As you step inside the house, you see a room ahead of you but cannot make out any shapes, a thin haze of fog obscuring whatever waits for you there.

A latch clicks shut behind you and, despite knowing there is no door, you turn to find the sound regardless. Unsurprisingly, you are met by a solid wall, oak or pine barring you from where you’ve been.

When you turn to face the room once more, it is not a room at all, but an overgrown pathway carved into the side of a ravine.

Along the path are swathes of Solanum elaeagnifolium sprouting where your feet should land.

You do not wonder why you know its name, nor why the not-room that was there moments ago has gone.

What you do wonder is where this path leads, and so you set one foot down in front of you, careful not to crush the nettle.

But there is no need to worry.

The nettle parts before you and a high, twinkling sound, unlike any you’ve heard before, chimes through the woods around you, in time with your footfalls on the path.

You continue on for some time, the brook at the basin of the ravine babbling along below, sounding so much like voices that you stop and peer downward.

“Hello?” you call, and your own voice repeats back to you tenfold, varying pitches crawling from the depths to greet you. One, you swear, is speaking a language you can’t place.

Something pushes at your back and so you carry on, the voices receding as you make your way deeper under the tree’s cover. 

And then, up ahead, you see—

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