, still on his guard. He was only more intrigued by that response, however. What could a girl from his school be doing to cause so much trouble in a place like this? “Could you tell me where I am, then?”
“The forest.”
“More specifically.”
“Ah. You’re not from around here, are you?” The boy vanished into a spiral of shadows and reappeared a second later in front of Blaze, inspecting him curiously.
“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Ethan.” He watched Blaze expectantly.483Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbnDtylIvy1
“Oh. I’m Blaze,” he answered warily. Ethan seemed nice enough, but then lately everything he had come across seemed to be incredibly upside-down, logically speaking.
Ethan smiled that creepy smile. “And where did you say you were from, again?”
“Asandra--- I didn’t say where I was from.”
“Asandra, really?” Ethan said breezily. Once again it was as if he shifted his whole body into pure shadow, evaporating and reassembling in a completely random location, this time sitting on a stump a couple of meters off to the left. “Who knew? Well, me, of course.”
“And where are you from?” Blaze said defiantly.
The shadowy boy raised an eyebrow. “Here, naturally. We’re all from here. Except for the ones who aren’t.”
“And here being…?”
“Welcome to Wonderland, Blaze,” Ethan said, his gaze unnervingly locked on Blaze’s. “It’s very possible you may never leave.”
Blaze tried not to let it show how much that unsettled him, how much Ethan unsettled him. He gestured to the break in the path, impatient and also hungry, having eaten only a literally minuscule cake in the past few hours. “Look, can you tell me which way I should take?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” remarked Ethan.
“If you could just tell me which way Amber went---” Abruptly the black-haired boy melted away into darkness, invisible.
A single hand appeared out of the shadows, in the centre of the fork. “This way,” Ethan’s voice said, his hand pointing to the right, “leads to ice. And that way,” the hand pointed to the opposite direction, “leads to fire. Either way, you’ll probably get to the same place. Choose wisely.”
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