Chapter 68: Wooden World(4)
And indeed just a bit later they were able to jump off of the endless chain and arrived in the forest, the mountains far away on the opposite side, now hidden by the endless green roof that hindered their sight.
Both of them had a clear goal in mind, explore, find the water to clean themselves and drink a bit, if they could, and secondly, perhaps much more important to their health, at least psychologically, find food if there was any.
And indeed they moved through the lush forest without ever hearing a single sound, but it wasn't that they didn't see anything move, no, the leaves moved, they rustled, or at least they seemed to, the ground was littered with bugs but whenever they tried to look closer at them they weren't ther, and whenever they took a step they evaded as if they already knew everything.
It was not as if there was no live, no movement, no, they simple couldn't hear any sound, as if the sound was held back by force, as if the rustling leaves only send their melodies away from their ears, as if the bugs only existed in old times and only appeared to make them feel safer, to show them safety, because they didn't exist, they knew none of this was truly there and yet, sometimes, they knew it was there, as if the amount was multiplied to make them feel safer, which it probably was.
They didn't talk out of that very same reason, they were so observant of their surroundings, they were unnerved, they knew that something was grotesquely wrong, they know that they may die at any moment, they know that they had to watch out, but after some time they began feeling safer, much safer.
And soon after they also arrived at the long-awaited water, at the place where they would be able to cleanse themselves, so they might stop attracting beings that only smelled, beings that only had a nose, and they had seen many of those slithering by in the endless light, or perhaps they just looked as if they had no eyes but in truth they watched them, it was hard to tell when their bodies were obscured by the endless light.
The water they arrived at was a small river, about two meters deep at its deepest and in the shallow sides only about half a meter, the water was crystal-clear and there were no algae, it was just about a few hundred feet away from the end of the islands, from the place where the endless water somehow vanished into the endless light.
Surrounding the small river, only about 36 feet across there was a long stone shore consisting of beautiful gravel of various colours, mostly white, but even some that reminded Cades of gems, ones that had been worked on, but in this case they had only been smoothed out.