“Alright, this might be a problem.” Karla touched the barrier with her wing. Despite Edie’s assurances that it was an illusion, it felt hard and unbroken. “I don’t think I could walk through this if I tried.”

“Well, there has to be a way to get through, otherwise it wouldn’t be an illusion. I’m sure that if somebody was thrown across the hole with enough force, they would be able to-”

Karla slapped Edie off the ground. The fish, so surprised that she managed to stop talking, went flying through the illusion. She let out a surprised grunt as she slammed into the fake barrier, but carried on to the other side. Out and into the human world, she bounced and flopped on the ground with a groan.

“That worked surprisingly well.” Boggy said with enthusiasm. “Can you do me and Darkness next?”

Karla inspected them, and did some quick calculations in her head. “You’re probably too heavy for me to slap through. But, as my father always said, where there’s a will, there’s a way!” A devilish glint sparkled in her eyes.

A few minutes later, Boggy and the cape that held Darkness were clutched in Karla’s talons, circling hundreds of feet in the air. “All right, so what I’m going to do is fly at the barrier as quickly as possible, and then right before we hit the illusion, I’m going to let you go.”

“On second thought, I don’t need to leave the Grove that badly.”

“Too late. Here we go!” Karla let out a screech of joy, and hurtled towards the hole with as much speed as she could gather. Boggy let out a screech of abject terror, and was chucked at the barrier with too much speed. For a second, he felt a hard pressure growing on his trunk and branches and was sure that he’d been thrown at the wrong spot.

He gave his thanks for the world for introducing him to such great friends, even though they’d killed him tragically. The stress grew and grew, until it suddenly broke, and he was launched forwards. He tumbled over and under, bounced off a rock, and landed on Edie, who let out a hoarse squeal. With effort, he managed to croak out, “Sorry.” He was not forgiven.

Karla landed on the ground on the other side with a laugh, and gave a mocking bow. “You’re all very welcome.” For the first time in his life, Boggy felt bitter.

“And how do you think that you’re going to get through?” Edie asked. She looked like she was ready to thrash the bird, but a convenient wall lay between them. “Also, could you please get off me?” Boggy, realising that he was still sitting on the fish, stood up with another apology.

Karla gave a haughty bark of laughter, and said, “I’m not like you cowards. I can fly.” She spread her wings to emphasize her point. Boggy wasn’t entirely sure what that had to do with bravery, but he wasn’t going to give her the chance to start ranting about it. “Something as petty as an illusion won’t stand a chance against me.”

She flapped her wings and took off. Edie, sour expression still painted on her face, muttered, “I hope she misses.”

The Kanmi built up speed in the air, and after a couple minutes of circling, made a beeline towards the hole. She looked like she was going to make it, but at the very last minute her eyes widened, and she swerved to the right, missing the fake barrier by a feather’s width.

Edie chuckled with malice. “Oh, can somebody not get through a petty illusion? How sad!”

Karla ignored the jeers with a huff, and went back a couple hundred feet. She took a couple of deep breaths, and flew back, ready to dive headfirst. Failure. As though possessed by some sort of passion for not flying into things, she stopped just before she hit the fake barrier.

Boggy had to admit, it was amusing to watch the prideful bird fail the first couple of times. But after ten attempts, even Edie had to admit that the scene was veering away from enjoyable and straight towards depressing. By the twentieth try, the rest of the group was simply sympathetic.

###

Karla flapped her wings with frustration. For what felt like the millionth time, she turned around and dove straight towards the place where she knew there was no barrier. In her mind, she knew that if she flew into it, she wouldn’t get hurt, but every instinct in her body refused to let her do it.

And just like every other time, she stopped before she could fully penetrate the illusion. She let out a scream of frustration and crashed into the ground. The others stood only a few feet away from her outside the barrier. Their eyes were filled with pity, as though she were some hatchling that didn’t know how to fly yet. Karla’s eyes flashed with indignation.

The fish walked towards her with hesitation in her step. “Karla, you can do this right?”

“Please. Of course I can. The only reason that you even got over there is because I pushed you over there.”

Edie opened her mouth, a harsh retort about to escape her lips, but she calmed herself down. “I’m just saying, if you need help then we can ask somebody else to push you out of here.”

“Help? Ha!” Karla laughed incredulously. “I don’t need help. I can do it by myself.” With that said, she flew back and prepared herself. All she needed to do was bash herself into a fake wall. She’d done scarier things in her life, so why was this what was stopping her?

So she tried again. And again. And again. But to no avail. She landed near the hole once more, touching the wall, enforcing the belief in her mind that it was fake.

A raspy voice came from the cape that Boggy was holding. “Your eyes are open.”

Karla jumped, and narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Well, obviously. I don’t suppose you would understand, but I use them to see things.” Her words dripped with vitriol.

Her provocations didn’t get a reaction from Darkness. “No, I mean when you’re about to hit the barrier. I can sense that your eyes are open.”

“Huh. Creepy.”

“Maybe you should try closing them.”

Karla couldn’t believe her ears. Was she actually getting a lecture on how to fly from a being that was stuck in a cape? “I think I’ll be fine without your advice. You should stick to your day job. Oh, wait; you can’t have one.” She took off from the ground, heart heavy with resentment. As if she was going to stoop so low as to take help from a freakish abomination.

