Trees.
Loads and loads of trees.
Nothing but an endless, suffocating barrage of wood and leaves along our path as we made our way through the forest. We were supposedly being led by our beloved Yanyin. Not a great guide if you ask me.
In fact, calling her a "guide" might be an insult to people who actually get you from point A to point B without stopping to look at a weird beetle for ten minutes.
Every interesting leaf demanded her commentary, every bird call required investigation, and her stamina disappeared faster than a fart in the wind. It is a miracle we haven't walked in a circle three times, and that's only because I recognised the path from us walking through it a day before.
Thank the gods we'd started at dawn.
I had spent the night before hatching plan A's, plan B's, and even a few plan C's. I briefed them to my friends, going over contingencies, and making sure that the variables we could control were, in fact, firmly in our control.
