"How generous it was. Whoever it was."

She began to walk once more, toward the cave looming in the distance.

After ten minutes of solid walking over rippled terrain, Sophie's feet were aching. The land around her looked so different than it had when she first started walking.

Ten yards away, she saw a sizable pond, diamond clear and surrounded by lushly green garden space.

Thinking to herself about how nice and cool the pond would be on her sore feet, she gradually changed courses towards the pond.

She was there in no time. It was so beautiful and clean. She removed her socks and shoes lightening-quick, wading in and gasping.

"Oh! Yes, this is just what I needed."

Looking around, she saw she was shielded from view. Not that there was anyone around to see her. She decided to strip down to her underclothes and have a brief swim.

Her dress she wetted and did her best to clean, leaving it to dry stretched over a flat, hot stone.

Floating on her back, she did not hear the rustle of a small, black-eared animal in her pack. Presently, it robbed her of her last food and scuttled away, up a tree.

Sophie's limbs grew heavy and tired, too tired to swim. So she waded back out of the pool, letting the sun dry and warm her skin.

Soon, she felt the telltale rumble of hunger in her stomach.

Retrieving her pack, she was stunned to see she had been raided.

"Oh, no! That was my last loaf of bread! And my cheese, it's gone!"

However, Sophie's despair did not last long. Growing all around her was a garden, no just of flowers but of bright vegetables and fruits.

"It would feel wrong to take something someone else worked so hard on…" Sophie said as she toured the garden. Shortly, she came upon a plaque that, in many languages, said:

"For Travelers

For Lost Souls

For Beggars

For Empty Bowls."

"How kind," Sophie said, picking a grape from its sprigged vine. Soon, she had picked out a peach, a carrot and two plums. After that she had a radish, an apple, several greens she didn't know the names of…she ate feastingly, trying all manner of odd fruits and vegetables.

All she tasted was fresh, perfectly ripe and filling. She went back to her flat rock and redressed, now dry and warm against the chill she felt creeping across the crater into the garden.

It was about time she started to head back, wasn't it? She walked around in what felt like circles.

Where she had known there was an opening to the outside, there was nothing. Where there ad been walls, there were none. The garden shifted and changed, forcing her to its center.

But Sophie seemed unaware, simply walking where her feet carried her.

"You're mine now," a smoky voice said. It seemed to be the air speaking to her. It was something, a spirit, a demon, something old, powerful and starved.

Sophie looked around, head foggy and eyelids heavy.

She was in a luxurious garden pavilion, where one might sit and take in the day as the sun rose or set.

It was a round pavilion, a great tiled mosaic was underfoot, rippling and writhing to Sophie's eyes like a great serpent with something dangerous within its coils.

Along one edge of the pavilion were several narrow, but plush, sleeping cots.

"Tired…" Sophie said. "Just. A minute. To rest," she mumbled, sinking into the nearest one.

She felt the reassuring pressure and warmth of blankets wrapped around her, but when had it gotten so cold?

She shivered, shrinking further into the comfort and security of the blanket cocoon. She'd get up in a moment. It had been so long a day, so much walking, so hard, so hard.

Sleep had come like a quiet summer rain, softly and unnoticed. Sophie did not feel the cloth slip up, over her head and firmly around her, like restraints.

In her dreams, she saw a much older version of herself and Howl, playing with a winged child whose hair was the color of the moon and the sun.

"You're mine now," the voice said once more.