You say, "Alright, I trust you to get me out of here. Lead the way."

Instead of exiting your mouth as a smooth strain of words, your command comes out as a shaky plea through your clattering teeth. You find your breaths forming nimbostrati in the chilly winter air. The chill creeps down into your bones, prompting you to slap your arms around yourself to conserve your body heat. A snowflake floats down from the heavens, plasters itself against your cornea and melts. The cold stings your eye and it waters in response, forcing you to bury your face in your sleeves.

"Human, are you alright?" asks the vixen peeking from behind the dry briar. You glimpse it padding forward through your tear-blurred eyes.

You dry your eyes on your coat-sleeves and nod at her. "Y-yeah, I'm okay. L-let's go."

"I've been told that a human's eyes water when they're sad. Why are you sad, human? I apologize for my rudeness, you can go home if you'd just follow me."

"No, it's just. . . something went in my eye, let's go," you say while rubbing said eye and following her into the woods. The vixen is careful to stay within your sight as it pads through the shrubbery and the thick undergrowth. Her paws carry her silently over the layer of fallen leaves carpeting the floor. You find the contradiction fascinating with almost all of the vegetation sporting green foliage. It seems as if the change of seasons didn't matter in this odd forest. The vixen's fluffy tail slides smoothly over rotten logs, over the white-spotted, scarlet toadstools that sprouted from them and under the feathery, green fronds of the ferns. You've never seen trees other than ancient redwoods hit such heights. You gape at the arboreal marvels, while your fingers trace the roughness of their bark surfaces, and the smooth, wetness of the moss growing on them.

Little mushrooms form fairy rings across grassy stretches, and you find yourself being serenaded by invisible frogs. "It's pretty lively in here," you whisper as you hear owls, crickets and lizards pitching in for the performance. Your arms unwrap themselves from your body as you feel the air growing warmer in the direction in which the vixen leads you.

The vixen spins around to check your position.

"Oh they're. . .you're. . . you're baring your teeth at me. I'm sorry, have I angered you?"

"No, this is a smile," you explain again, while pointing at the newly created facial expression, "we humans smile at things we like, and when we're happy. It's a good thing."

"You're happy now?"

"Not exactly," you say and top it off with a shrug. The creature guides you through the woods, a flash of white cutting through the shadows. The sudden change in scent from the mix of damp wooden, floral and fishy smells to that of fresh tea catches you off guard. The atmospheric temperature has risen from bitterly cold to lukewarm. Your hand parts the last of the gigantic sedges in front of you to find the vixen standing before a hot spring.

Smooth grey rocks demarcate the edges of the spring, and the steam rising off the fair waters invites you in. You look at her and ask,

"This is?"

The vixen explains,

"This is a threshold point that you can use to get home. We're safe now. Thank the forest that you were able to make it before it closed itself off."

She shakes her head, sits down on her haunches and begins to lick her front paw. You're surprised that the fox can talk Verdish pretty well in the first place. It would make sense, since Verdish would be the most common human language in Shikagami. The vixen picks out a pointed stone from her paw pads and drops it into the rich, lime-green grass covering the banks.

You take a seat on the soft grass and decide to ask some pressing questions.

"So er. . . Where are we exactly? You mentioned a threshold point thing."

"You're in Shikagami, silly human," comes the guileless answer.

You hug your knees and shed your footwear to warm your freezing toes. The polished, hot stones feel heavenly to your tired feet as you rest them on their surface. A moan leaves your mouth and you throw your head back. The teal fireflies flutter and shimmer above your little slice of paradise.

"I've lived in Shikagami for quite some time, but I've never heard of a magical forest like this one," you confess.

The vixen regards you with her shining brown eyes and blinks. She strokes her head repeatedly starting from the dome, all the way upto her nose with her front paw. Her tale curls against the same layer of cushy grass under you.

"Oh, it's not like that, human," she replies as she blinks at you again.

"How do I put this in words?"

She pauses for a brief second.

"You're a little. . . dead."

"A little?"

"Er. . . There was a little, I daresay, accident involving you and an old tree branch in the park dimension."

"Okay," you manage.

"And the branch fell on you head while I was trying to get your tailbone off the bench."

"Okay," you say, stifling a laugh.

