Felicia expected a song. She expected to be woken up by the barbers' quartet of empty-headed bimbos singing about their perfect man. She expected to be woken by a heady rage, the ideal mood to scour away all useless dreams and prepare her for the cutthroat life that is the business of modern business.

Felicia was woken by the twittering of unknown birds, however. This allowed her mind to wander into forbidden territory. She recalled unpleasant memories of bliss and happiness, long stowed away thoughts bubbling to the surface of her conscious mind. A foreign pressure surrounding every single part of her body caused her to flee inwards.

Felicia woke smiling. She gazed upon the gnarly bows of dark limbs surrounded by vivid green. She looked upon a badger as it took a bite of her arm, sinking teeth into flesh that was only partially covered by the finest wool suit jacket money can buy.

The pain did not appear until her mind had registered what was happening. Moments before, she had been inside her car. She was being driven home, still coming down from the tension she had been placing herself under the entire day. Now she was being eaten by a sizable badger, the white and green beast sinking needle-like teeth into her soft flesh.

“AAAAAAAAH!” Her scream sent a flock of birds flying. The meter-high beast that had been gnawing at her humerus moments before fleeing into the rustling undergrowth, taking a chunk of her triceps with it. Felicia screamed some more, the pain of having her arm chewed to bits tearing through her mind.

It took her a full minute to realise that the massive chunk of missing flesh was just a shallow gash. A shallow gash caused by the teeth of a wild animal, sure, but a rather minor wound none the less.

Gaining control of her faculties once again took her a mere two seconds when she realised that. The alien nature of the trees and the unnatural colouration of the beast that had been chewing on her were so far out of her expectations that she didn’t know how to act for a second. Then she remembered who she was.

Focussed and in control again, Felicia looked around. She saw towering trees, oddly gnarly and twisted bows stretching high above. Green leaves capped off this odd environment. Felicia ignored the fact that each and every element of this picture seemed way too yellow to be natural for now, only filing away the information at potentially useful and marking it for later consideration. She looked at the ground cover and noted it to be a rather standard combination of mulch and dead leaves, the occasional hopefull plant sticking up from the dark loam. She took note of the few mushrooms she saw and made sure to avoid them.

Then she started walking. Holding a hand to her bleeding arm, she strode through the densely packed forest. She stepped over triangular ferns and through the flatly spiked brush. She noted the few unknown birds in her surroundings, including the way they kept an eye on her in an eerily intelligent manner. Felicia noted all of these facts and filed them away. Her mental fortitude had started crumbling by the time she ran into a wall.

Red rock, nearly brown and perfectly smooth. Looking up at the sheer obstacle, she noted it to be around twenty meters high. She touched the perfect surface and pulled her hand away at once. Even the trees seemed wary of growing near the barrier, and the woman felt like she should keep away from the insurmountable obstacle. She had not spotted an animal for a few hundred meters now. Felicia glared at the intimidating wall, daring it to reveal its secrets to her. The wall did an excellent job of looking unimpressed.

The woman started walking again, keeping the wall to her right. She had come at the thing at a shallow angle, and decided to take the path that forced her to change course the least. The area just beside the wall was spacious. The only living things for a full meter beside the mysterious barrier was the reedy grass growing beneath her feet. Not even small bushes blocked her way as she followed the wall. Then she came across a bend in the red sheet. Not a full corner, yet obviously not straight, the suspicion that this bend was around a hundred and twenty degrees crept up on the woman. She followed the bend and kept walking for an unknown amount of time. Not even the sun was able to tell her the passage of time, as she was in the shadow of the wall since emerging from the oppressive forest.

By the time the next turn came into view, Felicia’s mood had turned from reflexive habit to stoic rage. Instead of falling back on trained reflex, she started allowing herself to process her current situation. The third angular turn of the red obstacle changed any remaining fear into pure fury. She had made up her mind by the time she reached the fourth turn of one-twenty degrees. She had a pretty good feel for the length of the walls by now, and she estimated them to be less than two miles.

Two kilometres, actually. Felicia did not allow herself to slide down the old rabbit hole of comparing different unit systems again. She is sure there is a time to ponder about what arbitrary length is better, but she is fully cognizant of the fact that right there, right then, was not the time.

Instead, she walked another kilometre before making a ninety degree turn. She then strode into the forest again, not even looking back a single time. She had long since noticed that there seemed to be a prevailing wind. One side of the trees was markedly more green than the other sides, letting her know that this area of - wherever - had a wind direction that was generally opposite of the green side.

Moss tends to conglomerate on sides that are both shaded and wet. Thus, the area hit more often by stray droplets - the area facing the most common direction of wind - would logically become greener with the growths. She suppressed the small doubt she had at the validity of this information, deeming it as a low priority concern at the moment. And so it was, that Felicia walked straight into the heart of the small forest she found herself in, while following dubious tenants learned in her youth. The memories of the scout troupe she was in nearly managed to take up her concentration. Nearly, because she stamped down on the sentimental non-information the moment she realised she was reminiscing.

Stepping over the dense undergrowth, Felicia strode through the forest. The fine wool of her business suit was little help against the oddly shaped thorns and sharp plants that littered the strange forest. Her suit got torn up and more bloody with each step she took. Silent tears made dark furrows across her cheeks as she stoically keeps walking, occasionally letting go of her wounded arm to shove particularly barbed bushes to the sides.

Bleeding, tired, silently crying, and exhausted, Felicia stumbled into the sunlit clearing and thought she was hallucinating. The small house located in the middle of the open space shone with divine light. The pressure all around her continued making drawing in breath difficult, and the woman sat down. Her eyes hadn’t left the simple looking hut the from the moment she glimpsed it as she forced her way through the underbrush surrounding the clearing. Gathering the last of her willpower, she stood up and slowly made her way over to the gaping doorway.

“He-” She devolved into a coughing fit asher parched throat was unused to speaking.

“Hello? I’m lost and would appreciate it if I could make a phone call. I have a GPs tracker on me, so people will come to find me in a whi-” She coughed some more as she realises she did not have a GPS tracker on her. Her purse - and thus her mobile phone - was still laying where that beast had started chewing on her arm. Refusing to let the realisation show on her face, she stepped through the dark doorway while continuing to speak. “And do you have a first aid kit? I’m bleeding. And some coffee would be nice. Hello, is anyone …”

Felicia stopped speaking the moment she saw the house was empty. Now that she thought of it, the hut was pretty weird. It looked quite pretty, standing there in the clearing, but a perfectly white cube capped with a flat black roof was not an architectural style she recognized. And the inside was weirder still. She had been blocking the light, her adjusting eyes only allowing her to see the interior after stepping through the doorway.

Felicia saw nothing. To be more precise, she only saw empty walls and a single object.

This single object was a crystal suspended in the air, the few rays of sunlight causing it to shimmer brilliantly.

“I ACCEPT. DO YOU ACCEPT?”

“What?”

“AID.”

Baffled and unsure of what to say, Felicia mutely nods.

“Yay! I got a contract already, now you’re mine!”

Then the pressure all around her that had steadily been increasing this entire time surged into a climax and Felicia fell over.