"Tori? Tori, what are you doing?"

A voice wafted sleepily from the top of the stairs; Tori stopped her mad scramble down the steps suddenly, nearly sliding down into a tumble from the inertia. She gripped the banister and shot a look up the stairs; the light of the moon flowed untouched down the wall. "Um," she called back to her brother, who was probably lazily yelling from his bedroom doorframe, as usual. "I'm thirsty," she finished unconvincingly, then proceeded to leap down the rest of the steps and dash out the front door as quickly as possible. As she ran, and ran, and ran, she thought she heard her brother yawn behind her with a quiet, "okay," and that was the last she heard from him.

All alone in the quiet of night, the girl ran down the pavement of their subdivision, her socks nearly causing her to slip and fall flat on her face every time she made a sharp turn. Where was she going? She wasn't sure, but the neighborhood was so quiet at night. It was kind of weird, but she wasn't scared. She couldn't be scared, even if she tried, despite the circumstances. Tori didn't really stop to think about it, but if the question was about how she [i]felt,[/i] then, at that moment, she definitely felt a certain strange thrill, like...like...like she was running into a forest without her parents or her brother with her, and she didn't know where she was going, but she felt like it would be amazing, magical, like she was going to see something she'd never seen before...

...Wait, how long had this forest been here?

Tori didn't remember there being a forest in her neighborhood, but now she was in one for some reason, and her legs were carrying her deeper and deeper, until she reached a tunnel guarded by a statue she didn't even look at. She ran straight through the tunnel, waving moss and lichens out of her face with both hands and plowing straight out as quickly as possible, and nearly crashing straight into the boat waiting for her. She skidded to another abrupt stop, and she paused in front of the little craft, giving it a short glance that could hardly be called hesitation before leaping straight in with the other three passengers.

The small boat carried the children farther and farther into the dark waters, the night illuminating its journey like a romantic old painting. Tori blinked as the floated onwards, and then everything just hit her--She had run out of her house without saying goodbye and had jumped into a boat with a bunch of strangers without knowing why. Wow, that was weird! She must have been dreaming, so might as well make the best of it!

Tori turned to one of the boys as he spoke. She looked at him up and down; he looked like he was a bit older than her, almost as old as her brother, and just as carefree, it looked like. Tori smiled at him and swung her legs under her in an attempt to keep out the cold that she found was suddenly seeping into her thin nightdress. "I don't know!" she chirped at him, a probable figment of her imagination. "But I don't think we should worry so much about it. My name is Tori. What's yours?"