Silly Plots 4: It's not particularly silly, is it?

[Deathkeeper]

Sunny Orchard

Well, step 1: don’t get bee lizards teleported into you success!
Now step 2: diplomacy?
”Apparently the well in the back decided to make itself a portal. Can I use that circle to get out?”
He decides to get straight to the point. After all, that would be super convenient, wouldn’t it? He’d be home in a minute. But he would still be soaked.

[Rebonack]

[Sunny Orchard]

Being soaked is less of a big deal when it is as absurdly hot as it is right now.

Has our hero been remembering to hydrate regularly?

Aside, of course, from being dunked in the well.

"Wow, really?" the swarm of pixies replies. Well, not all the pixies. Not the whole swarm, at least. Several have landed in the peach trees and are busy munching away at peaches.

What?

Did you think they ONLY ate honey and stuff?

That would be silly. Given the chance, bees will happily sip on the juice of fallen fruit. Or in the case of these pixies chomping on fruit still hanging on the tree. Stuff's getting pretty ripe, though. One peach just dropped off the tree when a pixie landed on it.

"That seems weird. I don't think that was a Threshold when I was working on the orchard. Someone must have opened it up."

But who? And for what purpose?

"Nah, this one just leads to another part of the Enchanted Forest. If you want to get out you should look for a flight of stairs," the bees buzz back. "Oh, hey, you can call me Drake, by the way. Do you know the Three Taboos?"

[Deathkeeper]

Sunny Orchard

The intern blinks as he processes that. “Um. No names, no eating, no thanking, right? They put instructions all over the city after the Buttercup thing. So. Do you see any stairs from up there?”
It’s worth asking, right? After all, they can fly. Flying often helps you see things.
Our hero steadily stands up so he isn’t sitting on the dirt while having this conversation.

[Rebonack]

[Sunny Orchard]

Hey, don't know sitting in the dirt!

There's nothing wrong with dirt. Especially when it's nice dirt.

The leaping out of the stone circle smushed a few wild strawberries. Our hero now has strawberry stains on his outfit.

Tragic.

"Bingo! Man, I'm glad that stuff is common knowledge, now. I didn't know about it when I chased a goblin into the forest that stole one of my favorite rocks. Now look at me! I'm totally scatter-brained."

Literally.

"Haha, but you don't know much about the Forest though, do you? Being able to fly doesn't help me see anything. It's just more forest up there. It's just more forest everywhere unless you find a Dream Glade. Or the King's Road, I guess. Getting turned around is pretty easy if you're trail-blazing like we're doing right now. Thankfully there are a WHOLE bunch of me and I can cover a lot of ground. I'm guessing-"

One of the pixies will swoop down to land in our hero's shirt pocket. The lizard peers up at him and licks one of his eyes.

"-you want to get back to the waking world WITHOUT getting turned into a rock?"

[Deathkeeper]

Sunny Orchard

”Yeah. That would be the plan.”
There’s lots of things that he could end up as. A rock is pretty high on the list of awful. Even the Buttercups still get to walk around.
”So I need to find a big road or stairs to a Glade. Got it. I guess I’ll just start walking then? Call me…Sandy.” it’s short and easy to remember.
Unless Drake pushes him in a certain direction he’s going to start walking until he finds something.
But he’s taking that bucket. It might be useful and it has a metal handle. He knows that might help.

[Rebonack]

[Sunny Orchard]

"Granted you probably don't want to find someone's Glade," Drake warns. "That doesn't usually turn out well. This place is full of all sorts of nasty, dangerous things. I'm pretty fortunate since most of me are expendable."

There ARE quite a few of the pixies flying around.

"Mostly I was just swinging by here to snack on peaches and strawberries but this seems like a good cause. I'm going to spread out a bit and do some scouting. That way if anything is coming your way I'll know about it," Drake says as three more pixies land on our hero. One on each shoulder and another on top of his head. Followed by SIX MORE alighting on the back of his shirt. Our hero is covered in lizards.

The rest of the pixies begin flitting off through the branches. "Don't mind the crowding I get dumber the fewer of me are in one spot. I'm going to use your shirt as my C&C for this little expedition."

So!

Off into the forest.

It gets weird pretty fast.

Our hero will spot a tree that looks like something with VERY SCARY CLAWS has been scratching on it.
Another tree has been twisted into a fountain with water pouring out of the bowl its branches form.
And there's a human skeleton covered in strawberry vines! Lovely.

"Sandy, huh? Hah! So you work at the orchard, right? Just a summer job or are you dreaming of peaches in your future?"

