Watching Crann silently, Jimmory only stared worriedly into her eyes as she stroked her cool, woody fingers down his face. He scrunched his nose, which caused his goatee to wiggle a little, and then backed up to flump down in the leaf litter at the base of Crann's tree, draping a hoofed leg over one of the roots.

[color=f7976a]"Of [i]course[/i] I'm distressed,"[/color] he grumbled, picking up his double-sided flute and trilling a few airy notes with a deft flutter of his fingertips. The sound seemed a bit shrill to match his irritation. He resolved to wait, settling down to blow through the low drone chamber of the flute and watch the birds that tended to gather in the branches when he played. He even let his songweaving magic flow, but felt restless and dissatisfied with his own music.

A light crunching of hoofbeats announced the arrival of faun behind Crann as she made her way through the deep woods. The dark-skinned fey creature glanced at Crann a bit guiltily as he caught up to her and fell in step beside her on the other side from where she carried her staff.

[color=f7976a]"I remembered where I put my bow,"[/color] he said by way of explanation, and truly the polished grapevine weapon was strung across his shoulders, the fletching of his arrows poking out of a grass-woven quiver, the fletching in blues and greens from kingfisher feathers.

Jimmory whuffled non-commitally as they walked along, navigating the rolling land between the roots of the great trees, hopping the mossy stones jutting up out of the creeks, and trying to not slide down leafy embankments. (Actually, Jimmory slid down on purpose and wasn't even sorry.)

[color=f7976a]"Not another dryad. Though I heard a rumour that there is trio like you north of Silent Rise."[/color] He glanced at Crann sidelong, curious about how his companion would feel about that. [color=f7976a]"Anyways. I wandered up to the Bahora forest for a while but the treants there seem to be a lot more grumpy than the last time I was there so I came back. There's a new human family down near Milmont. I know humans are dangerous but I stumbled across one of them a few weeks ago."[/color] Jimmory sighed woefully. [color=f7976a]"I wanted to bring him to the Midsummer Celebration later this month but with what's happening in the west I don't know..."[/color]

The going was easy for the pair, but the further they walked, the more signs of wrongness they came across. Plants that should have been flourishing seemed withered and wilted, spotted and furry with some kind of disease. Saplings seemed dark and stunted. The birdsong faded and disappeared, leaving Crann and Jimmory in the company only of creatures that scuttled and skittered furtively and untrustingly at the edges of their vision. It wasn't at all like the place they remembered. 

As they rounded a huge stump of a tree that had rotted from the ground up so quickly that the boughs of its felled trunk still had green but doomed leaves clustered in its downed crown, they came across a previously cheerful spring-fed pond that was now nothing more than a soupy black mess that stank of putrefaction. Jimmory covered his flat nose and bleated in dismay, though the sound was joined by a dry rattle of a growl from nearby.