The Unicorn's Forest

The first problem came up immediately as they had to decide on a direction to go in since there wasn't any clear indicators on where they should go first. Such as natural boundaries that they could see like a cliff. Though, Charlie personally didn't care. She found their surroundings very relaxing and thought that there wouldn't be anything unpleasant around.

In the end, they left a marker to indicate the entrance to Petals' forest and traveled in the same direction they were technically heading when they left Petals' forest.

Charlie found their surroundings were more peaceful than she would have expected as they walked: birdsong floating in the distance, butterflies visiting flowers, squirrels and chipmunks going about their business. If she could, she'd have liked to spend the rest of her life there. Despite not having her family around, which she knew she would want.

However, the tranquility of the world they were now traveling through was disturbed when they encountered a path. It wasn't a path they'd have expected, as it didn't look like a game trail or even what they'd have expected as a dirt road. It was two parallel paths that were about a quarter the width of the tires of any vehicle Charlie had seen.

The consensus was to follow it, so as to see where it led. Tim made a marker so we'd know how to get back to Petals' forest when the time came. Though, there was a debate on which direction of the path they should take. Eventually Wes pulled out a coin and suggested they flip it to determine which direction they should go.

"Hey, at least it'll be a fair result, okay?" Wes said.

"I still say we should take the left," Ralph argues.

"I think I'm with Wes on this," Amelia said and Hannah nodded her agreement.

Charlie was partial to going to the right, but didn't want to say anything, especially since she didn't see what good it would do. So, when she voiced her support for the coin flip, Beth and Tim followed suite, leaving Ralph the odd one out.

"Fine, I'll accept what the coin flip indicates, but can I choose which side of the coin goes which direction?" Ralph asked.

No one objected, so it was decided that if the coin landed heads, they'd go left. If it landed tails, they'd go right. Charlie suspected Ralph had something in mind, but didn't know how to prove it if he did, so she made sure to watch the coin flip carefully.

Wes flipped the coin and tried to catch it as it fell, but missed. After that, they had to spend several minutes searching for the coin. Finally, when Beth found it, they saw it had landed tails. Ralph looked like he was cursing up a storm silently, and Charlie had to admit, if he had planned something, whatever it was had gone far off the rails.

So, they started following the path and while they had a path to follow, the places where it had worn down to the dirt weren't wide enough for their feet to fit in, so Charlie walked next to it, part of her wondering what could have made that path.

Finally, after a few hours of walking, it was agreed to get out what they had to eat for dinner. Or technically lunch, since the sun was still rather high in the sky. The meal they had were some cold cut sandwiches, since they didn't have anything to refrigerate them with, they didn't want the meat in those to go bad, so it didn't take much persuasion for everyone to agree to eat those first.

Charlie sat with her back against a tree, with the tree between her and the trail they'd been following. Even though she'd been up for any sort of walk or hike, she found herself dozing off as she ate. She drank from a bottle of water she'd brought, since they didn't know if they'd be able to find a source of water in this world.

It wasn't long before Charlie fell sound asleep. She slept well, but when she started to wake up, she heard giggling. It took her a few minutes before she could even place the sound of giggling and realized it was Amelia and Hannah. When she opened her eyes, she saw everyone standing around her, each with a varied expression of amusement on their faces.

"What?" Charlie asked, partially asleep still.

"You were sleeping so peacefully," Beth said.

"We couldn't help ourselves," Amelia added before giggling again.

"Wish I could claim credit for this one," Ralph commented, chuckling.

With each statement, Charlie's stomach sank lower. She had a feeling she'd just been the target of a prank and wasn't sure what to do about it. For one, she didn't have a mirror to look in and see what they'd done.

Suddenly she remembered her phone. She quickly pulled it out and after a few minutes of working out how to operate the camera, she was able to see herself. What she saw was that her friends had written on her face. Dumb comments like 'Ralph was here' or 'kiss here to wake me up' with an arrow pointing to her lips or even 'Property of Alex Samuels, handle with care.'

Some Charlie had to admit were amusing, but others annoyed her completely. However, she didn't say anything about it, she just pulled on her magic and imagined it as a cloth and was happy to see that it removed the writing easily.

"When'd you learn to do that?" Hannah asked.

Charlie looked up in surprise. She'd actually forgotten that her friends were still watching her. "Um, just now," she admitted. "It was the first thing I thought of to removed your graffiti."

"Well, lets get going. We still have a good amount of daylight left to explore," Tim commented.

Charlie sighed. "How long was I asleep for?" she asked as she started to stand up and pick up her pack.

"Not long," Wes said. "I think we noticed you asleep maybe a half hour ago."

Charlie nodded. At least a short nap wouldn't really hurt them. Especially since they left their world in the afternoon and arrived here in the morning. As Charlie walked the short distance to path, she stopped when she heard a terrified scream.

