ANSWER POLL BEFORE REVEALING SPOILER!

Former Member

Suddenly, you become deaf and blind. You don't remember where you are or what happened this past hour. You're disconcerted, and begin to wonder if you're dead. But you smell something strange. As you stagger, you find its many smells, each going in different directions. Which scent do you follow?

You just want to go home, but despite the fact that you don't know where you are, you somehow feel that you're nowhere near.

🪻Lavender:

You find that the smell gets stronger the closer you go and begin to feel calm. You feel the stalks brushing against your elbows and feel what you think are leaves within your fingertips. What you thought was lavender obviously wasn't lavender, those flowering plants are just a bit taller than you! You go inside the field and the darkness begins to feel beautiful. You get drowsy and begin to hum with no melody. As you walk, you feel your knees buckling and you fall in the middle of the field, hidden away like a secret, and you fall fast asleep. You dream of the best life you can possibly imagine, the best people you could know, wealth and fortune, things that are impossible and brilliant, but you’re lucid and aware that none of it is real. Time seems to go slower as you dream up an entire lifetime. The reality is that you die within a few days at most from starvation.

🚬 Cigarettes:

You bump your head on what feels like rusty metal and pause for a moment to rub your head. You touch what’s in front of you and guess they are rails and when you push them, the gate opens. This is when the cigarette smell really hit. You walk forward and it's warmer, you feel yourself getting sweatier, but you don't rest. You mustn't rest. You need to find the source of that smell. You walk through an entrance and bump into a wall made of rock. You brush your hand across the wall. It's circular and as you walk around, you fall since you didn't realise there was a spiral staircase and bash your chin. But the pain didn't faze you. Instead, you begin to climb up those steep steps, searching for the smell you now desire. You are exhausted, thirsty, in unbearable pain from the aching, a feeling that won't go away, but you don't stop. You don't care. You only care about the smell. Sometimes you trip and fall down hundreds, even thousands of steps, but you just go up again. It seems that the tower never ends, but you must search. You search for all eternity, unaware of your immortality. Sheer determination keeps you searching, climbing up those steps, exhausted. This was a determination you never felt before and it felt almost good.

🪵 Sawdust:

You trip over a tree stump, knowing it was a tree stump you tripped over without feeling it with your hands. Instead of picking yourself up and dusting yourself off, you just stop. And then you mourn. You mourn the tree stump as if it is your brother and then you feel splinters in your skin. Your skin gets rough and you get taller, feeling as though you're stretched on a rack. Your arms raise up and stiffen, your fingers lengthen and you feel the creases tear apart. They become branches and sprout leaves. Your legs conjoins and hardens. At last, you're a tree.
"At last, I have purpose," you think.
And so, you provide oxygen. You provide beauty in the autumn as your leaves begin to fall and start over in the spring as flowers bloom. They then become the fruit you bear for the inhabitants of The Enchanted Forest in the summer. This becomes your purpose, you are fulfilled. The whole time, you mourn your dead brother, especially during the winter, when all you do is weep and no one knows. Your purpose is thankless.

🍲 Your Loved One’s Cooking:

As you approach the source of the smell, you begin to hear the rustle of the leaves, the soft blowing of the breeze and the sweet song of the nightingale. When you’re there, you suddenly see the door of the cottage in front of you. You rub your eyes to allow them to adjust and that is when the door opens, and in front of you is a woman with long, silky black hair, pale skin, and a dark dress that seems to shift shades of blues and greens in the light. “I’ve been expecting you,” she says in a deep confident voice, “Although it has been two hundred years since we last had a newcomer at The Enchanted Forest.”
“How did I ge-” but she hushes you.
“Please, do come in.”
And so you do. The aroma is so familiar and nostalgic that it gives you a sense of security. As you follow her, you look away for a moment, admiring how homely the cottage is, only to look back at her and realise she isn’t that woman anymore. Instead, you see your loved one. Bewildered, you try to ask them what’s happening, but they cut you off again. “You must be hungry, please, do sit,” they say in a very different voice, a familiar voice that brings you warmth.
And then you feel very warm, for you don’t realise that you are sitting in a cauldron, unable to move, and the heat is turning up.

