Days clouded by shadows - The short story

Chapter 4 - The Misty Forest

Aeons before realms were properly established, the primordials sent explorers to every corner of the planet, far from their village with the intent of mapping the natural world around them and understand where their society could thrive without disrupting their environment.

The explorers first found the grasslands at the south of the great continent, where the sun could get stuck at times, refusing to go down in a permanent sunrise. They called it Dawn on their sketch of a map before moving on.

Then they travelled north-west, following the shore until it abruptly changed into fjords so steep and jagged that it was a rough climb and an awful fall if you misplaced your feet. They wrote down the Never-Ending Drop after one explorer fell off without the characteristic - plop - in the end. They surrendered their exploration further north, into the mountain range blocking their access given all the beauties to discover below such intricate natural barrier.

They returned to Dawn, to explore north of it. There they found gentle prairies extending from the lower mountains to the western shores, where they found a volcanic archipelago. These lands were lush, and its fauna was equally impressive and diverse. The explorers wrote down on their little map: Gentle Prairies and many islands before continuing their journey north, towards the harsh mountain range to understand the extent of the prairies.

Sometime later, they noticed the slow transition in the vegetation to bushes, shrubberies, and eventually, trees; where the vegetation was the densest. The terrain had changed as well, the grassy surface cushioning their steps had disappeared. Instead, they walked on black soil, branches, leaves, and rocks.

After a day of two, they came to a mysterious change in the landscape. They had run straight into a new environment. The tall vegetation had come to an end, replaced by a thick fog, close to the ground extending as far as they could see, with the sporadic canopy nudging over the fog.

One of the explorers left caution behind, when he decided to take a step forward into the fog, discovering it wasn't fog covering the ground, but clouds covering a deep canyon filled with tree hundreds of metres tall. We can say that explorer had trouble recovering of his fall, but he saved the life of his fellow explorers that understood it was best to proceed slowly instead of just jumping off a cliff.

Once at the bottom, they found a land like no other, where clouds rolled over their heads, blocking the deep blue sky and any sunlight from reaching down. The trees here had learnt to grow fast, big and tall, to have a chance to feed of sunlight, whilst the rest of the vegetation found ways to bring life of their own to the isolated world.

The tree trunks were so thick, explorers could take residence between the roots having ample room above their heads, and with a little bit of work, they would have a kitchen, two rooms, a workshop, a study, and a sunroom... not that would have the opportunity to have that much sun in the room, so they would just pile useless stuff in it, calling it a closet.

The ground was covered with all kinds of moss. Some were short, puffy, and damp. Others were grassy, stiff, and itchy. Some glowed in the dark, and some smelled like strawberries when stepped on it, and some was brown and mushy with a strong smell like digested organic matter after you stepped on it, perhaps the later one wasn't a type of moss to begin with.

The atmosphere was very relaxing given you ignored the unlucky explorer finding mounts of the brown moss. If you cleared your mind from your inner voice, you would listen to the permanent dripping of water running down the bark of trees, splashing down on mushrooms, lichen, and liverworts... the last one sounds disgusting, but they were quite appealing to look at.

Anyone experiencing this calmness more than five minutes could describe it as liberating, inspiring and diuretic.

The fauna of their world dived under the canopy cover of the forest to heal and rest. To be revitalised from the exhausting migratory cycles.