The next stretch of days became, against all reasonable expectation, fun.
The fourth terrace nearly ended in disaster before it started, when an innocuous-looking meadow of silver flowers turned out to be a single organism, and the whole field tried to digest Jibril the moment she sat down to rest. She came up sputtering, covered head to toe in faintly glowing sap, screaming threats at a meadow that could not possibly hear her, while Yuna laughed so hard she fell over.
"It's not funny," Jibril snapped, wringing sap out of her hair.
"It's a little funny," Azelis said, not even trying to hide her smile.
"Sap. Suits you," John said. "Very shiny."
Jibril's answering glare could have melted stone. It didn't stop the whole group from teasing her about it for the next two days straight, and it didn't stop her from getting her revenge by dunking John face-first into a river three terraces later, claiming it was an accident with a completely straight face that fooled absolutely no one.