Looking towards the noise, she saw what looked like a centaur, but with a black body with multiple legs on either side. She couldn't see clearly because the creature turned and ran away as fast as its legs would carry it. The human part of the creature was clearly that of a little child and she guessed that it was a girl, though since she wasn't familiar with what it was, she couldn't be sure. At the very least, it looked like it was wearing an undyed silk shirt, but there wasn't any way to really be sure. What she was able to see before the creature ran out of sight was that it's skin was almost a light gold, its hair was a mint green, and its eyes were a bright yellow.

Though, running away was being charitable. Whatever it was, it fell down in surprise, then as it tried running, it kept tripping over its own legs before it finally did manage to get its balance and really run.

"What was that?" Beth said as she came up to her.

"I'm not sure, I think I scared it when it saw me," Charlie replied absently.

"Look, I think it was picking flowers," Hannah said.

"Why do you say that?" Ralph asked.

"Because it dropped its basket full of flowers," Amelia said as she and Hannah went over to pick up the wicket basket with several flowers having fallen out of it, with many more still inside.

"At least we know there's something living in this area," Tim remarked.

"Let's follow whatever that was," Charlie suggested. "It looked like it was wearing a shirt, so it's certainly not a mindless monster. Maybe it'll help us learn more about this world."

"Or let us know if they have food they'd be willing to trade us for, if we use this world as a staging point for our expedition," Beth commented.

"We should also bring that girl her flowers and basket," Amelia said, as everyone started walking along the path back the other direction from which they'd been traveling.

"What makes you think it's a girl?" Ralph asked.

"Who else would be gathering flowers?" Amelia retorted. "I'm sure she'll want the flowers she'd gathered."

"Whether it's a girl or boy whatever doesn't matter," Charlie remarked. "But I agree, it'll probably be happy to get the flowers it dropped."

"How far do you think we'll have to go?" Hannah asked.

"Well, it's probably heading to wherever it lives or is camped, so it should be roughly nearby. I'd say probably a few hours at the most," Beth said.

"Well, let's hope whatever they are, they won't be hostile towards us," Wes remarked. "I mean, I think whatever it was was as tall as us; and that's not counting the fact that that it's clearly not fully grown."

"You know, while I didn't get a good look at it's underside of the creature, it kind of looked like a spider," Tim commented.

"Looks can be deceiving, right, heh?" Wes asked, clearly uncomfortable with Tim's comment.

They continued discussing what the creature could have been as they walked. Charlie wasn't as interested in what the creature was as much as she was with what the creature's presence might mean. Even if this world turned out to be less than ideal in regards to their search for the world that connected to the griffin canyon, these creatures might actually be a resource they could use to help with that expedition.

The conversation died off after a couple hours of walking, as everyone started to get tired. While the sun indicated it was early afternoon, Charlie was sure it was probably well past dark on their world.

Charlie moved next to Beth to ask her something that was on her mind. "Do you think our being tired would be considered 'jet lag?'"

Beth took a few minutes to consider the question, which most of was from her being tired, Charlie was sure.

"Would it be 'jet lag' though?" Beth asked finally. "Wouldn't it be better to say 'gate lag?'"

Charlie chuckled. "Maybe, but it would still have pretty much the same effect, right?" she replied.

They continued on quietly after that, though Charlie was starting to wonder if they should continue on or take a break so everyone could get some sleep when she heard noises from ahead of them.

Charlie suspected the nap she took earlier helped her be more alert now, as it took everyone else a bit longer before they became aware of the noise ahead of them.

As they got closer, it sounded like someone talking, but it was still a few minutes longer before Charlie could make anything out.

"-no possible way there's anything out there like you said you saw," the first voice said.

"I don't care what you say is possible or not! I know what I saw! They're coming for us!" a second voice wailed, this one sounding a lot younger than the first. Which Charlie suspected was the creature they saw earlier. However, there was something strange that she couldn't quite place. It was almost like she knew what it was, but couldn't quite put her finger on it.

"I'm sure mother will be willing to talk with you about it when you get back home, so why don't…" the first voice trailed off as Charlie and her friends rounded a large bush around some trees and came in sight of the creatures.

As Charlie was able to get a good look at them, she had to admit that Tim was right. Their bottom part really looked like a spider. The creature that had been talking was easily twice as tall as the younger one and carried what looked like a large spear. Charlie wasn't sure she wanted to find out just how sharp that spear was. The older creature very much looked male, but she couldn't really be sure, so decided to continue not thinking of it as any particular gender. The older one had skin that was a few shades darker than the younger creature, dark orange eyes, and its hair was mostly shaved, aside from an emerald green strip of hair woven into a braid from the crown of its head down until it hung over its left shoulder.

