You wake up with a start. Your head is throbbing, and you can't seem to remember what happened to you. All you can really think is that you feel...different, somehow. And it's...really hard to breathe...
Some time passes. You could tell when you first came to that wherever you were was somewhere really damn bright. With slight hesitation, you open your eyes just a bit, figuring that if this headache you have is a migraine, you'd only be making it worse.
The sight that meets you nearly made you pass out a second time. You were lying on the ground in the middle of a lush, green patch of forest—or is it a jungle?—but that wasn't what scared you...it was that everything was HUGE! What would normally be insignificant blades of grass were nearly as thick as your own legs and grew up to your chest; hell, even the smaller weeds around here were much taller than you! Luckily, there wasn't anything around. You don't want to think about what kind of bugs live here, let alone the 'regular-sized' animals.
In the distance, something catches your eye; it looks like the base of some large stone structure. Very narrow, as if it's sticking up into the sky, like some kind of pillar—not that you can really tell, with the massive leaves overhead. With no real hope of shelter anywhere else in sight, nor anything better to do, you decide to trek to this unusual landmark. The journey is long; the location might've only been a few minutes' walk if you were normal sized (relatively speaking), but now it could probably take more than an hour...
You take the spare time to wonder about your predicament, such questions being: Why did you wake up in some random jungle that you've never seen before? What could've possibly transported you here? And why is everything so big? Or is it that you're small...? Uncomfortable with the direction your line of thinking is going, you choose to focus more on the scenery. The plants here are really quite lush; even if you were normal-sized, the trunks still look like they'd stretch up, like they were trying to reach at the heavens. Speaking of, how far up is this place? You felt pretty out of breath when you woke up, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're on Mount Everest or something; especially considering that you don't even know what the hell brought you here. Jeez, why does everything you think about keep coming back to that?! It's stressful enough to subconsciously acknowledge that you're in the middle of nowhere for no real reason...
You stop, take a few deep breaths (that still don't seem to relieve your lungs too much), and continue on. As the distance closes between you and the stone structure, the foliage seems to fold back, giving off an heir of importance to whatever it is that caught your eye. This also allows you to get a better look at what exactly 'it' is; it turns out that the pillar you guessed it to be was only part of a much larger structure. There were lots of them, edging the corners of terraces that reminded you of a book you read on Mayan agriculture. The outermost pillars were interconnected at the top by more stone, while the interior had seven larger, each with a flourish at the top, like a watchtower. And at the center, there was what looked like a...massive, glowing gemstone?!
Nevermind that, it looks like there's someone there, sitting on the bottom steps of the gem-shrine! Short, with bright, orange hair. Wow, that's a lot of orange...all over their body...are they even human? You guess you can't rule out your 'everything is big and I'm my normal size' hypothesis just yet. Even if approaching a gigantic stranger isn't the best idea at your current stature, it's probably a better one than just standing around.
You resume your trek towards the steps of the shrine, now intrigued by both the structure itself and the person you're about to meet. As far as you know, they're the only other person here. Maybe they're in the same boat as you?
---
As you make your way there, any plant life larger than grass eventually peters out, leaving a small clearing that encompasses the shrine. Among some detritus strewn on the ground (if you had to guess, you'd say it's because of erosion), you can make out some tattered white cloth and shards of what look like broken jewelry. Was there a group of people here? A tribe, maybe?
Finally, your journey is finished. You've reached the steps of the shrine, and are peeking out at the person you saw before. Strangely, they hadn't moved much at all, not even standing up or pacing around idly. A closer look at her face reveals that she is indeed not human, but still some kind of mammal. She's wearing a long, green skirt, patterned with diamonds that alternate between red and pale yellow, one inside another like a matryoshka doll. Adorning her right arm, collarbone, and forehead are ornately designed bands made of gold and slotted with a type of blue gem. She has large, sky blue eyes, with wristbands to match. Strangely, she only has a short, white, high-top shirt that almost looks like a bra. The same type of linen cloth you saw on the ground is wrapped carefully around various parts of her body; her left arm, her dreadlocks, and some long, winding ones around her legs, down to her large, auburn feet, which lie on pretty, white sandals.
As weird as it sounds, she's kind of...beautiful, in her own way. She looks terribly forlorn, though, with the way she's hunching over, barely holding up her head with her hands, and looking off into nothing. Did she live here, and something happened to her people?
You feel a powerful urge to help her, but there's not much you can do from here, at the foot of the steps. Surely, your presence would at least help to distract her from whatever's on her mind at the moment. But from where do you decide to approach her? Her feet are the closest to where you are, and it shouldn't take much to attract her attention from there, given that it would take one movement of her neck to see where you are; however, it isn't necessarily the safest place to be. If you go for her waist, she'd probably also notice you easily, but she could just as soon scoot over and crush you from there. Besides, she might not take kindly to you being so close to her unmentionables. Finally, you could try to crawl over her back and to her ears, but that could also end in you getting flung somewhere.
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author