Trust is just as rare | Glowfic Constellation

...it does absolutely nothing to her.

The trees that ring the valley are some extremely local species of pine, tall and silent and foreboding. There are no birds or small animals in sight, no rustling in the underbrush, no distant calls, except behind her in the world outside the valley. A few steps under the trees, and the morning light is almost completely obscured by heavy boughs laden with long green-black needles. All together it looks very cursed.

But looking cursed is all it does; the trees aren't shifting into her way or reaching for her with their branches, the ground isn't twisting beneath her feet, she's not finding herself inexplicably turned around or tripping on thin air. It's just a really ominous forest.

.... Huh.

Does she need to go in further to bounce off? Is that what's happening here?

She decides to test turning around and exiting before she goes in further, in case there's some kind of - something going on.

Turning around and exiting works just fine! The forest continues to be really ominous but not actively hostile in any detectable way.

Ooooookay.

Back to trying to bounce off, then?

The ominous forest persists in its ominosity, but also persists in not doing anything much.

She can walk for quite a while without any strange phenomena trying to happen to her whatsoever.

This is weird. Things are not working as advertised, and she verified this with a number of trustworthy sources before trying this.

She exits the forest again, and then she straightens out her web of starlight again, and throws out a line to her brother. She hasn't figured out a way to let him answer, yet, but just letting someone know that something weird has happened is enough for her purposes.

"Hey, uh. I'm not bouncing off the valley. It's just - letting me enter. I checked, it's much further in than anyone mentioned getting. It's very weird. I'm going to leave this up and keep you updated on my progress, but I am very apprehensive of this now."

And back into the ominous forest, this time with commentary.

It's ominous. It's a forest. The ominous conifers are tall and good at blocking out the sun. There is no perceptible wildlife -

- no, that was a birdcall from somewhere up ahead. A perfectly ordinary non-ominous birdcall.

She can't have gone all the way through, can she? The valley is bigger than that. But it's been known to warp space in weirder ways. Maybe it's finally spitting her out. If so, it's doing it without affecting her directly in any way.

"Oh, wow. Just heard a bird. Weird... It might just be peacefully sending me through to the other side instead of making me bounce off it. Maybe something to do with intentions? I didn't intend to actually try to get inside, so it's warping me to the other side rather than turning me around? I don't know. I'm just making guesses. As far as I can tell it's not twisting anything at all, and I could just leave earlier."

She keeps walking.

The ominous conifers gradually give way to a wider variety of more cheerful species of tree. There are more birds audible up ahead. But she's still headed downslope; this isn't out, this is further in.

"Nnnnope I'm going downslope. I'm going to try exiting again to check to make sure it's not trying to catch me instead of turn me away. Exciting adventures in walking. You find this riveting, I know."

And then she attempts to do precisely what she said.

After a few minutes of retracing her steps, she finds that the ground is leveling off, so that she can't tell her direction by the gradient of the slope.

"..... Fuck, I think it is trying to catch me."

How about if she navigates via the sun?

The sun that the ominous conifers are so very good at blocking? That sun?

Here's a gleam of light that suggests it's this way. Here's a gleam of light that suggests it's that way. Gosh, those conifers sure are ominous.

"Okay, yes, it's probably trying to catch me. Shit. Okay. Okay. I can probably think my way out of this, just. Be my soundboard as I talk my way through this, sorry if I just got caught horrifically by an evil valley in front of you. Can't navigate by the sun, because it'll fuck with the trees so I can't see it. Can't trust the direction I go, because it'll warp space around me and turn me right back around to where it wants me to go. I can't trust my environment, I have to be able to navigate independently in the right direction without it."

She stands for a minute, thinking, and then she tugs her threads inward to see if she can weave something that'll work like a compass into herself. Not pointing North or something - she doesn't know how she'd manage that, actually - but pointing towards the thread she left out to her brother. She explains as she works, so her brother won't worry.

It takes her about half an hour, and it's not like she can safely test it or anything, but her intuition for how her magic works is pretty accurate when it comes to this kind of self-modification. And it seems to work right.

Okay. Time to try this again. Walking towards her brother, fuck you evil valley.

The direction her brother is in rotates slowly around her in a steady circle, at a rate of about one revolution per minute. If she stood still, she could count the time by it.

"... Okay it's rotating my you-compass. Or. My you-compass is rotating on its own. I - can't tell if that's me messing up, or if the valley's fucking with me, but if the valley's fucking with me it's being very rude. If it isn't, I guess I just made a clock by accident."

She checks over her compass to make sure there was no reason for the rotation, finds that it should work as she expects, or at least not fail in such a bizarre way. From this, she decides to attempt to navigate by her rotating brother-compass anyway. She's more inclined to trust it than the forest, even if it's rotating once a minute.

If she walks at a reasonably constant rate, it will soon become very obvious to her that she is going in circles, as you might expect from someone using their clock as a compass.

Well, she had to give it a shot.

She disentangles the compass/clock, and sits down, and tries to think about how she could get out of this fucking place when it controls her environment so completely.

"You know what, let's try asking nicely. Why not." She stands and clears her throat. "...... Could you please let me go?" she asks of the forest.

There's no response for a few seconds.

Then the trees ahead of her shift aside; the forest opens like the pages of a book, and in front of her she sees...

...the middle of the Cursed Valley.

It's beautiful.

There are streams and rivers and sparkling waterfalls, fields of grass and flowers; there's a lovely tidy hedge maze encircling the whole thing, with an entrance a little ways downslope from her current position, far enough that she can easily see over the top of the hedge from here; there's a city in the middle, or maybe just a palace the size of a city, with domes and towers and huge stained glass windows and more waterfalls interwoven with the architecture.

She lets herself have a minute of stunned staring.

And then she composes herself.

".... Okay, you have some really impressive aesthetic tastes and that is absolutely gorgeous. But if I go see it am I going to be able to go home again? Because I'm willing to go visit for a day trip, even come back multiple times and try to help do - whatever it is you seem to want, probably even daily, but I would like to also go home and sleep in my own bed at night."

No answer. Well, a few distant birdcalls, but they don't seem especially communicative.

Sigh.

"Fine, but I would like to put forth that I am definitely willing to work with you without the coercion. You don't have to trap me here to get whatever it is you seem to want. I am much nicer when not coerced."

And then she walks to where it clearly wants her to go. Can she spot some kind of path through the hedge maze from here? Because she just has this feeling that she's going to have to navigate it.

Well, it's a cursed hedge maze and is probably not going to be kind enough to maintain a consistent layout, but -

- actually when she walks up to the flower-bedecked archway the hedges shuffle around until they make a straight corridor directly through to the other side.

Or not?

Ugh. It'll probably be another layer of the thing that'll be keeping her here. Maybe she should just stop going in further and see if she can think her way past the barrier? ... No, she didn't bring enough supplies for that, she was expecting to bounce off.

She keeps walking, eyeing the corridor warily.