Though she didn't feel much of a bond with the four strangers in front of her, she knew she needed answers, and they were the only people who could give them to her. After a warm meal of soup and toast, she was feeling much better. She watched the odd bunch, sitting around the small table with her, for a moment before asking the one question that had been burning a hole into her skull for the past hour.

"Why didn't I die?"

Kash froze, veggies and meat falling from his spoon and splattering back into his bowl. Tobias eyed her from across the table, while shooting glances at a concerned Juniper. Fig wasn't sure if it was the blunt nature of the question, or something more, that had the four friends shifting uncomfortably around the table.

"First," Emerzahn spoke up, setting his spoon in the bowl and crossing his arms over his chest. "Can you tell us what you were doing so far out of town? No one else ever ventures out to the trees anymore."

"Other than us," Kash muttered into his bowl, not taking his eyes away from the food he was greedily shoving into his trap.

"But trees are everywhere," Fig informed them, confused.

"Not here." Juniper leaned closer to the table as she spoke. "They surround our town, though most of them are dead, but there are no trees inside. Actually," she thought for a moment, "there is no nature anywhere inside the city."

Fig didn't know how she was supposed to respond to this bizarre information. No nature? No trees? That's all she'd ever known. She even lived inside of a tree. To her, the idea of no trees meant no life.

"We used to have trees," Emerzahn explained, "but after the war, they all began to rot and we were forced to replace them with our own creations. Mind you," he grinned with pride, as if he'd built these so-called 'tree replacements' with his own two hands, "they are quite stunning creations, but they're not real." He picked his spoon back up, preparing to take another bite.

"Not real, how?" Fig asked, eager to learn as much as possible about this new world.

Instead of answering right away, Emerzahn stood, his meal forgotten as he pushed his chair back out of the way. "How about we show you?" he offered with a mischievous gleam in his eyes.

The unease returned in full force as she watched his lips lift into a lazy smirk. She wasn't sure if her discomfort was the product of caution, or if it was because of her strange infatuation with the male in front of her. She'd never experienced this feeling before, this desire to follow him anywhere, to watch his every move, to know him. The foreign emotion had Fig questioning if she should really even be here, but it wasn't as if she really had a choice.

She'd never had to gain trust in someone before, but the level of faith she had towards Emerzahn already seemed too easy. Was it possible to both trust someone and doubt them simultaneously?

As she sat debating the male's intentions, the remaining friends stood and nodded in agreement.

"Fantastic idea," Juniper exclaimed, as she tugged a shawl off the back of her chair and threw it around her shoulders.

Fig knew she needed to focus her attention on getting back to Zohrul, but since that wasn't an option at the moment, she pushed it to the back of her mind. She'd worry about it at a later time. Right now, she was too keen on the idea of exploring the grand city she'd viewed from a bird's eye-view just hours, or maybe days, before. Fig couldn't be sure how long she'd been unconscious in this foreign land.

Instead of turning down the invitation, she found herself nodding in agreement. "Okay," she said, standing and following the four outside.

The moment she stepped through the door, she froze. This was bad. Very bad. The sky was still dark with the absence of the orbs, but somehow the air was still warm. She glanced down the shadowy trail to see naked trees dotting the edges, light cascading over them like a waterfall. Glancing further into the distance, Fig could catch a glimpse of glassy looking objects that seemed to be emitting a brilliant glow, but from where she stood, it was hard to tell what exactly it was.

As her foot pressed against the soil her gaze snapped to the bright colors shooting out from inside the ground. She could feel her eyes widen in disbelief as she took another step forward. Again, the ground illuminated from beneath her foot. Strange as it may sound, it was almost as if the ground itself was breathing life into her skin, sending warm shivers up her calves. She jumped back, inhaling painfully as her heart sped up.

"Are you okay?" Emerzahn asked from behind her, catching her elbow in his firm hand.

She continued to stare at the possessed ground. The imprint of her foot still lingered in the soil, dimmer than before, but still glowing a dull royal blue. Within seconds, the colors had seeped deeper into the earth until everything once again appeared normal. There was no longer any strange light shooting up from its depths—until Juniper stepped casually onto its surface and the ground beneath her feet was instantly set ablaze.

"What?" Fig paused, breathing in awe. "What is that?"

Emerzahn followed her gaze, his brows dipping in puzzlement as he surveyed the ground. He turned back to Fig with a shrug of confusion.

"Her feet," Fig continued. "They're on fire. The bottoms of her feet are on fire!"

Juniper jumped back, dropping her gaze to her feet, but finding only the searing orange of her footprints as they quickly faded to green, and then blue, before disappearing. She relaxed, turning a sympathetic gaze towards Fig. It appeared that Juniper had realized something about Fig that Fig herself was unaware of.

"Where are you from?" Tobias finally asked.

The frightened girl glanced to the side where Tobias stood, the ground illuminated beneath his feet as well. Fig wasn't sure, but, other than introductions, this seemed to be the first time she'd heard him talk. He'd been standing to the side observing the entire scene through curious eyes before stepping forward to speak.

She lifted her baffled gaze up from the earth to look at his face. "Zohrul," she responded softly.

The heaviness that fell over them could have been a blanket packed with stones. Tobias, Kash, Emerzahn and Juniper all shared stunned expressions with each other. It was that feeling when everyone else knows something you don't, like they were reading each other's minds with just a simple glance. 

Fig shifted uneasily as her eyes swept from one person to the next. Their faces seemed to be emanating a combination of interest and horror, which didn't sit well in Figs tightly knotted gut. It was clear that something was terribly wrong, piquing her curiosity in the most dreadful way.

