It was official. Aidyn was lost.

In his rush to leave the Voc, Aidyn had grabbed the map he'd gotten from the governor's house, not stopping to think — despite being the one who found the map in the first place — that a human map would be covered in human symbols.

He couldn't read human symbols.

Even better, he'd realized this blunder a good ways from the base, so even if he did turn back, he wouldn't get there until well after morning. By which time Ryne would've discovered the missing map, asked around, discovered him missing too, and put two-and-two together.

Which meant if Aidyn returned, he was absolutely screwed.

So, in the spirit of self-preservation, he'd taken his best guess and gone from there.

Now he was trudging through the jungle, swatting away leaves and mosquitos and wishing it didn't feel like he was walking through thick soup. Aidyn had spent most of his childhood in the rainforests of Altiu, but after three years in the temperate south, he had forgotten how suffocating the heat could be. Still, he'd take that over the cold any day.

Aidyn glanced up at the thick emerald canopy, sunlight peeking through and striking the ground in golden beams. Trees towered over the thick underbrush, ferns and mushrooms popping up around the trunks like ineffective fences. Roots thicker than his arm poked randomly out of the ground, and the air was alive with the chirps and shrieks of animals he couldn't see.

"Well this is great," Aidyn muttered, dropping his pack and flopping into the ground. He took the map out and unrolled it, staring at the strange symbols for what felt like the millionth time. The map was a penciled sketch of Altiu, which had originally been uninhabited until the humans came and invented reliable overwater transportation. Red circles and Xs marked certain spots on the map, several surrounding the capital city and a spot off the coast. Notes were hastily scrawled in the margins, but the handwriting was so messy, it was almost impossible to discern any of the symbols, much less a whole word.

But Aidyn was trying nonetheless.

His eyes narrowed in concentration as he struggled with two heavily underlined words. The letters looked all jumbled and turned around, as always, but he gave it his best guess. "Toyer...?" He stared at it for a few more seconds. "What in the moons is a toyer?"

Yeah, that definitely wasn't right.

He sighed and rolled the map back up. He'd try again later.

Aidyn pulled his bag towards him and started rummaging around, pulling out one of his last bagels and taking a bite. After a week on the road, most of his food was either gone or stale, but there wasn't much he could do about that.

"Okay, Aidyn," he muttered to himself, his mouth half-full. "Think. You're stuck in the jungle with a map you can't read, and you're running out of food. What do you do?"

Go back?

Not an option.

Give up and starve?

Definitely not.

Hunt?

Aidyn sighed. He'd really prefer not to. He didn't like killing things, unless they were rats. He hated rats.

"Guess I don't have a lot of options," Aidyn muttered, dragging himself to his feet, slinging the bag back over his shoulder before taking another bite of bagel. He was regretting not taking any cream cheese.

After a few more hours of walking, a loud booming echoed across the canopied sky. Aidyn stopped, watching as the rays of sunlight disappeared, and dread pooled in his stomach. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

More deafening thunder, and Aidyn could just make out the light pattering of rain against the canopy above him. He knew it was only a matter of time before it broke through and he got absolutely drenched.

"REALLY?" he yelled up at the sky. "NOW??"

Purple lightning flashed in response.

Resigning himself to never being dry again, Aidyn made sure the map was tucked safely in his jacket and started forward again. Hopefully he'd find some sort of shelter before the rain really picked up, but he wasn't counting on it.

A few minutes later, the first few raindrops smacked against the top of Aidyn's head. Quickly, he mentally went through his supplies, searching for anything that could be damaged by the water. Nothing came to mind, and he forged ahead, sending a quick prayer to the moons as the downpour started.

Pretty soon, Aidyn's clothes were soaked. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and he carefully shoved it back, squinting as water streamed down his face. He'd shoved his leather boots in his bag, and his scaled feet were now covered in mud, making the already-treacherous ground slick and slimy. Aidyn didn't particularly mind mud, but getting it all over himself would not be ideal, at least until he could get a couple changes of clothes.

Eventually, he gave up on walking. It felt like he was trudging through a massive waterfall, and the rushing and thunder drowned everything out, even his footsteps. This was the only part of the rainforest Aidyn hadn't missed. He remembered how much of a flooding problem his village had growing up, and how he'd sometimes have to splash through several feet of water just to get breakfast.

