The branches and roots of the trees had warped, forming a perfect circle that was almost entwined in the fabric of reality itself. Between the wooden frames, a ball of warped light had formed. Shifting across its surface in faint flickers was the image of a different place altogether.
Faerie Doors were not a normal happenstance outside the Schwarzwald. And yet, they still happened. A Zone as old as the Schwarzwald seemed to be able to flex its influence in small tendrils. Planting 'eyes' in odd places, gateways between the world outside and the world inside.
Usually, they would have gone unnoticed. So far off the beaten path, tucked away in corners or crevices where no one would see them. But they were not impossible to reach and for someone running in a panic without looking where they were going, it wasn't hard to stumble through one.
The door swallowed the unfortunate woman, the subspace bubble collapsing in on itself to seal its passage closed behind her. The framework that was held around it fell to pieces, hardly more than litter and debris in the place she had come from. If there were any pursuers, they would not find any evidence that the door even existed in that time and place.
Even the most dense temperate forests could not compare to the inner confines of the Schwarzwald. The atmosphere was heavy and dark, massive trunks compacted in the space to make makeshift avenues cut by roots so large, one had to climb over them. A green-gold gloom hung over the world, muffled silence impermeable on the ground-level. A faint distant clacking of leaves and creaking branches, the even more distant sound of birdsong as though trapped in a dream.
The Wolf had been lead to this avenue earlier, following the persistence of the smoke pouring from the pipe in her lips. The haze billowed from the jaws of a silver wolf's head, shifting and turning in seemingly random patterns to any but her; the thickness of the smoke told her how close she was to the change it was warning about, the wispy tendrils drawn not by air currents but by the will of the Zone itself. A navigation tool for those in Schwarzwald's favor, a Tell.
The Faerie Door had greeted her first and she stopped on seeing it. The space in between the frame was occupied by a bubble of warped reality where normally, such anomalies lay empty as a lure. But there was something else in it this time, a reflection in fish eye of some other place. Of some other time, perhaps. She hummed a cloud of smoke in thought, noticing how the wisps pulled toward this bizarre mimic of a better-known anomalic trap.
So, she was supposed to wait here, was she?
A nonchalant shrug of her shoulders was given, as though to tell whatever divine will had drawn her to this place that she would do as asked until another change took place that assured her she could move on. It was a good thing The Wolf was used to being patient.
She shrugged her shoulder bags off of her body, letting them fall with little ceremony to the root-twined floor of the avenue. She slid onto an outjut on the side to wait. It wouldn't be too long of a wait.
A few hours had passed. Her eyes were closed, listening to her surroundings passed the atmospheric thump in her ears that told her the nearby anomaly was still active. As always, the surrounding trees were silent of all but natural ambience. It was almost cathartic, up until the tone of the thrum shifted down a few octaves.
The pipe flared again, the smoke cloud renewed in a thick puff. The Wolf was pulled back into the moment as the smell of clove-tobacco infiltrated her nostrils, the hazy tendrils reflecting the faint glow of her quicksilver eyes. She looked side-eyed toward the anomaly. The Door was changing...
A blurry figure was mirrored in the bubble, warped due to the fish-eye perspective, faint at first and compressed near the top but growing sharper. It wasn't long before it became recognizable enough as humanoid, falling into the center and colliding with something of mass on the other side, shattering once the source pushed through. A sound like splintering glass reverberated around the avenue clearing, loudly layered in multiple octaves with the undertone of a droning bell beneath. The frame of the Faerie Door snapped apart and fell to pieces, a clatter of debris across the root-woven floor of the avenue.
The intruder seemed no worse for wear, but also not fully in their own mental state. The smoke from the pipe petered out as The Wolf pushed to stand, staring glowing quicksilver into the face of the other as she rose to her full towering height.
She took a few steps forward, no sound issuing from her movements as an arm reached out to try to catch the other. She would not have someone barreling through the Mother Zone, if this was Schwarzwald's will. It was a danger to them both to do so.
