I apologize to those few who read my other story, but this idea wouldn't let me alone until I got it out.

Disclaimer: I own everything and nothing, but mostly nothing.

SNAP!

"Owie!"

The little girl held a hand up to her scratched and bloodied cheek, scowling at the low-hanging branch that had slapped her. It remained, innocent and unassuming, in the same position it had before she had so rudely made the attempt to push it out of her way.

Gradually her glare softened, and the branch in front of her grew fuzzy and indistinct through a film of tears as she sank to her knees and let loose the veritable flood that had been stubbornly building behind her eyes since her parents had chased Rammy away. Her Daddy unintentionally so, however much she may have wanted to blame him for it anyway. Her Mommy had no excuse though, she was just plain mean to her friend; the first time she introduced Rammy to Mommy, Mommy had let loose an ear-piercing scream and jumped onto the table, calling for Daddy over and over again while scaring Rammy back into his hole in the process.

And after all the times Mommy had told her to get off the table. Mommy was such a hypocrite.

The girl sniffled one last time before angrily wiping the remnants of her tears away with the back of a hand and unsteadily climbing to her feet. She still had to find Rammy. The first time she went back to visit him in his 'little house' after having him meet Mommy, she had found a peculiar white sand-like substance scattered around his hole. She recognized it as the weird smelling sugar-stuff that her Daddy kept in the shed that she should never, ever eat, because it wasn't for people. Her Daddy had obviously tried to make up for Mommy's unreasonable hysterics by giving Rammy the sugar as a gift, but when she called his name, he didn't come running out to greet her like he always did.

Confused at first, she had searched all over their tiny house, not finding him anywhere, before she realized he must still be in his hole and just didn't want to come out and have to eat all the white stuff. Because when Daddy puts something in front of you to eat, you have to eat it, no matter how yucky it looks. So she snuck into the kitchen and cut a large slice from the cheesewheel that the neighbors had given them two days ago, and held it out in front of his hole, softly calling for him all the while. He never came out.

Really scared now, she combed over the place twice more before leaving to find Daddy in the fields. She saw his silhoutte in the distance, and ran towards him, shouting his name all the while. When she got within hearing distance, he turned towards her and, catching sight of her frightened look, immediately stopped what he was doing and kneeled down to her level, asking her what was wrong with wide, caring eyes. She shouted with a desperate gleam in her eye, "Daddy, where is Rammy? He didn't like the white stuff you gave him, and I can't find him anywhere!"

A flash of irritation crossed his face before it fell into some semblance of sadness. "Sweety, the ra- Rammy... He ran away."

"What?!" she cried, shocked and disbelieving. "How could he run away? We need to go find him and bring him home!"

"No sweety," He was getting seriously annoyed now, "if it- if he ran away, then he wasn't happy here, and we shouldn't force him to stay where he isn't happy, right?"

"He was happy here until you made him run away! You're just mad he didn't like your white stuff!" she accused. With that parting shot, she tore off back to the house, ignoring the exasperated calls from her father.

So here she was, trudging through the Wilds like she had been told not to since the day she had been born. Because if she was going to run away, it would make sense that she'd run to the place where no one would ever go into to look for her, right? So obviously, Rammy had done the same.

And she would be lying if she said she didn't get a thrill from doing the expressly forbidden.

This thrill, however, was tempered by the fact that she did not come prepared to hike through wilderness and was subsequently beaten, bruised, and bloodied to some extent with every tree, shrub, and weed she stubbornly pushed past. Luckily or unluckily, however, after twenty minutes of traipsing through this thorny woodland and refusing to believe that she was lost, she caught sight of the light at the end of her tunnel: a break in the trees to a clearing beyond.

So joyful was she to be free of the tightly packed trunks of the Wilds' trees that she did not notice the short, grasping tendrils of the particularly malevolent looking shrub tearing at her pants leg as she jumped through the opening in the trees with a girlish squeal.

A girlish squeal that was swiftly cut short as she gazed upon her new surroundings with loose jaw and curious eyes.

The clearing that had gotten her so excited, that had revealed a break in the monotone, that had painted a picture in her mind of a meadow of flowers, softly swaying in the breeze-

-was weird.

The ground beneath her feet, that she could dimly feel from within her torn socks and curling toes, was hard packed, chalky, and stained black. Not the kind of black that Daddy had shown her, the crumbly one with white specks that tasted of punky wood, pulverized beetles, and the potential for life, but a wrong, almost perverse sort of black. In her mind, the only word for it was weird, and even outside a five year old's limited vocabulary it was still a fairly accurate description, if incredibly understated.

The tarnished earth was surrounded by trees on all sides, in a roughly circular pattern. These trees which were nearest the blemish were distinctly diseased, gnarled, dying, and yet still stood proud and high, almost seeming to be a willing sacrifice, a buffer against the corruption that would so maliciously devour the forest if not for this circle of solemn ancients having given up their purity, preserving the innocence of the remainder of the forest, the futures of their saplings, and the entirety of the Wilds.

Even the noble, proud sun itself seemed to shy from this circle of vileness, it's sunbeams seeming to shiver, distort in the air, growing cowardly and retreating behind the venerable protectors, leaving the foul spot even darker than the surrounding forests.

It was a place of death, despair, and demons.

She thought it looked a bit weird.

Humming a bit, she skipped around the clearing, swiftly discovering all there was to see and just as swiftly becoming bored with it, Rammy rapidly becoming a vague blot in the lowest of her priorities.

She was wrinkling her nose at one of the rather wicked looking shrubs to have claimed the space at the perimeter of the clearing along with the trees, when the air, malicious and unwelcoming as it was, suddenly and unnaturally stilled. Any insects brave or foolish enough to have attempted their songs near the circle instantly shuddered and shut up, briskly springing and fleeing from the area with all the haste instinct lent to them.

The girl didn't even notice.

She did notice, however, when a low whisper caressed her ear, brimming with slick promises and underlying power in a language she could not fathom.

She rose from her kneeled position and turned to face whatever was still softly crooning into the tensed air behind her, eyes wide and curious, uncomprehending, only to come face to face with possibly the oddest thing she had ever seen-