After a quick search for shelter, Aidyn managed to scamper up a particularly large tree, slipping a couple of heart-stopping times before making himself comfortable in its lower branches. Though it wasn't much, the large leaves did offer some protection against the onslaught, and it was a relief to be able to see clearly for more than a second at a time.

Digging in his bag for the rope, Aidyn fastened himself to the branch, leaning back against the trunk and closing his eyes. He missed Lyla. She would've found a way to make this situation better, even with her constant complaining. Really, Aidyn would've taken anyone from the Voc, just to give him someone to interact with.

And of course, he missed Damon. All the anger and grief had faded to the backburner during his week on the road, but he wasn't sure whether he was healing or simply suppressing everything. Either was possible. Whatever the case, he was grateful for the emotional silence.

Eventually, Aidyn dozed off, listening to the deafening drum of the rain. He wasn't sure how long he slept, but when he opened his eyes, the downpour had stopped. His back ached from spending hours slumped against a tree trunk, and his legs had fallen asleep. Perfect.

Aidyn unfastened himself from the branch, stuffing the rope back in his bag and swinging his legs over the empty air to try and get some feeling back. But the bark was still slick with water, and before Aidyn could do anything but cry out, he slid off.

He tumbled through the air, instinctively lashing out with his whip before his brain could catch up. The metal wrapped itself around the wood, stopping his fall for a good millisecond before wood broke in two. Aidyn landed on his back with a wet squelch, scrambling back just in time to avoid being crushed as the massive branch crashed down in front of him.

What a way to wake up.

He took a second to catch his breath before glaring down at the whip in his hand, trying to slow his pounding heart. "Some help you were."

There was no answer.

"Six tides," Aidyn swore, looking down at himself. His jacket and shorts were soaked and caked in mud, and his skin was already starting to itch because of it. He was honestly kind of impressed — he hadn't been this dirty in years.

"Uh, excuse me? Are — is everything okay?"

After a week of nothing but his own thoughts and the ruckus of loud animals, it took Aidyn a second to register that those words were probably directed at him. He glanced up, staring at the large wooden treehouse weaving itself around the thick limbs above him. Flowering vines twisted up the walls, flat mushrooms poking out from the wood like short staircases. A thin platform wrapped around the tree trunk, creating a rail-less balcony, and the roof was lost in bushels of leaves and branches. It blended in pretty well with the tree itself, so it was no surprise Aidyn had missed it in the rain.

Somehow more surprising was the girl leaning halfway out the window, staring down at him with confusion written all over her face. "Hello?"

Aidyn didn't really know how to respond. He didn't want to yell in case it drew human attention, but given how high up the girl was, he didn't have much of a choice. "Oh yeah, I'm good! Just..." He tried to come up with a non-embarrassing excuse for being soaked and covered in mud, but nothing came to mind. "Chilling. Sorry about your tree."

Amusement flooded the girl's dark features. "What were you even doing?"

Aidyn got to his feet and grabbed his bag, holding it at arm's length and attempting to shake the mud off. "Trying to catch a break." An idea struck him, and he glanced back up at the girl. "You don't happen to read the human language, do you?"

Her eyebrows scrunched together, wavy and tangled hair falling over her shoulder as she leaned forward. "Yeah, I can. Why?"

Aidyn took out the map and waved it over his head a bit. "Cuz I can't."

"And... you want my help?"

"If you'd be willing to give it, yeah. "

The girl glanced over her shoulder, and Aidyn could barely make out another voice coming from inside the treehouse. While they had a quick conversation, Aidyn glanced around, trying to make sense of his surroundings. A winding path had been beaten into the undergrowth, and more houses were nestled in the trees, connected to each other by a series of rope bridges and nearly invisible in the canopy. It almost reminded him of an anguis village he'd spent a couple of days in, but there was just something about this one that felt... weird.

The girl stuck her head back out. "Coming down now."

She disappeared again before he could respond.

A few moments later, he caught sight of her making her way down the tree, reaching and leaping from one branch to another with a graceful speed and agility. She jumped the last few feet, dusting her hands off and turning to face him, the ferns around them weaving with her movements. "Map?"

Aidyn handed it over, and it crinkled as the girl unrolled it, the paper stiff with rainwater. Her different-colored eyes scanned the map thoughtfully, one grass green and the other a light blue. Occasionally, she'd mouth a word or two to herself, but Aidyn couldn't make any of them out.

"It's mostly a bunch of city names," she said finally, bringing the map closer and staring at a particular spot. "If you're trying to get to these circles, you're going the complete wrong way."