The younger creature turned in alarm as the other trailed off and quickly ran around the other creature, putting it between itself and Charlie's group. The older creature stared at Charlie and her friends in shock.

Amelia and Hannah step forward before anything can be said and offer the younger creature the flowers and basket it had dropped. The younger creature looks out from behind the other creature and looks like it was about to move back around and accept the flowers, but the other creature stops her by putting the shaft of the spear in her way, stopping her.

"I don't know why you're here, but you're in direct violation of the agreement between our peoples!" it said, eyes glaring at them.

"I don't know what agreement you're talking about," Charlie said, not sure what kind of predicament they walked into. "We're just-"

"I don't care what your plans are, you are now our prisoners!" the creature said, cutting Charlie off, as it pulled out what looked like a whistle and blew in it, sounding out a high pitched whistle that echoed in the distance for at least a few minutes.

"Hey, Charlie," Beth said as she came up to her. "You can understand these creatures?"

"Yeah, they're speaking in English, aren't they?" Charlie asked, not taking her eyes off of the creature.

Beth sighed. "Actually, they're not. I can tell they're saying something, but I have no idea what it is," Beth replied.

"What?" Charlie asked, surprised. "Then how can I understand them?"

Beth shook her head. "I'm not really sure, but I have a thought that we can discuss later."

Charlie turned her attention back to the creature. "I think there's been a misunderstanding," Charlie said. "We just arrived in this world several hours ago. We don't know what agreement you're talking about."

The creature laughed, clearly not believing Charlie. "Your lies are a transparent as your attempts to claim ignorance," it said, keeping the spear leveled to keep the younger creature away from Charlie's group, or vice versa. "When the others arrive you will see the folly of your actions."

"What're they saying?" Tim asked Charlie.

Charlie turned to the others. "Apparently there's some sort of agreement that we're violating somehow. I'm not sure who the agreement is with, but I guess we're caught in the middle of it," Charlie said.

"Would you at least ask if she can get the flowers she'd picked?" Amelia asked.

Charlie turned back to the creatures. "Would we be at least able to give the flowers your friend picked and dropped when she saw us?" Charlie asked. "I mean, it looks like she put in a lot of effort to collect them."

The older creature looked at Charlie intently. Charlie felt a little unnerved by the gaze, but not enough that she felt like they should leave. Charlie started to wonder as she waited for a response if it was kind of a test of wills or something. Or maybe she was just overthinking things in the situation.

Finally, the creature takes its left hand from the spear and holds it out, where Amelia and Hannah hand over the flowers. The creature then passes it to the younger creature who accepts it gratefully.

"Thank you!" the younger creature called out to them before walking to about thirty feet behind the other creature, where it stopped and started to watch the standoff.

"So, what do we do now?" Wes asked.

"I guess we wait for the others to show up," Charlie said.

"What others?" Beth asked.

"The ones that whistle was for, obviously," Ralph answered.

Charlie glanced at Ralph, wondering if he could understand these creature, but like with Petals, chose not to help with letting the others know what was being said.

Shaking her head, she focused again on their current situation. "So, should we wait for the others to arrive or should we try to get out of here?"

"Might as well wait," Beth said. "I mean, it looks like it can run faster than we can, so right now I don't think it'll look very good if we try to get away right now."

"Yeah, probably going to be better to wait and see how this plays out. If nothing else, we can use magic to hide us on what we're doing and head back to Petals' forest," Tim remarked.

"So, what do you do while we wait?" Hannah asked.

"Maybe play some music?" Charlie suggested, not sure what else to do.

"I like that idea," Wes said.

"Should I get my piano out?" Hannah asked.

"Maybe hold off on that," Amelia suggested. "We don't know how long it'll take, so it could be just a few minutes and if that's the case, you won't have enough time to really set it up, let alone play it."

"You got a point," Hannah laughed.

"Okay," Wes said. "Any requests of music?"

"How about some quiet music?" Beth suggested. "Something that will be calming. I mean, we don't want them more worked up when they decide what to do with us."

"How about some Enya? I always find her songs rather relaxing," Tim commented.

Wes looked around. "Any other suggestions?" he asked.

Charlie couldn't think of anything, or at least anything calming. Looking around, it looked like no one else had any suggestions either.

"Okay, since there's no other suggestions, I'll start with 'May it Be,'" Wes said after waiting a couple minutes.

Charlie watched Wes as he began playing the song. Though, unlike the last time he did this, he didn't have a CD in his hand. He just held out his left hand and Charlie could feel the magic creating the vibrations in the air that her ears translated to as the music of the song.

Charlie wasn't too familiar with the song and merely listened, but had to admit, the soft tones of the song was relaxing. She sat down with her arms hugging her knees, with her head resting on her knees.