📖 Old Books:

You feel someone touch your arm and you react by whacking them on what feels like a hairy face. You feel them grab you again by the arm, and you steady your feet. You feel your heart pounding out of your chest but you think that perhaps, you are being guided to safety. It feels warmer now, and suddenly, you see a library. You blink to let your eyes adjust.
"That bloody hurts you know!" you hear, and you turn around to see a man wearing a pointy hat and a robe. He rubs his jaw which is covered by his long grey beard. "You're lucky I'm welcoming you to my home! Not even a thank you. Though I suppose you want some time to adjust."
You see behind him a book on a desk, and beside it, a wand. The book then flies, fluttering it's pages like wings.
"Clever eh? You can also thank my trusty spell book! Restoring senses is a tricky thing indeed."
"Where am I?" you ask.
"The Enchanted Forest. It's not so bad really. Actually it is quite wonderful. Although the dragon that resides at The Infinity Tower reeks of cigarettes, he can't help having dragon breath. And best avoid the cottage down south, the enchantress has a cruel sense of humour. No newcomers in two hundred years so she hasn’t played that joke in a long time. No one knows how they get here, they’re a mystery. You are a mystery. She enjoys making the smells more powerful so that the newcomers meet a terrible fate by following the scent. Sometimes she directly causes that fate, sometimes she doesn’t. Lucky for you, The Enchanted Library is screaming for books to be read and knowledge to be gained, so the scent got more powerful without her intervention. Also, avoid Lullaby Field."
You feel that this is a lot to take in.
“I know this place isn’t home. But it’s wonderful and maybe it could be home. Perhaps you can become my apprentice. I’ll teach you everything, show you everything. I told you what to avoid but let me show you The Lake of Shining Waters. Let me show you Brotherhood Woods. I am alone, and no one realises that knowledge is everything. We need more wizards. I’m getting old,” but then he pauses. He sighs and says, “I know this place isn’t home and if going home is what you really want, then I’m sure we can find a way. I make no promises, but there’s hope. And this place is wonderful, I’ll still teach you everything meanwhile. It’s your choice, so what do you say?”

JustV

🪵 Sawdust

It's good to have you back, @spoon

That was an emotional journey I was not prepared for. Kinda like the idea of being a tree, now. You have a talent for visceral and evocative writing, spoon!

JJLemon18

🍲 Your Loved One’s Cooking

@spoon That was awesome to read!!

As much as I wouldn't prefer to be cooked alive, I think I chose the best option, at least I got to see my loved one for (what seems to be) the last time...

"Although the dragon that resides at The Infinity Tower reeks of cigarettes" that gave me a good giggle ngl

Former Member

@JustV Thank you! I hope to make more soon! They are fun to write.

@JJLemon18

the loved one part was the hardest one for me to write because i overcomplicated it at first. Originally (well not original original), the ending was gonna be about how a part of you believes it’s real and another knows its too good to be true. That your belief keeps you living a full life but you lose hope on ever experiencing anything real. I liked the idea of having there be a parallel between the wizard and the enchantress, that one gives you hope and the other makes you give it up. And one fakes a home and the other doesn't. But then i realised that it would be too similar to the lavender spoiler (the lucid dreaming an entire lifetime) so i scrapped the idea. I decided that maybe it’ll be better to make the enchantress a more sadistic character. I’m glad the dragon part made you laugh!

JJLemon18

🍲 Your Loved One’s Cooking

@spoon

Ngl that terrifies me, never being sure if they're really your loved one or not.

I love (and honestly kinda hate) the idea of everyone having their own story, and being completely unaware of all the other paths (beside the book one). Say if I choose the smell of cigarettes, I will never know that the smell is actually a dragon. Or if I choose lavender, I pretty much experience the best life, completely unaware of the world around me (and btw knowing that its fake doesn't really make it worse imo, because its still an experience, pretty much the same as watching a fictional movie or playing a videogame in real life, those are completely fake experiences too yet we still love them). All this is making me a little bit existential haha.

As you see, I really loved this. I could keep on talking about it. Well done!

Amy22

🪻Lavender

I find these are super fun reading and the twist at the end is so so interesting. You really have a great way with words . I chose lavender but didn't expect that ending

sinead276

📖 Old Books

Forgot to comment the other day when I did it but I also think these are so interesting to read.

I chose the old book ending but then after I had, went to see how the other options ended. It's crazy the effects one small decision can have on an outcome