Seeking Shards IV
You consider the choices you have, as limited as they are, for a bit, until you decide.
“I guess…” You hesitate briefly. “What do YOU think the best choice is? You keep having me make the decisions, but you’re the selkie with the super nose here.”
Moirine chuckles. “I figured it would be helpful for you to be the one making the choices, but, if you really want my input, pup… then I suggest I simply enter each Shard to sniff about and then we can see which one is the quickest to where we need to be going.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” you say. “It seems smarter that way, so, let’s do that.”
“Very well,” Moirine says.
And with that, you both head toward the first Shard, the one in the massive tree’s trunk directly in front of you. You stop in front of it and, much like the hole in the cave wall, you can’t see through it at all; it doesn’t seem like it leads INTO the tree trunk, and if the other Shard is also a hole, you don’t see any sign of it. It looks more like a tunnel.
“…are you sure this is a Shard?” you ask Moirine. “I don’t see… anything in there.”
“Oh, it definitely is,” Moirine says. She smirks and points to her nose. “It smells of a Shard, pup, which means it smells of magic. The fact you can’t see anything doesn’t mean it isn’t a Shard, silly. Although, granted, I can understand why you would be leery of a giant-ass hole in a giant tree that doesn’t appear to go anywhere at all.”
She snickers at this and you crack a small smile, too.
“How long do you think it would take for you to exit it?” you ask.
Moirine taps her chin. “Good question. It varies, honestly.”
“Of course it does,” you say, a bit dryly.
She shrugs. “Shard entrances are as fickle as the Shards themselves, pup. Often, you’ll enter one and it might feel like seconds before you exit it to the next Shard, or it’ll feel like you’re going for several minutes. Time is a strange entity when you are inside a Shard, and it’s even stranger when you’re traversing between Shards, truth be told.”
You glance at the hole in the trunk, and as you stare at it, you feel this weirdly foreboding sensation overcome you – it isn’t one of fear or concern, but, it’s definitely an alien feeling, probably because of how freaky it is to see a hole that leads to nowhere.
You sigh. “Well… I guess, then…”
“Let me venture in and see where this Shard leads,” Moirine remarks, and she flashes you a smile. “I shouldn’t be too long, just so you’re aware, pup. Like I said, some of these take longer to get to the ‘end’ of, which is why it might seem to you like a certain time will pass before I pop back out. I can’t give you an exact estimate, otherwise I would.” She sniffs the opening. “Can’t tell from smell, either, sadly. Just know… I’m not going to abandon you or anything. I promise I’ll be as quick as I can physically move.”
“Okay,” you say. “Uh… be safe, I guess?”
“You be safe, too, you know,” Moirine says. She glances around you and frowns rather sternly at you. “Don’t wander off too far from this spot, alright? I can find you if you do, but, I don’t want anything to happen to you when I’m not around to keep you safe.”
“I won’t,” you say. “I mean, I’ll try not to.”
“Very reassuring, pup,” Moirine says.
“I’ll stick in this area, I swear,” you say.
Moirine nods to you, then enters the large hole in the tree trunk after a beat, vanishing seconds later – and you don’t just mean vanish in the sense that she’s not in front of you, you mean that the moment she enters the hole, you don’t see her, or hear her. It’s bizarre, and you can’t help staring at the gaping hole; it really DOES feel like a portal.
“That’s insane,” you say to yourself, shaking your head.
You are still wrapping your head around the reality you’ve been shown to be true – all this magic and this supernatural beings existing and these crazy pocket realms called Shards… it’s a lot to take in, and while you feel you’ve been keeping up okay, you know that there’s so, so, so much you’ve yet to fully process. And you frankly don’t know IF you’ll be able to process it all. But, you shake this off, and you decide to look around.
The surrounding area is much the same as far as you can see: the ground is relatively barren, smooth and somewhat dark in the color of the dirt, with only sparse flecks of grass growing out here and there at random spots. There are the endless rows of trees, yes, but again, those are separate from one another, rather than being close like the wooded part of the island you and Moirine first came to, before the first Shard.
The trees themselves aren’t exactly lush, either. They’re not quite dead, to be fair, yet their branches don’t have a whole lot in terms of leaves – you look all over, and, to your eyes, it’s almost as if the exact same tree was copied and pasted thousands of times. And other than the lone massive tree you’re standing beside, you don’t see anything else; no hills, no mountains, and no signs of any civilization or change in the scenery.
