Frosty and eerily quiet. Not exactly uncomforting. When Erald was a little tyke, he’d loved exploring forests on his own. Climbing up hills, splashing through creeks, hiding in secret places, occasionally taking a friend and pretending to be, oh, pirates, pokémon trainers — it hardly mattered what. Maybe that’s why Erald found it peaceful now to trek endlessly over strong, smooth roots that dipped into an apparently bottomless depth of water.
But there was no one here. Like, no one no one. Not a squirrel, a mouse or a bird. He had sampled the water, which was strangely delicious. He found that he just kept drinking it. It was sweet, like Fresca. He drank until his belly rounded and felt physically taut.
“Oookay.” He pulled himself back. “Ex-nay on the instantly addicting ink-dray.”
Erald shook himself, and kept walking. For thirty minutes. After encountering nothing in all this time but trees and darkness, he had a revelation.
“Mirkwood!” he shouted. Then he scrambled up a tree.
Since when do I climb like Tarzan? he thought. Erald quickly reached the top and he poked his head through the uppermost branches.
“Oh!”
There. Around him. In front, to the left, the right. He felt the wind and stared at a sea of leaves. They extended toward the horizon, sparkling in daylight, rippling with the breeze. He stared for a while.
Then he turned. Behind him, opposite the direction he’d been heading, a mountain towered. Bare stone mainly, up at the top, and so huge it should have been snowcapped. Three miles high? Five? It was the nearest of innumerable mountains which stretched left and right as far as he could into opposite horizons.
Erald stood at the edge of the world, and he’d been going the wrong way. It was time to turn around.
So he slid back to the ground and began sprinting across the tree roots.
Erald didn’t know he could sprint so well. It pleased him, but only slightly surprised him. He could swan dive through trees now and talk to weird spooky voices, after all. And he was orange, which rather took the cake.
So he sprinted, then jogged to rest, then sprinted and rested again, and so on. Thirty minutes later, there was finally something beneath him besides tree roots. It was the mountain’s edge. Erald set one foot on solid ground and sighed in relief.
—
BLAAM!
Loud noises! Ahh!
He came to and found himself curled into a fetal position. No idea how long he’d been out. His hands gripped the sides of his head tightly. There had been .. a trumpet blaring? An eruption? Drums? The noise, whatever it was, had come — exploded — upon him immediately after his foot touched ground. Erald’s vision swam, he felt as though blood were leaking from his ears, and finally a thought crystallized.
“Omigosh something or someone felt me touch soil and tried to scare me. Or kill me. Or summon the police. I’m… gonna run now.”
Percent rational? Four. Percent practical? Ninety-four.
Winded as he still was, Erald began sprinting along the periphery of the forest, hugging the mountain’s base. The ground was firm here. Only small herbs covered it, as though one of them (rosemary? basil?) had drawn a demarcation between mountain and surrounding ocean to tell the many trees “That’s your side, this is ours.”
Erald had run quickly in the woods. Now he consciously drove his will into his legs like spiking a nail with a hammer. Step after pounding step.
It was exhilarating.
Erald felt alive. The sheer act of pumping and flying across the ground. It was .. inebriating. He kept running faster. At some point he left the mountain’s edge and began climbing upward. He poured all his energy into his internal engine, using pure will and effort to make every foot (he seemed to have a thousand!) bounce instantly off the ground.
The wind, the racing wind.
“So this is pleasure!” Erald roared – yes, roared with wind behind him.
He ran until he forgot about the Noises, forgot that he was running. Or where he was running. Or why he was running. He ran until his body was fire — and the fire was agony and agony was pleasure. He ran until there was nothing but the running. Bliss drove him forward. Perhaps he would never have stopped. But something struck bluntly him on the head.
Portal Park 