At first it's just an ordinary morning in the Cursed Valley. The ominous conifers shade her from the ascending sun, but enough light filters through the canopy to illuminate the path ahead. She can hear the quiet sound of water and the distant songs of morning birds. A stream crosses the path as soon as she needs one; an abandoned squirrel cache provides assorted nuts for a midmorning snack. The ominous conifers thin out in favour of more cheerful trees as she gets farther into the valley.

And then, although she's still headed directly downslope, there's a break in the trees ahead. Not a clearing or a waterway; an actual edge, an end to the forest. That's new.

Hmm. She doesn't really want to leave the Valley, but this might not be that, and if it is she can just come right back in. Okay, time to investigate.

This isn't the edge of the Cursed Valley; it's the middle.

Straight ahead, a ways down the gentle slope of the valley, an arched gateway covered in flowering vines leads into a tidy hedge maze which in turn rings the vast grounds of a city-sized palace. The space in between the maze and the outbuildings is filled with grass and flowers and sparkling streams; beautiful waterfalls intertwine with the architecture, flowing down marble walls and between elaborate stained glass windows. All together it is kind of unfairly gorgeous.

--Oh.

Well.

That's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. And the Valley's never steered her wrong before.

She heads down to the gateway.

At her approach, the hedges in the maze shuffle back and forth until they form a perfectly straight corridor from outer gate to inner.

Well.

This probably has some kind of purpose other than "keep Annisetimara safe and happy."

But that doesn't mean its purpose is incompatible with that, and the Valley's never steered her wrong before.

She walks through.

When she passes the inner gate, the hedges reshuffle into a more mazelike configuration.

The walk from the inner gate of the maze to the outermost gardens of the palace proper is reasonably short and exceptionally lovely. The gardens, when she gets there, are prettier still.

Oooh!

She wanders around the gardens for a while.

Some of them are neat and orderly; some are artistically wild. There are familiar flowers and ones she's never heard of. It is all lovely.

So lovely!

...Are any of the gardens the kind with edible plants, because she's getting kind of hungry.

Doesn't look like it -

But the valley always provides. There is a gazebo in the middle of this garden; when she reaches it, she finds a table, several chairs, and a picnic basket sitting on the table with wings of woven straw folded neatly to its sides.

Oooh!

This is such a good Valley. Not having to live on miscellaneous edible plants for the rest of her life, yay. What's in the basket?

Bread and cheese and butter and jam and clotted cream and assorted fruits!

Holy crap, this is the most delicious stuff she's ever eaten.

It's not ostentatiously fancy, but it's very good and some of the fruit and cheese is fairly exotic. The Valley apparently plans to take good care of her.

It is such a good Valley.

She eats until she isn't hungry anymore and then keeps exploring.

The city-sized palace and its gorgeous gardens continue to be all-around stunning. And very grand - the doors and walkways seem sized for giants.

As she nears the middle, buildings get taller and gardens less frequent, but there's always something green in sight. Sometimes it's an orchard, sometimes a garden, sometimes a tree growing in a patch of grass encircled by a decorative retaining wall right in the middle of the street.

So pretty!

She's probably here for a reason, but she's in no particular hurry to learn what it is. She'll find out in due time, presumably, and meanwhile everything is lovely.

Lovely archways, lovely colonnades, lovely orchards and aqueducts, lovely gardens, lovely waterfalls, lovely glass-walled tower rising up in the very center of everything and curtained in falling water so that all she can see of the interior is refracted glimpses, fragments of colour, red and green and black and silver and gold...

Ooh, what's in the tower?

Inside the tower is a rose the size of a border-pine.

Its stem rises up trunklike from the center of an intricate tangle of lesser rosebushes. The floor is completely covered in scarlet petals. The branches twining up the trunk and arching around its base bear roses of merely ordinary size, but the big one could swallow up her house with room to spare. The walls are clear glass, framed by iron wrought in the shapes of thorny vines. Along with the water falling outside, they catch the midday sun and pour it into the tower to drench the roses in light.

Wow.

She's just gonna sit here a minute and admire that.

...Not forever, though. Eventually she gets hungry again and goes looking for another gazebo or something.

A flying picnic basket descends from the sky on its woven-straw wings and alights on a bench near the edge of the next garden she passes.

Eeee.

She eats dinner. She explores the gardens some more.

...It gets late. She looks for somewhere to sleep.

One of the buildings opens its doors as she passes. Lamps light themselves in the foyer.