"And then you. . . oh dear, the cougars are restless today, human, perhaps they've caught your scent. It's best that you wade into the threshold point now and wake up. Good luck, I hope you make it to the other side."

Saying this, the fox stands up abruptly. She takes one long look at you, the hot spring and the little clearing enclosing the forest dreamland. Her whisker twitch and her head swivels to face the darkness beyond the sedge walls. With a soft nuzzle of reassurance against your arm, your companion bounds off into the shadows of the trees. You wonder if she'd be safe in the forest, with all the big-cat-predators prowling about.

You sigh as you follow suit, trying desperately to ignore a sudden bout of  roaring. Unwilling to sully the waters with your dirty shoes and socks, you shyly step into the pool, fully clothed. The waters thaw your body, loosen up your tense muscles, and endows a certain calmness to your mind. You find yourself drifting off to sleep, cradled by the gentle waves formed by the warm breeze. Your feet slip on the pebbles at the bottom, and soon your eyes fall shut in a soundless slumber.

When you open them a second later, there's a still ceiling fan attached to the white wall above you. You shed the soft, cotton sheets smothering you and look around. There's an I V drip attached to your upper left hand, with the last few drops of the solution dripping into the pipe. The traffic outside the pink tinted windows offers a hum of sound to the silence in the room. You wish that the windows were kept open as you scan the place, ignoring the throbbing ache in your head. You notice your wallet, your phone, you apartment keys, a pile of your clothes and a vase of wilting dahlias on a bedside table.

The odd piece of white paper sticking out of your black leather wallet catches your eye.

Despite the ache in your joints and the pain in your abdomen, you stretch and grasp the paper piece. You register its crude roughness and pull it out, careful to not let your wallet fall. It's cut into a long rectangular strip, spanning the length between the tip of your forefinger to the base of your palm, and bearing a counterclockwise swirl painted with blue ink. You flip it over, and read the message scribbled with pencil on the other side.

[Welkome bak, humen, I'm glad that you kould make it. I've managed to find almost everything that had bin on your person befor you fel 'asleep'. Your feet kovers are under your bed. I hope that's everything; if anything's mising, kindly inform the head priest at the shrine and show him this paper. Take kare now, and please don't loose this paper. It's a sort of goodluk charm– it's pawmade, so forgive the kwaliti. If you find yourself in great peril, just burn this paper. Be safe.]

Had it been under any other circumstances, you would've chucked the paper in the nearest wastebasket and called the cops on the creeper. You sniff the paper for some reason and confirm the scents of tea, rotten wood, cherry and fish. Your fingers fold the paper and tuck it safely into your wallet. The fox has a lousy grasp of human words when it came to writing, but you don't mind. If you were to encounter her ever again, you promise yourself, you'd buy her a full cup of hot, steaming corn and top it off with high quality sushi as a token of gratitude. And a hug, pitches in your mind, I better give her a huge hug.

You don't know what the heck had happened. You don't know why the fox had helped you out. You wonder if the fox was a part of your subconsciousness trying to get you wake up. But the bark caked under your fingernails, the strand of white fur caught in the fold of your muddy t-shirt, the 'goodluk charm' and the scents convince you otherwise. You try not to think much about it.

According to the local news reports that you had painstakingly fished from the internet on your phone, there had been a terrible accident involving you and an old tree branch two days ago. Your hand instinctively goes to the turban of bandages wrapped around your head. The doctors had confirmed your full recovery from the coma an hour or so ago to the hyper-concerned media. You spit gets caught in your throat as you catch a stray headline, stating that the Emerald Glades park might close down due to their violation of safety norms. Your fingers scroll down the lone article, clawing at it to reveal more, but it resists adamantly. In the end, you have an article which is nothing more than a spiced and puffed up version of the headline. Click-bait, you curse in your head.

As you sink back into the soft pillows supporting your head, you try to ignore the skull-racking headache. You desperately wish for a tube of balm to materialise on the desk to aid you but nothing happens. A growl escapes through your clenched teeth and you turn over to one side. The evening is pink and purple today, with the gentle spots of the billboards and neon lights splattered in between. You hush your thoughts and wade into sweet slumber, alone and calm in your mindspace.

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Time to bounce back.

Turn to chapter 20 and welcome a NEW DAY.

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