Kyra woke up next to an energetic baby crawling onto her stomach demanding attention. Giving a groan she rolled over onto her side, taking Ihaka with her.

“Five more minutes baby.”

This, of course, did not persuade him in the slightest as he squirmed in her arms.

Sighing Kyra sat up, muttering under her breath about getting her revenge when he was a teenager.

Although, she was feeling a lot more well rested than she had expected to feel after sleeping on hardwood for the night. Even with the petals providing a form of padding.

Just as she was thinking that she realised that the spot that she had been sleeping in was ever so slightly concave. Gulping, she pulled Ihaka onto her lap to reassure him as she used her free hand to push aside the petals.

Sometime during the night, the floor of the hollow had moulded its self to fit the contours of her body.

Kyra stood up abruptly, a hard shiver rushing through her from head to toe. Not having the where-with-all to reassure Ihaka, who was trying to get her attention as he reacted to her sudden tension, Kyra poked her finger against the floor to see if it had any give to it. However, nothing she did could budge it. It was solid as a, well, a plank of wood. Yet, it was somehow pliable enough to change shape.

Closing her eyes, Kyra took several deep breaths.

“I’m alright baby, I was just surprised is all. Let’s take a look outside, shall we?”

Her heart still halfway up her throat, but not wanting to freak Ihaka out any more than he already was, she stood up and stepped outside, more to prove to herself that she could than anything else.

“Isp’s ‘one?” He asked distressfully, as they looked around at the dimly lit meadow.

“No, I don’t think that they’re gone sweetheart, or it would be so dark right now that we couldn’t see anything.”

Just as if to prove her right, what looked like a small dewdrop of white light came slowly dripping out of a nearby flower, only to flash a bright fuchsia colour as it seemingly bounced off a thin blade of purple grass, before then swirling around them in welcome.

Ihaka gave a shrill laugh and clapped.

Kyra felt her heart settle as more and more lights came out of hiding. It was impossible to watch them and not feel a deep sense of peaceful awe.

As Ihaka took in the sight of the dancing Whisps, Kyra glanced back towards the hollow. From how tired she felt, they probably hadn’t been asleep for a full eight hours, and the hollow feeling in her stomach gave Kyra a good idea about what had prompted him to wake up.

In all the excitement before falling asleep, Ihaka had seemed to forget that he might want to eat. Kyra hadn’t reminded him, because quite frankly, she hadn’t been all together certain of if she wanted to trust the food that had been left there for them.

Sure enough, the sight of the Wisps could only keep his attention for a short while this time, and soon he was tugging on her teeshirt asking for sustenance.

Not really feeling like she had much of a choice in the matter, Kyra brought Ikaha back inside the hollow before putting him down in the petals and picking up one of the MilkFruits.

“All right Ihaka, so far since coming here, the plant life has shown us nothing but goodwill. In fact, I would go as far as to say that they have saved our lives a couple of times. So, whatever the fff—fruit is going on here, I doubt that it’s meant to hurt us. Hopefully. Maybe.”

I guess the only thing I can do is check if it tastes bad, Kyra added to herself, even if she wasn’t all that confident that the taste of the fruit would reveal anything.

After first dabbing some of the juice on her lips and feeling no numbing or tingling, Kyra slowly ate some of the fruit before putting the rest up out of Ihaka’s way over his screaming protests. After several minutes had passed and Kyra still felt no dizziness or pain anywhere, she waited just a little bit more until Ihaka had fully calmed down. Feeling a little bit silly now, and with Ihaka pouting and making her feel like the biggest monster in the world, she decided that she had done as much as she could, and let him have it.

Sighing while Ihaka made a complete mess of himself, as he had turned his back on her and refused to let her help him eat, Kyra eyed the orange celery-bamboo like things —she needed to come up with a name for them— and finally gave in to her own hunger, picking one up gingerly and nibbling on the end.

Not certain if she was glad, or if she was feeling even more ambivalent after the celery-bamboo like things didn’t seem to be poisoned either, Kyra finished the stalk down to one of the segments that closed off the middle.

They were quite filling. Kyra couldn’t help but sigh contentedly as the now familiar warm feeling spread out from her stomach and seemed to travel down her veins out to the ends of her limbs and up into her face. The sensation continued further then it had before this time, wrapping itself into her spinal column, and then up towards her brain. Kyra jumped up in fright, not that she could do anything about it at this stage, but when it got there, instead of warming her brain, the most refreshing and cool feeling that she had ever experienced before overcame her.

