Breaching into the Jungle

We finally reached the gate we were searching for. Skarra had me walking for what feels like a day straight, just so we don't have to sleep another night inside the ways.

Exiting the Ways was much easier than entering them. As we neared the gate, the strange tunnel around us seemed to move slower and slower when we tried to touch it. The gate wasn't an actual passageway, it was more like a point where we could touch the walls and by doing so, break through the mysterious barrier they formed and leave the Ways. Skarra was a bit suspicious of my descriptions about how to leave the Ways so I had to go ahead. Passing the walls between dimensions was like thrusting my arm into a lake just to realisier, that I was in fact submerged in water and only my hand was touching air. It's a very confusing sensation, like ones brain has to touch our dimension first before it can recognize that it's ours. The strange bluish colors split apart before my eyes and gave way to a sea of colors, most prominently green and yellow, flowing in the wind. Leaving the ways was like walking from a dark room into the shine of the midday sun. The sudden amount of light around me blinded my eyes.

I looked around. Giant ferns and palms craned to the sky, lianas coiled around them, draping back and forth like ribbons.

Skarra suddenly appeared behind me, like spawning out of thin air. She quickly surveyed the area before around us before turning and walking in one direction.

"Do you know which way we have to go?" I asked.

She nodded, so I followed her lead. Looking at my map I saw that it is relatively useless when navigating the real world. It showed nothing but a little black dot in the middle of the map, and multiple other dots in different colors spread around the whole paper, all labeled with different names, none of them catching my eye.

"You know in which direction we have to go?"

She noded and I followed her lead.

Moving through this jungle was quite a novel experience of me. Everything around us was alive, breathing and moving. A concert of animal sounds - singing birds and chirping insects - accompanied our every step.

The gras beneath our feet is shaped like long, thin fingers that grasp onto us with each step we take but then lets go as we move away.

The air was humid and warm, making me sweat beneath my clothes. Skarra doesn't seem to have that problem. Apparently she had to bathe in boiling water in order to train her body. At least she says so.

We navigated the trees mostly in silence, with me throwing a few questions towards Skarra every now and then and her ignoring most of them.

My legs began tiring, then aching, then seriously burning from all the (what felt like) miles we had walked. Right as I opened my mouth to start nagging Skarra to start a break, a screech pierced the jungle. It came from the direction were heading. I stopped and looked towards Skarra. Judging by the volume of that noise, the source had to be some kind of giant. It reminded me of the birds that pestered our fields back in the village, just far, far louder. As i stood there rooted in place, Skarra shoot towards the noise looking like a blurred shade. The air moved by her speed pulled the leaves around us with her.