I’m wet…I’m tired……. and I’m pissed off. Each step through this freaking forest is even more trippy than the last. I’ve just survived the ordeal of a thousand lifetimes and every giant tree in this forest looks the exact same. It’s like when you get lost in the snow and suddenly familiar roads are all bathed in white and you can no longer tell any of them apart, except I’m not in familiar territory and this place is the farthest from normal that you can even get. I bet the snow is green here.

As soon as I woke I started trudging in the direction that I hoped our tree house is in, but I’ve been walking for what feels like years. And it’s not like Hansel and Gretel, no bread rail to lead the way home. Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll meet the witch and she’ll put me out of my misery. My feet feel like lead. How long have I really been walking?

I hope I’m heading back in the right direction, because this is one of the last places I want to be wondering around aimlessly… I might as well have the word “Food” tattooed onto my forehead. I just knew I shouldn’t have followed him, isn’t the first rule to being lost to stay put and wait for help to come…. does that even count when you aren’t technically the lost one in the first place? The only thing keeping me moving at this point is the beautiful image of Aether’s windpipe crushed under my hands.

Who would’ve thought that I’d be so desperate to get back to that witches den, but I am, after the night I just had the relative safety of that place would practically be heaven, but I’m also on a mission. If Aether isn’t back then I’m figuring out how to get home without him.

I’m so angry that it hurts to think. I swear for the last 10 hours I have been thinking of nothing but strangling Aether; I just don’t understand what I could have done to be on the receiving end of possibly the worst karma in history. I must have been awful in a past life to get thrown this kind of bad luck, because I don’t see what I could have possibly done in this life to deserve this. I hope I wasn’t Hitler. I would not rock that moustache, and there is the fact that while very charismatic, he was basically insane.

If not him, then maybe…for the love of God, did I drink the blood of children or something? Please tell me I wasn’t that crazy Countess Bathory. Oh, no. What have I done? I was totally Bathory, bathing in young girls blood. I could see it. So, this is why I’m on the receiving end of what has got to be the most insane, cruelest, and uncool punishment in the universe. I’m sorry I’m not sorry! I totally don’t deserve this!

I’m going to kill Aether the next time I see him. This is his fault. That is, if I see him. I just lived through a night out of an R movie, and at the moment I really just want a cup of dark roast, my laptop, and my dog. Did I mention I just survived a nightmare? It was the worst night of my life.

First off this place doesn’t get fully dark, it’s like this weird twilight type color and things glow. They freaking glow! Which I guess should have been reassuring, because at least I could see but it was just really creepy paired with the nighttime sounds. I kept expecting some zombies or a crazed monster to come and kill me.

And did I mention that you can see the breeze, like how is that even possible? And last night it was this shimmery silver that was glowing and made it really hard to sleep. And some of the plants and animals and those weird vine things also glow. Like this forest wasn’t weird enough.

I mean I’ve had some horrible moments in my sixteen years of life, meeting Aether topping the list, but this night nearly killed me. It wasn’t just the creepy glow in the green tinged night sky, or the fact that I was wet and sticky, or the weird heartbeat of the ground, or even the snap creak of the trees that kept me practically awake all night.

And it’s not like things improved much after I ran into the spider and fell in the river, they just got worse from there. There was a weird worm thing that woke me up trying to eat my hair. At least I think it just wanted my hair. There was this weird screeching sound that scared the heck out of me halfway through the night, and my stomach was growling so I went in search of food and fell into a pile of mud, or at least it had the consistency of mud but it smelled like something rotten.

Then as if that wasn’t bad enough the flowers here burn people. I found giant roses and I remembered that the petals are supposed to be edible, thanks to one of Aether’s rambles. I only pretend not to listen, it’s rather hard to tune the nutcase out, but I came away with welts and didn’t even get to see if the petals tasted any good. After that I was trudging through this dark glowing sludge river thing and a leaf fell on me, which normally wouldn’t be a big deal but this leaf was the size of a freaking van. I thought I was going to suffocate underneath that thing, or drown. It was awful.

Then I was chased by a giant snail into the river for the second time. So, I was super sticky and wet, but it’s not like the water really cleaned off any of the glowing sludge and mud, it just made everything colder and slimier. And the water here isn’t normal. It’s sweet for one, and has this rainbow-ish kind of look like water reflecting on asphalt. Or soap bubbles shimmering over the surface of water.

But being hungry, exhausted, filthy, and freezing cold were not the reasons that I couldn’t manage to get any sleep, though. What kept me awake was actually the sheer disgust with myself that for the first time since I’d met him, I actually wished Aether had been with me. But after promptly beating that out of my head I got through the night with the hope that Aether died somewhere out in this crackpot forest and is on the first train to Hell, because that is the only way I could possibly start to forgive him for putting me through all this.

I’m so mad that my head is throbbing, or maybe it’s a side effect of hunger. All the food I stole from Aether has long been eaten. I don’t think my stomach has been this empty since I puked up the casserole my older sister tried to make when our parents were out for the night. She mistook cottage cheese for sour cream, if that says anything. I stop when I catch a glimpse of Aether’s hat flying through the forest. “Aether whatever-your-middle-name-is Lislington! Stop right there!” I take off after the fleeing hat.