The Coral Forest (part 1)

Although the border valleys we'd been traveling through had grown steadily more Changrakatan as we went, there had still been hints of the Golden Desert to them: the low, dry-leaved trees, the sparse underbrush, and the dune-like shapes of the valleys themselves and the ridges between them. That ended when we reached the coral forest.

At first, we'd taken the strange shapes on the horizon for an unfamiliar variety of trees. When we crossed the final valley and climbed onto the higher ground on the other side, we found that we'd only been partially correct. Although there were a few trees, the forest was made mostly of land-coral. Polyp fronds waved in the breeze, catching airborne plankton, passing insects, and (in the case of the largest ones) the occasional small bird.

We weren't sure how to actually enter the forest. The spaces between the coral were far too narrow for our wagons, or, for that matter, the gafl pulling them. We traveled along the edge of the forest for an hour or two before we found a road leading into it.

The road was broad and paved with sand. This seemed an odd choice of paving material, at first, until we realized that any more solid surface would have been just as overgrown with coral, anemones, and various bivalves as the ground around it. Every road leads somewhere (unless one is deliberately participating in certain navigational meditation techniques), so after a brief discussion, we decided to take it.

We turned for one last look out across the border valleys, towards the Golden Desert, bidding our own goodbyes to that land of sunlight and forgotten places. Then we turned the gafl and set off into the forest.

Land-coral grows slowly, and (being an animal, not a plant) it doesn't particularly care about sunlight. The few true trees in the forest towered above the coral, their bark similarly encrusted with mussels and anemones. With sunlight speckling through the green canopy, it almost felt as if we were underwater.

We'd been traveling for most of the afternoon when we came to a fork in the road. The signpost was written in the curling characters of Jingli, somewhat overgrown with coral and barnacles, but still readable.

According to Chak, the arrow pointing back the way we'd come read "Somewhere." The arrow pointing to the left read "Somewhere Else." The arrow pointing to the right read "Nowhere, Maybe," and continued - in smaller characters - into a semi-poetic essay on the concept of locations, the difficulty of distinguishing one place from another, and whether what we think of as "places" actually exist at all or are merely a convenient fiction for the practicalities of civilized life.

This information, while fascinating, was dubiously useful for travelers in need of directions. We eventually took the road leading to "Somewhere Else." That was, after all, where we hoped to go.