This time it would work. Deep breaths. Karla looked straight at where the hole should be with intense determination. She knew where it was, and she knew she could fly right through it. With an inhale, she thrust forwards, hurtling towards it faster than she ever had before.

Whether by conscious decision or by some act of her subconscious, she didn’t know, but the second before she hit the fake barrier, the same place where she’d swerved away from the wall every time previous, she closed her eyes. And as though by magic, her entire body relaxed. Her instincts didn’t take hold, and her momentum brought her into contact with the illusion.

Her beak felt like it was going to smush into the rest of her body, and that was when Karla’s body decided to react. Wings flapping wildly, she tried to stop before the collision got worse. The momentum was too much.

She hurtled through the fake barrier, rolling onto the grass bumpily, bouncing off a rock and smashing into Boggy’s trunk. The shapeshifter let out a muffled grunt, and fell down with the bird.

Karla opened her eyes. She’d done it. And most importantly, she’d done it all by herself. She jumped off of the groaning tree, and flew into the air with a victorious whoop. She then promptly collapsed, crashed into the ground, and curled up into a rock-shaped ball.

The entire day had taken a toll on the Kanmi. In only a day, she’d been in two fights, explored the area around the Grove, and had flown back and forth from the barrier far too many times. It was enough to make her fall asleep while flying, and it was safe to say that was out of commission for a while.

Boggy let out a sigh, and got to his roots. It was going to be a long journey, but at the very least it was going to be an interesting one. He bent down to pick up Karla, and cradled the rock in between a couple of his branches. Soon enough, with all of the other members riding on his back, he began to waddle his way through the forest.

“Actually, I never learned what happened at the barrier earlier. I think you were saying something, but I couldn’t hear it through the bird’s mouth.”

“Oh no! It looks like I’ll have to tell it all over again.” Edie let out a sigh of fake anguish, and enthusiastically retold the story of the witch and the dragon, this time adding a couple of embellishments that, if Karla had been conscious, would have been scoffed at. But Karla was deep asleep, and so Boggy and Darkness, being the gullible fools that they were, legitimately believed that Edie had been the sole hero of the story.

The trek through the forest was slow but steady. It was only when Edie had finished her story that Boggy realized that something felt a little bit off. He thought about it, and soon realized what was wrong.

“Is the human realm always this quiet?”

“Well, you have to understand that you grew up in a place where there was something living everywhere. Out here, it’s harder to survive, so there’s less animals making noise.” Edie frowned. “Although you’re right, this is quieter than it usually is.”

The forest was fraught with silence. There was a slight breeze, but even the branches of the trees seemed afraid to rattle. This was because of the unknowing effects of Darkness. Although present company seemed to get used to his aura, it still had the tendency to scare away everything that moderately resembled life.

This fragile silence was lost on the listeners to Edie’s tales. They had found that the fish had a penchant for telling tales, and she really, really didn’t like to stop. Boggy trudged on, entertained enough to forget his exhaustion. It hadn’t been a day since he’d decided to leave, and even though his journey had been far less exerting than Karla, he’d previously been living life as a stationary shapeshifter. A bad stationary shapeshifter, but he still hadn’t had an adequate amount of exercise to prepare for the journey.

Regardless, Boggy kept going, a steady march fueled by determination. And soon enough, he reached a strange structure that he hadn’t seen before.

It was like a forest clearing, but it extended in both directions as far as the eye could see. The ground was flat and even, thoroughly unnatural. Boggy hesitated to step on it, confused by its very existence.

“Oh, thank Blesam.” Edie physically sagged with relief. She had been giving directions with confidence, but it had been three years, and the last time she’d been on this road she’d been rather emotionally distressed. It was nothing less than a miracle that they’d managed to make it here at all. “We’ve made it to the main road. It’ll be smooth sailing from here.”

So this was a road. Boggy put a tentative root on the road, not sure what to expect. All he felt was hard ground. He felt a little bit more relieved; he could deal with that.

Edie’s expression hardened. “Alright, we’re going to have to practice our human impression while we travel. We’re going to meet travelers on the road, but with a shapeshifter, and somebody who can speak in the human tongue, we should be fine as long as we don’t panic.”

Boggy didn’t listen to a single word she said. Instead his focus was drawn to something that approached on the horizon. “Edie, what’s that thing?”

Edie’s mouth went dry. This was an especially bad thing for a fish. “Boggy, we need to run away right now. There’s a human in that thing.”

A human. Waves of dread made their way down Boggy’s trunk. He tried to make his body move, but fear had rooted his roots to the ground.

Boglets, as a species, had never survived by way of fight-or-flight. All the ancestral boglets that had tried either tactic were eaten ferociously, and so when the present boglet encountered a danger, it followed its instincts. In Boggy’s case, to blend in with the environment.

Normally one would become a rock, or a tree, or a sapling, but with such artificial surroundings, Boggy crossed those out immediately. No, there was only one thing in the world that would blend in with other humans.

In his mind, he tried to conjure the image of the human. Had there been two arms, or three? No, there had definitely been two. Under pressure, he began to reconstruct the image that he held. He just wanted to be a perfectly ordinary human. Standing in the middle of the road. Holding a rock.

The figure he assumed was undeniably a human. It was not inconspicuous.