"You'll see!"

"So I will."

Eventually, of course, they're going to reach the road.

The path they're walking along joins onto another, broader path, and maybe fifteen minutes after that, there's a green-gold glow visible up ahead.

"That's the road," says Sunpatch.

As they approach, it becomes clearer what they're looking at. It's another path, not all that different from the ones they've been travelling so far, but the trees that line it are especially tall, and in the shade of their spreading branches the floor of the path glows a warm and pleasant green. Sunpatch stops a few feet short of the glow.

"If you've never used a road before, you should probably be careful," he says. "You won't get hurt if you fall down, but it's embarrassing."

"Careful like how?"

"Well... okay, when you're on the road, you can run really fast. And it makes you go along the road, so you won't go flying off if there's a curve or anything, but if the road bends and you're not paying attention and you keep running in the wrong direction, you'll lose all your speed really fast. There's kind of a trick to it. Try it walking first, walking's easier and we'll still reach the Tree pretty soon that way. And if you get confused or lost somehow you can just stop and sit down and I'll come find you even if I'm out of sight by then."

"Okay." She carefully steps into the glow.

And Sunpatch steps in too, and starts slowly walking in a direction. His steps carry him farther than they look like they should; he sort of... slides along the glow, smoothly and steadily. If Ikrifiss and Korafen try it, they'll find themselves doing something similar, with the effect falling off sharply as they turn away from exactly parallel with the road. The footing is very stable, but there's definitely a learning curve involved and it's easy to get disoriented.

Ikrifiss is exactingly careful and going significantly slower than Sunpatch.

Korafen manages not to skid off the road at any time but this involves some level of falling down.

Sunpatch stops frequently to let them both catch up.

"Okay, maybe the road won't help as much as I thought," he giggles.

"Well, it'll help us later that we made these mistakes now."

"True!"

And he doesn't seem to have anywhere to be; he's very patient with all the stopping.

Very friendly of him. At least they're still going faster than human walking pace.

This is true. And maybe they'll figure out the road well enough to get to the Tree before dark.

Thereabouts, yeah.

The road joins up to other roads twice, becoming broader and brighter each time. They pass and are passed by a few other travellers going in either direction, all of them better at roads than Korafen and Ikrifiss.

Then, as the sun is starting to dip low enough that its beams don't reach through the canopy, they come to the end of the road. Its glow dims gradually over the last stretch, until it's just a normal - well, locally normal - forest path again. Just past the point where the glow fades completely, an archway spans the path, made of one tree on each side that lean gracefully together to join into a single trunk twenty feet in the air over the middle of the ex-road. Beyond that is an open space floored with springy green moss.

"Welcome to the Tree!" says Sunpatch, swishing his tail happily. "D'you want to find somewhere to stay? Something to eat or drink?"

"Definitely all three of those things."

"Which one first?"

"Food or beverage, definitely."

"Okay!"

He leads them along the street. All the buildings seem to be made of living plants, with bark-covered wooden walls hosting climbing vines whose brightly coloured flowers unfurl and begin to glow as the light dims. The moss underfoot glows faintly in the dark too. Through the leafy canopy of this section of the city, they catch occasional glimpses of a vast towering trunk, its curve so broad you could almost mistake it for a flat wall. It, too, is adorned with glowing flowers; they twine along the railings of walkways formed from living wood. People are out and about on the streets and walkways - primarily pointy-eared humanoids, but also some glowing humanoids with insectlike wings.

After a few minutes, they turn onto the latest of several mossy streets and find the trunk of the Tree looming at the far end: huge and craggy and brown, with roots each as thick as a small building. Where it intersects the street, there is a living wooden gate, currently standing open, and a pair of walkways that climb away from the street and up around the trunk to either side.

Sunpatch thinks to ask, "...How do you feel about heights?"

"I'm fine with them."

"Might get a little nervous but nothing worth seriously worrying about."

"Okay, good. The place I'm thinking of is a few levels up, and I'd have to find somewhere else if you didn't want to go up," Sunpatch explains. "Let's go up the outside, it's always less crowded."

Indeed, there's only a handful of people going up and down the walkways. Sunpatch traipses up the one on the right; it's nearly as wide as the street, and carpeted in the same faintly glowing moss. Anyone who was nervous of heights could just stick close to the trunk and hardly think about it.

That's fine, then.

When they have been going up for a while, the walkway flattens out for a stretch and there is another gate in the middle. This one is closed when they get there, but opens creakily when Sunpatch prods it with the tip of his horn, and he proceeds inside.

From this vantage, it is finally evident just how big around the Tree is. They can stand just inside the gate and look down on the lowest section of the city, living wooden buildings spreading their eager leaves under a vaulted wooden 'sky' that glows with green-gold light. Here and there, gaps in that ceiling show glimpses of the levels above. The whole thing is easily the size of a medium-sized town or small city, but if it's proportioned anything like a normal tree, it's got to be much, much taller.