[Deathkeeper]

Sunny Orchard

Sandy would normally question being covered in lizards but he'll accept being covered in lizards that have a slightly better idea of where they're going than he does.
He walks out into the forest. He takes a moment to pass by the fountain and peer into the water. He isn't planning on drinking any but maybe he'll see something cool?
"It's just a summer job. I'm saving money to go to college." he explains.
Hopefully Drake doesn't mind sitting on such a soaking wet surface. Though his shirt will probably be dry in a few minutes at this rate...

[Rebonack]

[Sunny Orchard]

Being covered in lizards is the new fashion fad Sandy should be thanking Drake for making him so fabulous.

So!

Into the forest.

Our hero pauses to peer into the fountain!

Inside is a collection of coins and little gemstones sparkling in the sunlight. Very pretty. Very shiny.

Sandy could add something to the fountain. Maybe he could make a wish? Surely wishes are more powerful in the Enchanted Forest.

Or he could try grabbing one of those diamonds glittering in the water. With an emerald the size of a grapefruit he could probably pay for his college classes and ditch the farm.

Or... he could just ignore them and explore deeper.

Drake is watching curiously to see what Sandy decides to do. It appears as though he's disinclined to offer advice unless asked.

[Deathkeeper]

Sunny Orchard

Everyone knows you don't steal from fairies. Just like you never ignore advice you get from a helpful witch in the forest. You just don't.
"Sandy" does however reach into his pocket and drops the shiniest quarter he has into the fountain. If the fountain grants wishes, let him make it out of here. And if it can't guarantee that, at least let him meet someone else who can get him out without trying to make him wind up like Drake. He seems nice but he'd rather not be a bee swarm.
Then he's probably off on his trek again, unless the fountain does anything in particular...

[Rebonack]

[Sunny Orchard]

Plunk goes the coin!

And..

Nothing happens.

Drake buzzes his wings, annoyed.

"You can't just throw a coin into a wishing fountain and not wish for anything," the pixie points out. "Or did you just think it? The fountain can't read your mind, stupid."

That was rude, Drake.

But being nasty and insulting is a thing that comes naturally to pixies. Drake knows better and if this is pointed out to him he'll probably feel bad about it. But the kneejerk reaction of most pixies is to call people names while being belligerent. That's just how they are.

[Deathkeeper]

Sunny Orchard

"I made a wish to get out of here or meet more helpful people." Sandy insists aloud to the benefit of Drake and the fountain.
"You don't have to be a jerk about it." he grumbles.
But maybe when you're a lizard and also a bee being prickly just comes natural.

[Rebonack]

[Sunny Orchard]

"Ugh, do I have to explain everything? You have to say 'I wish-' then what you're wishing for. Every-"

Don't need to be a jerk about it.

"I... oh... I was being mean, wasn't I?" Drake says, drooping a bit. "Geeze, sorry. It's... a pixie thing. Pixies are little jerks. I try not to be but it slips through sometimes."

Will you accept the apology of the lizard, Sandy?

Or are you going to hate him forever, now?

Either way, the wish thing shouldn't come as much of a shock.

Fae tend to have all sorts of weird rules about how things are and aren't done. Why would making wishes at a wishing fountain be any different?

Though, granted, at least nothing terrible happened like water demon popping out and attacking Sandy.

[Deathkeeper]

Sunny Orchard

"It's okay." Sandy gives one lizard a boop on the nose since he doesn't have a shoulder to pat, really. He goes and drops his second shiniest quarter into the fountain.
"I wish I'll get out of here safe. And if you can't help with that at least let us run into someone else helpful." he tells the fountain.
See, now it's a proper wish.
Now he just has to hope it actually helps.

[Recaiden]

"Five Seven Eight?" June says. "Someone should give it a name."

Having very little sense for the scale of the planet, June can't tell if it's actually massive or just big, or what. How does it compare to the planet Eris? Is what June wonders.
...
Not that knowing that would help, having never seen Eris from space.

"Does it not have any air?" June asks, noticing the lack of clouds. Clouds are basically synonymous with air.

"Oh, it'll get named eventually. But it's not ready for a name quite yet."

It's at least twice as big around as Eris. That should help June picture it, right?

"Oh yeah, there's air. Just uhm, empty. No weather yet."

The ship swoops down towards the planet, going over a still and quiet ocean at a large height - no wind, no waves - and heading towards the base of a stark mountain range.
Then it gently settles onto the ground.

"Here we are!"

[5a Violista]

No, that doesn't help picture it. It's just big, is all. Horizon is farther away.

June stares at it.

