The trees were simply too tall, Gabrielle decided, sitting on a rock as she craned her neck back to look up at where the sky ought to have been. She saw only an overarching pattern of leaves and branches woven into a tangled canopy high above her. She'd been in an open space not too long ago - or was it days ago? she could not recall - and the trees all around her had soared up, higher than the skyscrapers she was used to calling home. Even taller than the meandering clouds, caught in the slow streams of summer air.
Was it summer already?
She shivered and made herself get off the rock to keep moving. She'd been in the forest so long she could not remember how she'd come in, nor where she'd been before the trees had pulled her into their grasp. She thought maybe that she had once had companions with her, but if so they were long lost to the mists and branches of this place. Perhaps they'd taken a different fork in the path Gabrielle was following. Or attempting to follow. It kept petering out and sometimes when she thought she glimpsed sunlight and heard the faint sounds of people and civilization the path took a sharp turn into thorns and suddenly she stood on the edge of a sheer cliff.
