Sunlight shifted softly overhead. Stillness poised among the narrow white trees, while songbirds whistled in the distance. There wasn't even a breeze -- just the quiet, the silky grass, and the Mote that lay nestled in the soil as if it had been there for centuries, glowing gently.

The darkening fingers of weeds and grass took a bony shape, stretching and scratching at the ground. Soon there were more, wriggling out of the ground like dozens of spidery legs from the base of the Mote. The ground there twisted silently, bulged as if something sinewy writhed just beneath the crust of the forest floor.

Ever so slowly, the plantlife around the Mote was transforming, moving, scraping and flexing in a way it had never been known to do before.

Griff would feel a snuffling and poking at his shoulder; the little dog, once trapped in the spiral of the seaside Mote, now wagged and sniffed at him in hope of a morsel.

The Mote's reaching tendrils tickled and along Capella's arm, leaving a sappy green trail. Emboldened, the living weeds jointed and crawled buglike up her shoulder, grasped her ankle, reached around her stomach.

Should this be left to continue for hours or days, it seemed, the crawling grasses would silently hide all trace of Capella's existence.

In the distance, shadows shifted the sunlight. A group of ... something ... moved quietly, huffing low and rustling leaves in their wake. They were unclear so far away, but they were furred and dark and moved like deer.

The little dog seemed jovial enough -- but he wouldn't move any closer to the things in the woods, nor to the Mote and its scratching fingers.