Then it was gone. Just as if it had never been.

Eyeing the rest of the stalk that was still in her hand suspiciously, Kyra then noticed that Ihaka, with a shiny green beard and moustache, was staring at her gape mouthed.

Sighing once again, it seemed like she was doing that a lot recently, she sank back down to her knees.

“I’m alright, baby. Finish you’r— oh, you have done. Why don’t you hand me the skin? There we are, I’ll just put this out the door for now. Look at you, were you determined to become an old man before your time!? You’ve got a green beard all the way down your front!”—— And so she continued for a while. Distracting herself by fussing over Ihaka.

Once he was as clean as he was going to get under the circumstances, and she had changed his unfortunately overdue nappy, Kyra was back to having to face the reality of where they were.

She had two choices. The first option was to stay here until it was at least light. Entirely feasible, though it was going to be at least another fifteen to twenty hours until it did so. Two, she could go exploring a little. So far though, none of her attempts at doing anything independently since coming through the portal had worked out well. She also wasn’t certain if she would encounter any predators even if she stuck pretty close to the log.

Then again, she at all wasn’t certain how safe they were staying in this hollow either.

If Ihaka hadn’t been there, Kyra would have stuck her head in the petals to do a “pillow” scream at this point. Or at least a groan, as she didn’t want to attract unwanted attention. Instead, she just gave yet another very long sigh.

Ihaka, who was tucked into her arms, gave a questioning noise and touched her cheek.

Swallowing down a sudden lump in her throat, Kyra gently placed her palm over his hand, holding it in place.

“I love you baby, you know that right?”

Ihaka gave another, slightly more distressed inquiring sound.

“I’m so sorry.”

Wet hot tears rolled down her cheeks as she held Ihaka close. He squirmed a little, but after a moment he seemed to understand that she just needed to hold him, and he quieted down, occasionally patting her wet cheeks worriedly.

—————————————————————

Having cried herself out, Kyra was then immediately confronted yet again with their precarious position as she needed to drink some of what little water they had.

Frowning down at the now three quarter full baby bottle, still feeling thirsty but unwilling to deplete their reserves further, Kyra desperately tried to remember if she had seen a spring, or anything of the sort it the immediate vicinity.

She couldn’t think of anything, but then, she had been too relieved to see the hollow to pay attention to that kind of thing yesterday. Not that it was strictly yesterday that she had arrived—— Argh! Not that it mattered what day it had been!

Poking her head out of the door, Kyra tried to see through the lights of the still dancing Wisps.

Feeling Ihaka grab onto her pant leg, she picked him up and took a small tentative step outside, explaining to him that she was looking for water, and why that was important.

Again, she didn’t expect him to understand what she was trying to say to him. But it was soothing to both of them to talk, and, Kyra new that the more she talked to him, the more chances he had to learn the language.

Kyra eventually did scout around their immediate surroundings, never going further than approximately fifty or so metres away from the entrance of the hollow.

When she finally carried Ihaka back in defeat, it was with a heavy hearty, and the knowledge that she would have to move away from this area sooner rather than later. They could do without food for a while, not to mention that they did have some food, but not having—

Kyra’s train of thought cut off.

There, in the corner of their little hollow opposite the food, was another little alcove. It looked like somebody had meticulously carved out a steeple shaped opening, but instead of a flat surface at the bottom, it had been further hollowed out into a round bowl. Into which, flowed crystal clear water from an opening in the top of the triangular dome shape above it.

Abruptly back-pedalling, she slipped on the petals. Then, only just having the where-with-all to make sure that she landed backwards with Ihaka safely on her stomach, Kyra groaned from having the wind knocked out of her, and from having hit the back of her head on the lip of the entrance.

Quickly reassuring Ihaka, who was on the verge of tears just from the shock of her falling, she held him to her as she sat up, wearily looking in the direction of their new water source.

After having investigated as best she could, and having found no indication of sawdust, or anything else that might betray a fast woodworking session, Kyra tried to wrap her brain around the sudden appearance of the small fountain.

Checking the lip around the surface of the alcove showed no signs of their possibly having been any kind of panel there to conceal it either.

Also, Kyra supposed that someone could have snuck passed her as she was exploring with Ihaka, however, she had been hyper-aware of how far she was getting from their little nest of safety the entire time. Therefore keeping an almost constant eye on the entrance in her peripheral awareness.

