There was no pathway, and his new map was certainly not helpful in more than a general sense, so Roger started following the stream-bank. Everything was in the backpack now, besides the map. The map was in his hands less because it was useful and more because it was a very strange thing to puzzle over. It was either magic or sufficiently advanced technology to the point that he might as well be interacting with a magic map. Neither one made him keen on getting it wet. Every step or two he paused and glanced at the paper. It was slowly getting more detail around where he walked, sharpening the blurry treescape to show a little trickle of blue that seemed to be the stream. Poking at the paper didn't seem to do anything at all, much as he wished the map maker had taken a cue from touch-screen computing. No zoom feature that he could make out, no scrolling, and no waypoints besides the red X that marked his position, crawling forward as he walked to keep pace with his exploration of the river. It didn't take long for this to become boring. Folding it up and glancing at it every five minutes to make sure that the stream hadn't gone off course was enough. As a map, it really failed to do a good job, though he supposed if he walked around the whole place it might be a bit useful.
The scenery itself was more interesting than the possibilities of the map, however. It was a forest with a stream in the typical sense, leaves and dirt and trees and the murmur of water. There was another layer of something on top of it all as he kept walking, something he couldn't quite put a thought on until he stopped to peer into the shady places away from the jagged crack of sunlight above the stream. It was mostly silent. No animals besides the fish he'd seen in the pond, and the wind wasn't rustling branches and playing with the tall grass. The deserted feeling of the place sent a sharp chill down Roger's back as he started walking again. A place like this should have some life, surely. Animals were essential to a healthy ecosystem, and if there weren't any and it was still able to thrive, it would be more crowded with plants. It wasn't an empty looking forest in that respect, but the plants left room to walk around without pushing through bushes or squeezing between trees.
His map said he had made it about a third of the way to the campground by the time two or three hours passed. Keeping track of time by the sun's height was not his specialty, so he couldn't get an exact estimate. Clocks had ruined those senses throughout his years. The river had started to lilt off southward, so he was about to make his way into the darker forest proper. Some apprehension held him back for a moment, though. The stream made noise, and the noise was peaceful and natural. Away from that would be a pure silence and darkness. Well, not pure darkness, he could see small breaks in the leafy canopy that let shafts down intermittently in the deeper parts, but nothing like the bright cleft that the stream made through the swathe of green that his map assured him went on and on. Still, the sun itself was dropping lower, and he would rather not be alone in the forest if he could help it when it finally completed its descent. That thought propelled him on.
A minute and he couldn't hear the stream. Just a minute of walking, since the trees opened up away from each other. Less water, less trees it seemed. It almost felt like the trees were keeping their distance, trying their best to keep silent in peace, secluding their trunks while their branches wove themselves into a near-solid roof of dappled yellow-green. If Roger had to guess what type of trees they were, he would have said oak, though they wouldn't fit the pattern any other oak tree he had seen made in his mind, at least not exactly. The leaves were too large, the size of his face, and the trucks had a grey hue to them, darker near the top to a light grey at the bottom that approached white. In the midst of it, he heard a rustling above him. He looked up to see a bright white cat creature, more like a panther than the domestic cat, and ever so shimmery, like you would picture a unicorn soaked in oil to look like, constantly shifting in spots that light reflected off of, but otherwise the flat white that absorbed away the detail of the short hair.
"No, don't mind me, I'm just here to spectate, you see."
"Beg your pardon?"
"Mmmm, yes, well, you may have my pardon." It was certainly a cat, by the way that it talked, thought Roger, though he hadn't heard a cat talk before.
"What are you spectating, though?"
"The competition, of course. Nothing else to watch here anymore. You're one of the contestants, I presume? You must be, she doesn't let others in. A bit early, though."
"I honestly have no clue what this is about, so anything you could say would be helpful." Roger wasn't sure how he had so casually started talking to a cat, but talking was preferable to being eaten. Wild cats of that size were supposed to be hunters, and he certinly hadn't seen anything else that it could eat.
"Dishonsetly, I would love to help you. Alas, I can't be favoring one of you before I've seen all the rest, I'm afraid. What if there were a more. . interesting fellow who showed up a bit later." He noticed the cat's tail lazily swinging back and forth behind it, partially obscured by the leaves and branches. He was having a hard time craning his neck up to get a good look at the cat. "You are right though, everything I say is just going to help you. . ."
"Why not tell everyone the same thing so as to make it fair then?" It would be about as annoyingly useless as the map if the first talking thing he found in magic-land happened to tell him nothing at all. He certainly hadn't learned anything yet.
"Oh, but that would be such an effort. All of you most certainly won't come in through the waterfall, not with the way things tend to shift here. And my tree won't be right in the way of the next one's path thanks to that. No, I think I'll just watch." The cat was worse than the map, he decided. At least the map gave him some general direction.
"Well, I'd best be off, then."
"Yes, well, if you do pass by again, and you aren't one of the more. . .boring ones, I'll be happy to not eat you." He finally caught sight of the cat's eyes, peering down at him. They were as white as the cat's fur, without the oily shimmer, devoid of any color besides white, in fact.
"That would be lovely." Roger was walking slightly faster than when he'd first heard the cat. And by slightly it averaged to about double the speed.
"Mmm, Yes. I hope the next few are going to be more entertaining, what with her telling me I can't eat all of you."
A half hour later and Roger was surprised to find that he was almost at the campground in the hurry he'd obtained after his meeting. Maybe the cat was the reason for the lack of animals in that part of the woods. Catching sight of a stream, most likely the same one, on an intersection course with his path, he was sad he didn't take the detour with it.
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