❧ the inner garden

[dramatispersonae]

You stumble into yet another garden, spinning and off-kilter and peculiar. This space is dominated by a massive waterfall pouring from the sky, casting a heavy wet mist into the air. The foliage is wild and overgrown, untamed and untrimmed. The flowers and leaves seem incredibly real, but everything else is offputtingly two-dimensional—rocks and boulders are papier-mâché, the stones beneath your feet are nothing but cardboard puzzle pieces, and flimsy trees hang from the ceiling by string.

Mobiles of birds and bugs swing around, hung from tree branches, spinning in the breeze, casting wild shadows. Crooked stacks of books—some short, some as tall as trees themselves—line the path, and a persistent, faint drumming sound echoes through the quiet space.

Under the waterfall, there is a single doorway.

[use this space to talk to each other and catch up, before proceeding to endgame]

Comments

[whyitgottabeblack]

Kind of showy when she could have just asked.

[simple_not_boring]

From some of what we talked about, she might have needed the game to make sure she could act on it.

[whyitgottabeblack]

Right, that's the way things work here. Well, I hope it was worth trying to frame the help she needed as a game. For all our sakes.

[simple_not_boring]

Me, too.

[whyitgottabeblack]

I hope we find out soon, because this place is not somewhere I need to stay for too long.

[simple_not_boring]

Definitely not arguing.

[whyitgottabeblack]

It feels like a child made this place. That girl?

[simple_not_boring]

Maybe. Or maybe it's because of the way the story works.