After having freaked out for a few minutes (...half an hour…) I considered that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to run around in a foreign forest while flailing my arms and making soft *thud* sounds as I tried to headbutt a tree to make myself wake up.

Since i had no idea how large this forest even was I decided to try and climb up to the top of a tree and look around, hoping to find where the forest ended, however…

*Thump*

“...!?”

As I was approaching one of the trees that had more branches than the others, I was stopped by the sound of something falling behind me, turning around I saw that it what looked like a giant rock moving towards me by… wiggling? Even though it had neither arms nor legs it was somehow able to make itself stand up on one side of its body(?) and then rotate, making the other side come closer to me and landing on the grass with another *thump*

I looked at it with great interest and a bit of fear and anxiety as it repeated this process and came closer and closer.

What was this.. this… can this even be called a creature? Whatever it may be, it was tall enough to reach my shoulders when it was standing on its side while also making me feel awe as i witnessed a feat of balance worthy of the olympics..

While I was standing half on guard and half ready to run away at a moment's notice, the rock stopped when it was a distance of twice my height away from me and started making noises that sounded like someone was pouring a bag of stones onto a bigger stone.

“*rumble rumble*?”

“... ...”

“*rumble*”

“...?”

“*rumble rumble*”

“... ... …!”

The gentlemanly spirit of the mountain (whose name was Charlton btw) then waddled away after telling me about himself and his species while also answering a few of my questions and pointing me in the direction of a building where I could stay in case it started to rain.

I wonder though, how did we have a conversation when neither of us said a word? for some reason i just sort of understood his intentions when he was making those rumbling sounds. I didn't even have the chance to try and voice out my questions before he rumbled in response.

Maybe it was his gentlemanly disposition that made him easy to understand and good at understanding others.

I’ve only been in this place for less than a day and yet I’ve already found something worth protecting…

After having walked along a path for what I’d imagine to be a good half an hour I arrived at a clearing. The house wasn’t here, but that makes sense since Charlton said that I would still have a bit left to go from said clearing, so instead of feeling misplaced anger at a pure soul I instead decided to follow Charlton's advice and climb one of the trees at the edge of the clearing.

I walked closer to one of the trees, half both expecting and hoping to hear the melodic thumping of a true friend from inside the forest, and tried to climb the tree.

Jump.

*flop*

Jump!

*flop*

Jump!

*flop*

“...”

The tree's branches were too high up for me to reach... (TT^TT)

I was about to give up when I remembered the shape and form of Charlton.

He believed in me!

He knew i would be able to do this, so I’ve got to give it my all!

With a renewed vigor I charged at the tree, closed my eyes and jumped with all of my might!

*Glomp*

After a few seconds I deemed it safe to open my eyes, and O noticed that I was still stuck to the tree without falling.

“... … …! … …!”

After having celebrated my success by trash talking the tree and praising the divine being that no doubt resided within Charlton's earthy body, I finally calmed down and realized that I didn't actually know just how I was keeping myself from falling.

“...?”

As I was looking at the two things that I could feel my entire body's weight hanging from, I saw that it was in fact my hands.

Somehow, even though my “claws” were as soft to the touch as an overly stuffed pillow, they had still somehow penetrated the trees bark, letting me hang there.

I looked down towards my feet and tried kicking the tree to make make a foothold.

*thud*

Instead of going into the bark like I was expecting them to, my toes simply bent in all directions, kinda like what you'd expect would happen if a stuffed toy tried to kick a tree.

And yet, even though my three toes were forcefully bent in a way that couldn't have been healthy for the fabric, I didn't feel any pain.

Don’t get me wrong, I could feel that they were bent in an unnatural direction and that I needed to stop bending them like that or something bad would happen, but even though I could feel that something about my foot was wrong, it didn't feel as overpowering as pain usually does, instead it was more like I just knew that something was wrong, and not just that, I could even feel much more accurately just where it was that something was wrong too.

I was suddenly snapped back out of my thoughts as i noticed the foot that I was still trying to push into the tree was beginning to fade into a dark, green color and was, millimeter by millimeter, slowly going into the tree.

This however, felt different from my hands. It didn't feel like fingers, where it felt like i was sticking my fingers in a bowling ball and I could feel the air around my fingers, instead I could feel the inside of the tree on all sides of my toes, and not just on the outside of my toes, but also the inside.

I could feel the both the bark and the wood of the tree inside of my foot.

I was phasing through the tree.

As I tried to lift the green foot upwards I found that, although very slowly, I could move it inside the tree, it felt like miving through incredibly thick mud. I then tried to move it back down, only to find that instead of moving the foot downwards, I instead moved my whole body upwards, as though I was walking up a set of stairs.

I slowly began to make my way up the tree by making holes in the bark with my hands and phasing both my feet through the tree for foothold, turns out I could only use each of the… whatever they were on specific parts of my body Honestly it kinda felt like climbing a ladder.

Once I finally reached the top of the tree and got past all the leaves (which takes a long time when the tree is four times as big as normal ones) I looked around and saw what looked like a octagonal house standing on eight large stilts, one in each corner, a few meters above the treetops a small distance away.

I slowly began to make my way over to it by climbing among the leaves and scaring off all the birds that were in the trees I went through.

As I finally came to the house I climbed up on a rope ladder that I found hanging from its side and got inside, there I saw that the house was just one big room with a very ornate octagon on the floor in the middle that was filled with all sorts of weird symbols in each of its corners, and inside of the octagon laid a single book.

Just as I had gotten halfway to the octagon I was suddenly assaulted by a great sense of fatigue and fainted on the spot while fell to the side.

Thank Charlton I don't have any bones in my body to break by falling the wrong way.