So while it was not impossible that someone had slipped in and out if they had been very careful of their timing, it was improbable.

Suddenly feeling a load of ants crawling up her spine, Kyra started methodically knocking on the walls and ceiling of the hollow, trying to find if she could hear any differences in the sound.

When that failed to yield any results, she stared at the alcove with her hands on her hips for a good long minute. Debating with herself before finally giving yet another good long sigh, and extending her hands under the stream.

The water tasted quite sweet.

Staring yet again at the little fountain, this time with a very odd look on her face, Kyra resisted the formation of an extremely outlandish idea that was trying to take form in her mind.

Then again, where was she right now, if not literally Out-Land, Out-of-Earth, out any kind of remotely familiar territory that she had ever been in?

Even now, with everything else that had happened and that was going on, Kyra was still frighteningly aware of the weird sensation of gravity under her feet that constantly somehow made her feel both as if she might just float away in the slightest wind, yet somehow managed to also keep her feeling very solidly planted on the ground.

She needed to stop thinking as though anything that she understood, about physics and general wildlife behaviour before coming here, would in any way translate to her current circumstances. Nothing made sense, because she had no relatable sense to put to her understanding of this place as of yet.

Suddenly wanting nothing more than to have some kind of relatable sense to put to this situation, Kyra grabbed her tote bag, strapped Ihaka into her carrier so that he was on her back again, and marched out the door. Grabbing the Milkfruit and the celery-bamboo on her way out.

Not to go away from the log this time however, no. This time, she was going to climb it.

Digging her fingers and shoes into the thick knobbly bark, Kyra realised for the first time that the log wasn’t actually round in shape. Rather, it was vaguely triangular with mostly convex sides and a flat top.

Not thinking much about it except to be glad that it was a little easier to climb than she had expected it to be, Kyra dragged herself up and straddled the 40 centimetres or so wide edge that she found up there.

The bark was firm and healthy looking beneath her hands, and apart from the places where there was moss like plants growing over it, it was also dry to the touch.

Ignoring for the moment, the inquiring noises that Ihaka was making behind her, Kyra reached out to touch one of these bits of moss.

Whoosh!

A dizzying array of psychedelic colour burst along the moss from the point of her finger in a wave. Swirling and following the length of the log, as it curved through the trees and into the distance.

Sucking in her breath as Ihaka exclaimed in surprise, Kyra checked behind herself to see the same dizzying flow of colours happening in that direction as well, and realised that she could not make out that end either.

After a while, the lights stopped their seemingly random swirling, and started flowing in one directing in particular.

It was the direction she was facing, and it brought to Kyra’s mind the way that the plants had led her to the hollow in the tree to begin with. Feeling like she had nothing to lose, and not having any bases with witch to otherwise choose a direction, Kyra took a moment to orient herself —the opening of the hollow was to her left— and then stood up.

Finding it a lot easier to balance up there than she had expected, Kyra set off.

The lights of the moss soon dimmed and went out, but Kyra wasn’t too bothered by that, as she hadn’t liked them casting what was effectively a spot light on her to begin with. Besides, the Wisps still danced on either side of the log, and that was more than enough for her to see where she was going.

Very gradually, the height of the log seemed to dip.

Kyra wasn’t exactly sure how far she had walked. It wasn’t long enough for Ihaka to get too fussy, but eventually the log became low enough that she could have easily stepped right off it, and then it disappeared into the ground altogether.

Stepping lightly onto the grass, Kyra stared at the large deer fences that stood before her. Somehow, she had made it back to the base.

Feeling slightly stupefied, she turned back, only to find that the massive log, root, vine, thing, was gone. Even the Wisps were gone. All that was left was an oddly long grass meadow, stretching into the distance.

Inwardly freaking out more than a little, she put her foot where she knew it had been, only to feel nothing but grass beneath her shoe. Investigating with her hands yielded nothing different.

Wanting to look further, Kyra then became afraid that if she did, this time the fence of the base would disappear.

So, vowing to come back and search when it was light out, Kyra dug around in her bag until she came up with one of her spare hair ties. Then, she secured that to the point of the fence directly in front of where the root or vine had been. Kyra’s mind boggled at the idea of there being a tree big enough to have that as its root.

Not even hesitating to follow the direction that was being indicated by the plants anymore, Kyra then set off to her left.