"Wait how does that happen? No weather? Shouldn't, like, just time passing mean weather starts happening?" Unless it's, like, literally brand-new, but a planet this big would be incredibly weird to suddenly have no weather. Like, sure, the rock part could be older but...."How long has it had the atmosphere, anyway?"

June looks at the planet from up close.
Besides the obvious weird lack of weather, it seems pretty normal.

[Recaiden]

How much experience does June have with the horizon of Eris?

"Weather doesn't just happen. It needs to be motivated." Mei says, as if this is the most obvious thing.

"The atmosphere has been here for, uhm, about 300 days?" The rock part was definitely older.
If you look around, there are trees that really look like they're older than 300 days. But they seem like normal wild plants, perfectly natural at the foot of a mountain.

[Rebonack]

[Sunny Orchard]

Sandy boops a lizard on the snoot.

The lizard reacts by licking his nose.

A clear, watery sounding tone pings from the fountain.

Wish made.

Drake looks vaguely offended. "Oh I'm not good enough help then, huh?" Though, judging by his tone he wasn't actually bothered by that.

Much.

There... really isn't any obvious effect from the wish. Mostly because it wasn't the sort of wish where you ask for a thing to happen right now. Just a thing to happen at some point eventually. The fountain might have a different idea of what 'safely' means, too. Which is probably not great for Sandy.

"Have you ever been to the Enchanted Forest before?" Drake asks. "I'm guessing you haven't."

There's still that clawed up tree nearby. And the skeleton. The trees have been growing even more dense the further into the forest out hero goes. To the point now that walking between them may prove difficult. The pathway he's one looks to branch three ways not too far from here. In one the ground is quite rocky and the ever present strawberry vines look to be absent. Down the other a shallow stream flows, shining with sunlight. And the third has strawberry vines growing thick, covering trees and hanging from branches.

What's next?

[Deathkeeper]

Sunny Orchard

"Calm down; you're plenty helpful. But I wouldn't say no if someone who knew exactly how to get me out of here showed up." Especially before his sandals wear out. They're pretty cheap.
"Yeah, this is my first time."
He chooses to continue straight and stick to the forest. The rocky path seems unwise with his poor shoes and the stream path is...well frankly it's too inviting. He's still wary of the last giggling stream he passed.

[Rebonack]

[Sunny Orchard]

Down the vine strewn path, then?

Sandy will immediately have some problems.

First?

He needs to push his way through all these vines.

Second?

The vines are covered in delicious smelling strawberries. Drake decides to snag a few as our hero is busy trying to shove his way through the tangle.

Of course...

If Sandy decides to eat some strawberries that would probably be fine, right? No one is offering them to him...

[Deathkeeper]

Sunny Orchard

Sandy pushes his way through the vines. It's hard work! But he can do it if he pushes hard enough, which he does.
And he can sneak a few berries while they go since no one offered him directly. Might as well get something out of this... He isn't really even thinking about it.

[Gullara]

[The Enchanted Forest]

The moment the brambles are cleared, Adir goes for his guns. As fast as he is, the witch still comes close to grabbing Cassie. Only that barrier and Melissa herself keep the monster at bay. But it gives him room to draw. Two of those chattering pistols flash into his hands.

Steel jacketed rounds are directed at the hag's middle, her face, everywhere he can possibly land them while having to shoot mostly from the hip. The sounds of the netherworld are drowned in terrible thunder.

[The Enchanted Forest]

With the protective aegis of childish imagination redoubled the hag is having a difficult time here.

Biting doesn't make it better.

The hag howls with rage at the cat sinking teeth into her leg. With an awful slowness she reaches for Melissa, her hand and crooked nails seemingly larger than life. A grip of iron, intent on ringing the nekomatta's neck.

But then she gets shot.

A whole bunch.

Just...

Goodness!

That's so many bullets.

She staggers away, glaring hate at Adir and unholy envy toward his beautiful child. So full of hope and innocence. A father so full of love and protection. She hates them both.

"Three years," the hag hisses-

-right as Sarget gets into clobbering range.

When the fist comes down with a tremendous crash the surroundings shatter like painting on a mirror. The dark, nightmarish forest crumbles away around them, leaving them once again standing on the King's Road.

A flight of stairs nearby leads up to a door standing open. The house on the other side stands silent.

[The Enchanted Forest]

Sarget straightens after his burst of violence. Cassie clutches her dad's neck and sobs uncontrollably. It's over... as over as it can be. "Take her home. Away from this place as quickly as you can." The treant urges. He'll need to take his own route back home, but he doesn't fear for himself in this place.

