If you had told Dante that he'd died on his way home, all odds were that he'd believe you.

As the sounds of voices nearby pulled him out of sleep, the world washed over him like lukewarm water, and his body felt light and devoid of strength. He didn't feel pain, but that was little comfort; all over, he felt as if something had taken him apart like a careless child taking apart a model and then, just as thoughtlessly, reassembled him and thrown him to the side. Something had clearly happened, but it was impossible to ascertain what. His mind was blank, short-term memories floating idly beyond his reach; the past few hours existed in a blur, the last thing he recalled being Harumi telling him she'd left something precious at a friend's before she caught her cold.

As that fell into place, however, things began to come back into focus. He remembered now. It had been a crisp autumnal day with no urgent work to do, and so he'd been out. Dad had been called into work and mum was looking after Haru, so he'd volunteered to go pick up what she'd left behind; it was only a few miles up the road, after all. Something had conspired to hold him up and so he'd elected to take a shortcut back, go through the woods that offered a shorter but more uncertain path home-

Something clicked. He blinked, mustering all of his slowly-returning strength to pull himself up into a sitting position and look around. He was surrounded by trees, so perhaps he wasn't dead after all- he couldn't place himself, but it was simple enough to assume he'd passed out somehow and ended up in a part of the forest he didn't recognize. Perhaps he'd tripped and hit his head? He doubted he'd have lost his footing so easily, but without the certainty of recollection he could only assume that or an ambush by his sister's cold amidst the chilly winds of the fading day. It didn't seem massively likely, but considering the circumstances and the limits of his memory, it wasn't impossible.

Neither explanation accounted for what he saw among the trees, however. He didn't recognize the clearing, but that much made sense. Dad wasn't a particularly solemn person despite his affectations otherwise, but he had warned him that the forest- this particular forest, anyway- was ever-changing and treacherous, and it had been years since he'd been particularly deep into it. But not only was he not the only person in the alcove- even in his addled state, he could make out two girls and a handful of other prone figures- but there was something distinctly inhuman floating in plain sight a short distance from them.

One of them seemed to be little more than a ball with wings. The other looked like... a clione? It certainly looked like the sea slugs he'd seen in his mum's old nature books, but it was far too large and [i]airbourne[/i] to boot, notwithstanding the fact that it seemed to be talking to the ball. Parsing sounds was still a struggle but there was no mistaking that the two were communicating verbally, nor the sheer [i]volume[/i] of the ball's apparent voice. 

He raised his hand to his head, feeling around to confirm that, no, he hadn't hit his head after all. No telltale lumps or jolts of pain, and no blood as he pulled his hand away. So he wasn't dead, and he [i]probably[/i] didn't have brain damage. But in that case-

"What the hell is going on?" He coughed out, almost involuntarily, as the waking fever dream before him unfolded.