Chapter 13: Chapter 9: Llorts and Snilbogs (Pt. 2)

They’d been walking for less than an hour when he started to notice subtle differences in the forest around them. As they drew deeper, the trees grew gradually taller, thicker, more imposing, each a mighty titan. Sunlight filtered to the forest floor in thin streams from the dense canopy high above, bathing the forest in an ethereal twilight.

 

The forest felt as a dream, fantastical and illusory. Mushrooms of various shapes and sizes grew in the gloomy shadows of thick, fallen branches; some short and stout with thick, bulbous tops, others rising to knee height, tall and spindly with narrow, pointed caps. The tall mushrooms had bright red, blue, and yellow tops in polka-dot patterns, splotches, and swirling, snaking patterns that evaded description.

 

There were others still, those of middling height with large, flat tops and intricate patterns of multicolored circles that ranged in thickness. They emitted a slight glow, illuminating the dark patches they inhabited. Slugs, snails, ants, spiders, and beetles scurried between the mushrooms, some climbing up their stalks, under the logs, and between the rotting, fallen leaves that coated that part of the floor. The trees in this part of the forest were so large that their fallen logs and branches were nearly impassible obstacles, creating large dark, wet recesses for the mushrooms to thrive.

 

Rocks, dirt, leaves, and bushes comprised the lush underbrush of the forest.

 

It was fairly easy to navigate save for where they were impeded by the fallen logs and thick roots that now rose two to sometimes even three feet high from the base of the giant trees around them. The air was cool but not unpleasantly so. a gentle breeze touched their skin and rustled the leaves high above, the trees seeming to come alive, voices whispering to them as they passed.

 

Ryan and Logan walked in an awed silence, humbled by the grand, enchanting forest. It was a majestic place, entrancing, and enthralling, it coaxed them deeper and deeper, luring them into its mysterious, unknown depths.

 

Logan was admiring a squirrel-like creature, though it was far too large—it looked more the size of a cat or a small dog with a poofy brown tale and an angular head that held perfectly still while it clung to bark at least a hundred feet above—when a cracking noise to his right returned his gaze swiftly to the ground.

 

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He and Ryan instinctively crouched, wary of the first potential encounter in the new territory.

 

Fifty or sixty feet away, standing regally in a small clearing illuminated by a patch of unimpeded sunlight, was a large, beautiful elk-like animal. Its tawny brown coat was long and lustrous, its chest and stomach a brilliant white.

 

Peculiar to the watchers were long, billowing streams of bright, verdant green vines adjoined to clumps of equally striking leaves that wrapped loosely around the animal's torso to lie upon its back.

 

Their origin was the most striking feature of all; the stringy vines of leaves were tied, or rather, grew from the deer’s huge antlers. The antlers were stunning, wide and full, the tines extended outwards several feet from the animal’s skull; it must’ve had a span of ten, no twelve or more feet. The animal was huge, its torso and neck thick and its legs lean and muscular.

 

The antlers themselves, even more than the strange, flowing vines that grew from their base, demanded the pair’s attention. They must’ve been bone, but they were unlike anything he’d ever seen. For one, they were almost translucent, a cloudy crystalline material that glowed with an internal white light. They looked carved, imbued with intricate spiraling line patterns that started where the antlers protruded from the head and continued along their entirety, looping, and curling around the crystalline horns.

 

The patterns were illuminated by the antlers’ interior light, shining brightly, beautifully.

 

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