[5a Violista]

June actually has a lot of experience with the horizon of Eris, since that's the name of her home planet.
...
It's almost certainly a different Eris than most other Erises that other people would know, and if this planet is twice as large as the dwarf planet Eris then the horizon here is much closer than the horizon of the Eris she knows.

June thinks.
Is 300 days enough for weather to start normally? Well...maybe? This isn't something that most people have experience with.
"How do you normally motivate it?" June asks. "Does it need, like, pep talks or something?" Probably not. Might need turbulence or energy added to it, or uneven heating or something along those lines.

[Rebonack]

[Sunny Orchard]

Sandy eats one of the tiny wild strawberries.

It is, without exaggeration, probably the most delicious strawberry he has ever eaten. While only about the size of a blueberry it is absolutely exploding with flavor. This is partly due to the fact that most domestic strawberry cultivars are selected for size rather than flavor. As a result they tend to taste diluted compared to the wild-type.

Also these ones are magical faerie food.

Our hero may feel all of a sudden like it's a good idea to slow his pace a bit and grab some more berries.

That couldn't hurt anything, right?

And they are literally all over the place.

It won't even slow him down that much.

If he has any natural magical abilities the faerie fruits will augment them until the next dawn.

[Deathkeeper]

Sunny Orchard

Sandy continues to push through the vines. He can't sit here all day berry picking!
But he can slow a little bit to pocket a few more strawberries. It doesn't seem like he'll run out of vines for a while but just in case he gets dumped somewhere inhospitable he'll need food, right?
But it seems like everything is verdant and summery and orchard-y for now.

[Recaiden]

Here at the base of the hills, the horizon probably only looks like 3 or 4 kilometers away.

"Exactly. You get some storm spirits to give it a pep talk, show the air its potential, that kinda thing. Of course, adding tides and heat spots helps too."

Mei points up into the mountains, and holds her other hand out to June.
"C'mon, let's go!"

[Rebonack]

[Sunny Orchard]

"Okay," says Drake who has strawberry juice staining most of his mouths at this point. "There's a satyr and some fauns up ahead, so be careful."

That's...

A warning?

Sure enough, as our hero continues onward he'll half a dozen deer hanging out and eating strawberries. There's a buck with some impressive antlers and three does and a pair of cute spotted baby deer. They'll all standing around eating strawberries and they look up, slightly alarmed, when Sandy approaches.

They don't run off, though.

Also?

They just look like normal deer.

Maybe Drake is wrong?

Our hero might try conversing with the deer. Or just waving hello as he walks past and continues on down the trail. Or he might studiously ignore them.

[Deathkeeper]

Sunny Orchard

Well if Drake was warning him so he’d stay out of sight that’s blown now.
Sandy just waves and tries to skirt around the edge of the clearing.
”Don’t mind me, folks. Just passing through.”
Are there faeries that are just magic animals? Would that mean there’s a farm like that faerie orchard but it’s faerie animals? Is a faerie cow a dairy faerie? With these questions in his mind he slowly tries to make his way around the little herd without getting charged.

[5a Violista]

Oh. Storm spirits.
...
Well, assuming spirit magic or whatever could really mean...something?
Just like not having experience with how long it takes for weather to start, June also doesn't have much experience with how storm spirits work.
"Okay."

June grabs the hand, and goes along up the mountain too.
"How do you know about this planet, anyway?" June asks. "Have you been, um..." What's a good way to ask this? There's obviously some better and some worse ways of saying it. "...helping out with it, or something?"

Also!
No clouds is not good. Means no cloud cover. Dehydration might be a thing that June will eventually have to worry about.

[Recaiden]

Spirit magic really could mean something! Basically anything, really. But it sounds like here, to Mei, it means a specific thing.

Up they go! Mei doesn't seem like a practiced hiker, but not totally out of her depth her either.

Mei is set giggling by the question. What an unusual and neutral way to ask!.
"I have been helping out with it, you could say. That's my job, helping out with new planets."
"So this here mountain, no one's ever hiked up it before."

Eventually. Hopefully June knows to keep an eye on that, and not stay out in the sunlight for too long.

[5a Violista]

The biggest problem with not knowing magic is that you don't even know the terminology. You don't have the vocabulary to even describe what you don't know.

"Oh, wow. I imagine you get to climb a lot of mountains for the first time," June says. And probably a lot of other firsts, too.
"How many planets do you help out with, anyway?" Since this unusual and neutral phrase has already been used by both of them, there's no point in trying to figure out a more usual and better way to rephrase it.


June figures it's fine.
Doesn't even know the limits, re:hydration. Just knows that direct sunlight for extended periods of time is really uncomfortable, and just drank whenever it got too uncomfortable.