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This is some serious monkey-paw-level shit.
It was hard to imagine that just over a week ago—maybe two weeks, if she was being generous—Gwen had been sitting on a bale of hay in her barn, remarking to her angry stray cat that she wanted an adventure—telling him what she wouldn’t give to go anywhere, doanything, other than stay in her sad and boring life on the farm.
Pushing herself up from the ground, she groaned in pain. She was really sick of waking up in ditches or other weird places. Usually after something terrible had happened to her. Which she supposed made sense. People generally didn’t wake up in ditches because they’d just had a great time.
It took her a long moment to remember what had happened. Mordred had destroyed the Crystal in a fit of rage. She had run for the forest. A shockwave, and then—yeah, that would be why she hurt everywhere. She had been knocked through the trees like a pinball before ending her trajectory by smashing into a rock.
Standing, she staggered a few steps and put her hand on the trunk of a tree to keep from falling over. Rubbing her temple, she winced. “Can we stop being a punching bag? That’d be nice, I’d like that.” She didn’t know who she was complaining to. She didn’t know if she really cared.
A cloud moved, and a ray of bright sunlight streamed through the leaves in the trees, momentarily blinding her. Lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the glare, she blinked, trying to clear her vision.
She gasped.
The world around her had…changed. Avalon was nothing like it had been only a few hours earlier. With the passing of the shockwave, it was like someone had reset the contrast and saturation on everything. Not only reset it—cranked it up. The trees around her were no longer faded, with half-bare branches shedding their last browning leaves. They were in full spring bloom.
The air was sweet with the smell of flowers. Birds chirped merrily in the branches. Leaves of every shade of green surrounded her. Some of the trees were even flowering, branches overfull with pink and purple blossoms. Petals rained down to the forest floor like beautiful, slowly drifting snow.
Dead grass was now bright and crisp, swaying in the breeze around her.
She gaped at what she saw. Birds flew overhead—all in wild colors like parrots. It took her breath away.
This was what Avalon was meant to be like?
Was this what Mordred had really robbed from the world?
It was beautiful. Beyond beautiful, actually—it was a paradise.
She walked deeper into the woods, marveling at everything she saw. At lady slipper flowers and colorful orchids, to buzzing, brightly colored insects that zipped from flower to flower like hummingbirds.
She watched as one of those insects flew close to a vaguely circular shrub, packed with large, thick green leaves.
A tongue darted out from the shrub and snatched the bug out of thin air with a loudglomp.It had looked like a frog’s tongue. But it had beenhuge—easily the length of her arm. Unable to help her curiosity, she tiptoed closer to the bush, hoping to see whatever odd creature was hiding inside.
When she got within a foot of the bush, she leaned in closer to see if she could spot the creature hiding in the branches. It was then that she realized the creature wasn’t inside the shrub—the creaturewasthe shrub.
Each thick green leaf of the shrub opened into a bright green frog’s eye.
Squeaking in surprise, she fell back onto her ass, staring at the shrub-of-frog-eyes-on-sticks that was now looking at her, blinking its eyes in random patterns. Each time it blinked, the eye would look like a leaf again before opening and revealing its true shape.
It looked almost like a sea urchin. Only witheyes. On the end of sticks.
It stared at her. A lot.
And she stared right back. “Hey, buddy. Hey. Sorry. Didn’t mean to get in your personal space. We’re good.”
Eyes kept blinking, watching her, as if she were a threat.
She had no idea if the thing was sentient enough to have a conversation. Standing back up, she retreated away from the eye-shrub and raised her hands in a show of harmlessness. “I’m gonna just…leave you to your froggy monster business, okay?”
The eyes began to close until the shrub once more looked like any other normal bush. Even if it was a little too round. She couldn’t help but stare at it still as she walked away, almost afraid to turn her back on the eye-shrub. But it didn’t seem to want to mess with her in any way, so she turned to keep wandering through the forest, taking in the sights and sounds of the new world around her.
She came to the edge of a pond, and watched as large, shimmering shapes dashed beneath the surface. They were like fish, but way too big. At least too big for a pond. But it didn’t seem to bother them, as they seemingly blinked in and out of existence.
Teleporting, magical fish.
That wasso cool.
She sat down on the edge of the pond, watching them dart around, fascinated by them, for a good long while before she decided it was time to get up and keep moving. She couldn’t just sit in the forest forever, right? She should probablydosomething. Go somewhere.