‘It’s almost… unnerving,’ you think. Your lips purse and you rub your arms to try and ease yourself. ‘I wonder what, if anything, lives here? I mean, I don’t… I don’t hear anything close by.’ You take a beat to listen intently, almost to the point where you’re straining your ears, yet silence besides your own breathing and heartbeat is all you’re met with. ‘No birds, no bugs,’ you pause and frown, ‘I don’t even hear the wind.’
You shake the unease off as best you can and slowly begin to walk around the circumference of the massive tree, since it’s the only thing you can currently see that’s even a little different from the rest of this rather quiet, somber, semi-dead scenery.
It takes roughly two or three minutes total for you to wander around to the side of the tree where you find another hole, which you assume to be the other Shard mentioned.
It’s roughly human-sized like the previous one, and shaped a bit different from the one where Moirine exited, but you peer into it and find that you can’t see anything within, just like the previous one. It’s pitch-black, but the only thing that seems different to you, after a moment of inspecting the hole, is the presence of grass on the ground near the hole, grass which seems to lead into it. The first Shard was nothing but dirt on the ground.
‘I wonder if that means anything,’ you muse. ‘I would assume it does, but, at the same time, I could well be wrong in assuming that. It’s so hard to tell with these Shard things.’
You step back and look around once more, including up. The sky above is a rather grayish-blue color, from what you can see due to how many thick clouds cover most of it. The sun is out, at the very least, yet the sun almost looks to be hovering in one spot far, far from where you currently stand. It only adds to the overall… eeriness around.
‘I wonder how far a Shard goes on for,’ you think. This isn’t something you thought about asking Moirine before, but you ponder it now. ‘She said that many Shards are connected, and that they all exist in this… detached reality. Does that mean if you wander on long enough in a set direction that… that you’ll find another Shard, or…?’
Your gaze wanders. ‘Moirine didn’t say how big Shards can be. For all I know, I could go until I fall off something, or maybe it will lead me to another Shard.’ You shake your head. ‘I bet if people learned about this, they’d want to explore. Someone would to find out how far they can go or what there is past the line of sight. Me, though…’
You aren’t entirely sure you WANT to know the answer to that question.
You suck in a slow breath, then exhale it, and you begin to walk back around to the front of the tree to the Shard Moirine entered – you don’t know how long it’ll take for her to return to where you are, but, you hope it doesn’t take too long; this whole place is weirdly unsettling to you, and you’re not certain why. You just don’t like the sensations.
When you return to the spot in front, you sigh and stand there, waiting near the hole.
‘Does time work the same in a Shard,’ you wonder. Another thing you only now find yourself thinking about, and you can’t ask Moirine. ‘It’d be kind of strange either way if every Shard is, like, a separate realm from my world. God, it sounds weird just thinking how it’s not part of my world… or that I even have to think of something AS my world.’
Before your musings can go on for too long, you hear something – it sounds like movement, yet it isn’t coming from the Shard in front of you, nor is it coming from the gigantic tree at all. You blink and glance around for a moment, as the sound grows a little louder; it reminds you of rustling leaves, except there ARE no leaves on the ground for anything or anyone to rustle. But, the noise appears to be coming from behind you.
You peer over your shoulder toward the direction the noise is coming from and notice it almost seems to be originating from the tree closest to you. It’s not a threatening noise, nor an alarming one (yet, anyways), but it’s definitely strange enough to grab your attention. You look that way for a breath, and then move your eyes back to the Shard.
‘What in the world could that be?’ you wonder. ‘I don’t see any animals around…’
After a few seconds, the rustling noise stops, and instead, you hear a faint… knocking?
It’s a light knock, like someone with small hands knocking on a wooden door. Obviously, you know that there are no doors around (or you don’t SEE any doors around, but given what you’ve experienced and heard thus far, you consider that there’s likely tons of surprises just waiting around the corner for you). And yet, somehow, though, it almost appears like it’s… trying to get your attention, maybe? Or maybe it’s your imagination.
You furrow your brow and look between the massive tree and the tree further from you where the noise is emanating from. You hesitate, unsure if it’s some sort of trick, or, if you’re hearing things, or… or if there’s something actually there. You don’t know what it could be, nor do you know if it’s something potentially good or dangerous, since you know very little about Shards other than what you’ve managed to process thus far.
Still, you would like to think you’re wise enough to not be fooled, and, Moirine did say she would be right back… so you end up thinking about going to investigate the noise. Do you, though? Or do you want to wait for Moirine to return and ignore it?
‘Crap,’ you think. ‘I hate having these bouts of curiosity like this. They’re such a pain.’
You aren’t sure if going to see would be safe or if it would be a waste of time… or if it would be potentially dangerous, but, you mull the two things over regardless.
Written by Hollowpages on 05 February 2022