Of course he was. 

The girl tilted her head slightly. "I think that says something like 'Tercy Cess'— " She froze mid-sentence, looking up at Aidyn with suspicion and a glimmer of adventure in her eyes. "What map is this?"

"Uh..." Aidyn paused, his mind racing. He barely knew this girl, and he still knew nothing about his surroundings. There could be humans anywhere, and if they somehow found out they weren't the only ones searching for the sources, it wouldn't end well for anyone.

"It's nothing special," he said finally, trying to act casual. "My dad's trying to teach me to read a map, and his methods are a bit questionable. I'm just trying to get back home."

She stared him down, raising her eyebrows. "Your dad sent you off with a map to the sources?"

Aidyn's stomach dropped. Moons, he was on a roll, wasn't he? "The sources" was probably written all over the map, and he'd just given it to a total stranger.

"Why are you going after the sources?" she asked, rolling the map up and staring at him in confusion.

"Who's Tercy Cess?" Aidyn countered doing his best to dodge the question.

"I asked you first."

"I don't even know your name," Aidyn pointed out, his thoughts racing as he tried to figure a way out of this. "I can't tell that kind of information to just anybody."

The girl paused. "My name is Keithra, but most people just call me Kei." She put her hands on her hips. "And what's your name?"

"Aidyn."

"Hi, Aidyn. Why are you going after the sources?"

He hesitated and glanced upwards, catching sight of two patrias peeking out the window of the house. One looked like a humanoid tree, about eight feet tall with twigs and leaves poking out from their rough skin. The other was considerably shorter, with shiny brown skin and dark wavy hair. They stared him down, as if they were daring him to do anything even slightly suspicious.

Aidyn's gaze returned to Kei and he shook his head. "I can't tell you. I can't risk any humans finding out about this." He looked around, once again trying to place that weird feeling he was getting. "How human-controlled is your village, anyway?"

"It's not."

"Right, of course." He made finger quotes. "How 'human occupied' is your village, then?"

Kei cracked a smile. "It's not. There isn't a single human here. There hasn't been for years."

Aidyn stared at her, sure she must be joking. But when she didn't shout "Just kidding!", his skepticism slowly faded away, replaced with awe. "You're serious."

Kei nodded.

So that was the weird feeling. The village was so... peaceful. Where Aidyn had grown up, there was always this tension in the air, as if the walls were slowly closing in and it was only a matter of time before someone snapped. But here, the atmosphere was light, quiet and completely carefree, like you could do anything you wanted.

"So are you going to tell me why you're out searching for a bunch of myths or what?" Kei asked, the small smile still on her face.

Aidyn shook his head, forcing his shock to the backburner. "Right, yeah. But only if you tell me who Tercy Cess is and why they're so important."

"Deal."

As Aidyn explained the situation (he obviously left Damon out), a frown began to tug at Kei's lips, but he saw a spark of excitement bloom as he told her his mission. She stayed quiet for a few seconds after he finished, and it looked like she was considering something.

"Sounds dangerous," she said finally. "Mind if I come?"

Aidyn blinked. "What?"

"Can I come?"

Again, Aidyn waited for the punchline, and again, it didn't come. "You're joking."

"It looks like you could use some help, considering you don't understand your own map," Kei pointed out, handing said map back to him. "And going on a giant treasure hunt sounds kind of fun."

"What about them?" he asked, jerking his head subtly up to the treehouse. "I doubt they'll want you running off with a mysterious hibri."

"I'll figure something out."

Of course, his brain was screaming at him to tell her no, but for some reason, he just couldn't do that. Kei was right, he did need help. And even deeper than that, Aidyn was sick of being alone. If he was going to get through this, he needed company.

He sighed and slung his dirty backpack over his shoulder. "Okay, sure. I'll meet you at the other end of the village, but don't take too long. And bring supplies too — I'm almost out."

Kei nodded and grinned at him. "See you there." She turned and bounded back up the tree, her wavy hair bouncing as she disappeared back inside the treehouse.

Aidyn started trudging through the village, following the beaten path and trying not to slip. If he was honest with himself, he was kind of excited to have a partner on the road. Maybe Kei was right — this could be fun. 

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Thanks so much for reading the chapter and for being a dedicated Almond! Great job to SilverBeams for writing all of Aidyn's awesome chapters!

With virtual hugs, purple Google features, and bad decisions,

Google Form Crew

(G.F.C.)