"Zohrul?" Kash finally muttered into the thick air.

"Yes?" Fig answered, unsure, as she took a timid step back. She hoped the added distance would dilute the tension from the air enough for her to breathe.

"The forest of Zohrul?" He repeated harshly, matching her steps as he came to stand before her, his hard, green eyes cutting into her. For some reason, the severity of his gaze left Fig struggling internally with a sense of self doubt.

"Yes," she confirmed boldly, hating the effect his intimidation had on her confidence.

She stiffened her shoulders, shifting her gaze to meet his. He smirked at her weak display of control, before dropping his head and rolling it back and forth, as if ashamed of her. He scoffed, sneering at the ground.

It was in that moment that Fig decided she strongly disliked the boy in front of her. Her veins were on fire and her hand ached with the desire to smack some sense, or even just some manners, into the arrogant fool. She could spit on him, for he spoke as one blessed with all wisdom, and yet, he knew nothing.

The mixture of fury and humiliation flooding her system was making her tremble. She felt weak, which she could easily blame her near-death experience on, but she knew better. There was something these four were not telling her, and it was gnawing at her gut in the most uncomfortable way.

The friends continue to stare at Fig, causing a great deal of turmoil to ignite within her. Her feet shifted awkwardly beneath her, not sure what to do with themselves as unease traveled through them. She was almost sure she heard Tobias whisper, "That's not possible," before Emerzahn stepped forward, gaining her full attention.

"How long did you live in Zohrul?" he asked her carefully, attempting to calm her obviously fragile state.

The foreign sense of revulsion she felt for the green-eyed idiot quickly evaporated at the sound of Emerzahn's curious tone. It held no judgment.

Her mind flashed with images of her life: A toddler wobbling her way through gold fields, her head not quite peeking over the tall grass; a child dancing beneath the billowing, lush greenery of the jungle trees; a teenager making a game of shooting stones at the patrolling underlings; and then a woman lying beneath the light-filled sky and asking herself if this was all that life would ever be, and wishing that she had a greater purpose.

Fig brought her thoughts back to the present, realizing that she was getting just what she had wished for on that lonely day: more.

"My entire life," she told him when she realized they were all waiting for a response.

He nodded, but she wasn't sure he fully believed her. "How long have you been outside of Zohrul?"

His question seemed so odd. Why did these things matter? By now, all she wanted was to return home to see Sowa and Leb again, but the four friends seemed more interested in finding answers of their own than helping her.

"Well, I guess since you all found me," she told them. "How long ago was that?"

"Just a few hours," Tobias answered, his expression matching the disbelief on the faces of his friends. "We found you lying on the ground at the outskirts of town, nearly dead. We took you home, got you warmed up, and then you woke. That was just a few hours ago."

"A few hours?" Fig exclaimed, her shoulders deflating with the news. She was hoping that it would be closer to daylight by now, but she wrong. "Then I can't go back yet."

"Why?" Juniper asked.

"I'd die. The cold would kill me." Her own answer conjured up a question she meant to ask the moment she stepped out into the darkened sky, but she'd been too distracted by the illuminated earth to bother. "How is it still warm out? The orbs are gone, but it's still warm."

"Yes," Emerzahn confirmed. "It's the man-made trees I spoke of earlier. It's the orbs. We've contained them in crystal structures and placed them throughout the town. They're what keeps the place warm. It's been this way for years."

"Who is 'we?' Who captured the orbs?" she said, directing the question at Emerzahn. "How is that possible?"

"My people," Emerzahn answered, a wave of hesitation, or maybe unease, seeming to pass over his expression briefly. "The vorgs have built technology that allow us to capture the orbs."

Fig tried to get a read on the vorg, hoping to understand what he meant and why he seemed caught off guard, or embarrassed, by his revelation. Was he ashamed of his own people? If so, why?

Fig breathed out a frustrated sigh. "Everything you guys say just confuses me more. First of all, what is technology? How do you capture orbs without melting into puddles of flesh, or exploding into thousands of tiny, singed pieces? And how do you keep the orbs from floating back into their normal routine? Why do your people feel the need to mess up the order?"

"Okay," Emerzahn said, his words softening when he noticed Fig's obviously frazzled state. He began to explain slowly as if speaking to a child. "First, if you've never seen technology before then it'd probably be easiest to just show you. Secondly, the technology is how we capture the orbs without frying ourselves into non-existence, and lastly, the orbs are trapped and used for their energy."

"Their energy?" Fig asked, prompting him to continue.

"Yes, their warmth, their light. By using their energy, we've been able to create electricity and power. Does Zohrul not have power?"

"What?"

"Electricity," Juniper said, jumping into the conversation. "You've never heard of electricity?"

"Did you grow up underground or something?" Kash questioned harshly, clearly annoyed by her lack of knowledge in anything pertaining to this new world.

While Fig wanted nothing more than to dig her dagger into the idiot's thigh, she couldn't prevent the smile from breaking free on her face at the truth behind his words.

"Well, kinda," she laughed, embarrassed, as she thought back to her quaint little underground home. She found herself missing the warmth it provided. Not the physical warmth, but the familiar warmth. She felt like an outcast here; she felt stupid and unwanted. She just wished to go home.

"Wait," she said suddenly, taking one step towards the four of them. "What about Zohrul? Why were you so shocked that I lived there?"

"Because," Emerzahn began, glancing at his friends before continuing. "It's desolate."

"What?" she asked, unsure she was fully comprehending what he was saying.

"The forest of Zohrul...," he said carefully, the words sounding more like a question.

She nodded for him to continue, but the unexpected words that whispered past his lips had her gasping in denial.

"It's dead."