"Caw, caw."

Le Lingyan opened his eyes drowsily, awkwardly hugging his knees and lying on his side.

'Who am I? Where am I? What's going on?'

Several questions flooded his sluggish head like the rays of sunshine flooding the cosy place he was in, his brain trying its best to update itself to the latest scenario.

His bleary vision cleared up slightly, enough for him to see a huge silhouette of something standing in front of him.

Sensing its gaze on him, he fumbled around as quickly as his heavy arms could, patting the area around him for his glasses like he does every morning when he wakes up in bed.

Grasping at a handful of bushy objects, Le Lingyan paused.

"Caw?" The blurry dark silhouette continued staring down at him, tilting its head.

Le Lingyan sighed in relief, relaxing slightly after sensing that the creature had no intent to attack him.

Unable to find his glasses, Le Lingyan sat up slowly, pulling up a bristly bunch and bringing it closer to his eyes to examine it. Squinting hard, he noticed it was a mixture of sticks, straw and fuzzy gray feathers.

Le Lingyan felt that he knows what the dark silhouette might be.

'A bir–?'

The dark silhouette suddenly hopped forward, yanking the straw away from his hands, causing the barely sitting up Le Lingyan to fall forward...into a fluffy embrace??

The huge bird threw away the nest straw this child had been stupidly trying to eat, keeping the ignorant child(?) in its warm embrace.

"Caw!"

'You can't eat that! Come here, mama will hug you!'

Le Lingyan was speechless. It was better not to open his mouth anyway, or else he would be swallowing a mouthful of feathers.

At this moment, his brain also caught up and started replaying the events of last night.

After the red blob man Ling Mo had left just as mysteriously as he had arrived, Le Lingyan was left alone under the huge tree.

As if the man had been warding off all surrounding creatures, the forest noise seemed to go up a notch the moment Ling Mo had left.

It was said that if one of the five senses had been obstructed, the other four would rise in sensitivity sharply. That proved true, as with the surrounding darkness and his atrocious eyesight, Le Lingyan was essentially blind, so his hearing sharpened drastically.

Le Lingyan glanced cautiously to his left, where he kept hearing a slight rustling in the grass. 

The rustling got closer, and Le Lingyan knew that he wouldn't be lucky enough to meet another harmless(?) Ling Mo.

He strained his ears, holding his breath to listen better.

Rustle...slide.

Something was getting dragged or sliding on the dead leaves, and it sounded..big.

Le Lingyan looked around, observing his blended surroundings, looking for a safe space to spend the night, away from god-knows what predators were here in the forest.

This spot was blurry, that spot was blurry, and was that a branch or a bush? Because that was blurry too.

Eventually as the sound of leaves crinkling like it was getting smushed under something got closer, Le Lingyan looked up.

The only way he currently knew, would probably be up.

He looked up at the tree he was standing in front of, looking up so much that his neck hurt.

'No no no no, I definitely can't climb that.' Le Lingyan shook his head imperceptibly.

Walking around the huge trunk of the colossal tree, he walked towards another short tree, only around less than half of the first tree. This tree was simply a sapling compared to the other, but it was a more normally-sized tree, comparable to the ones on Earth.

As the moonlight couldn't reach this place, Le Lingyan tripped over a knobbly root, finding himself at the door of a hole between the roots of the shorter tree, coming face to face with...giant mice.

Scrambling up, Le Lingyan backed away as the startled (giant) mice squealed and sprung out of the hole, hopping quickly towards the treeline as small grey blobs.

Le Lingyan turned and followed the blobs with his eyes, sighing. 

Maybe he could take their hole for the night…

Just as he was about to turn back, a loud snap sounded from the direction the giant jumping mice had fled to, making Le Lingyan stiffen.

Squinting hard, all he saw was a grey blob disappearing suddenly in the jaw of a vaguely green longer blob. Le Lingyan sucked in a deep breath.

With the hissing and the sliding sounds, it didn't take a genius to figure out what it was. Those sounds he heard around this area had probably been this huge long green blob python!!

Oookay, it's time to either bet whether he could outrun a giant predator or find a place to hide quickly enough, before this unwelcome seeker found him.

He looked up at the short tree he was below, realising that the trunk of this shorter tree was probably... smaller than the body of the python.

'No no no no, it's only gonna become a pre-meal exercise,' Le Lingyan shook his head hard, turning around hurriedly, looking at the only tree tall enough to pose a challenge to the snake in the area.

And so, Le Lingyan ended back at the same tree he was under when he first woke up.

All this time, there had been intermittent silences followed by desperate squeaking after quick, violent snaps, making Le Lingyan shudder every time he heard it.

'That... could've been me…' Le Lingyan shuddered again, rubbing the goosebumps that rose at the thought.

He quickly stretched his arms cautiously as a short warmup, controlling his breath while glancing around for the huge green python. He could only hope that it had been sufficiently distracted by the giant hopping mice.

At the midpoint of the huge tree, there was a sizeable dark blob, which was most likely a hole.

Patting the tree trunk, Le Lingyan noticed that there were many rough markings on the trunk, most likely hewn out by something sharp. 

Great, these can be his footholds!

Awkwardly hugging the tree, he made use of the rough knobs on the tree to first haul himself upwards, releasing an awkward squeak of exertion as he had to use almost all of his strength for the first lift.

Kicking his sneakers hard into the roughly hewn markings he took as footholds, he tried expanding it for more space for his foot.

Pulling himself upwards, Le Lingyan silently regretted not training harder during the physical education classes in school. 

Managing to get his other foot into another foothold, he continued patting around blindly while struggling to hold on to a tree knob with his shaking left hand. Feeling another slot in the wood, he jammed his fingers in and hissed in pain as he felt some splinters pricking his fingers.

Gritting his teeth, he continued pulling himself upwards, repeating the arduous process of pricking his fingers, struggling to pull himself upwards, followed by straining what felt like every muscle and tendon in his legs to climb up the tree.

Just like this, Le Lingyan - although painfully - as quickly as he could, made it steadily up the tree.

'This is just a more painful form of rock climbing, but on a tree,' Le Lingyan tried hypnotising himself. 'Just causal tree climbing.' 

His limbs had long started to shake from overexertion, his pale forehead dripping with perspiration.

The tree hole was just up ahead, which meant that Le Lingyan had already made it more than halfway up the towering tree. 

Le Lingyan clenched his jaw hard after a deep breath into his burning lungs, reaching out a trembling hand for the next slit in the trunk. This slit was smaller and shallower than the rest below. Paired with his sweaty palms, Le Lingyan... slipped.

The force of the tilt forced Le Lingyan to lean backwards, merely a few degrees away from a full-on free fall.

The moment suddenly seemed to be in slow motion.

With a gasp that echoed in his ears, adrenaline sped through Le Lingyan's blood, along with a warm rush of something unknown.

Le Lingyan's mind involuntarily directed the warm current towards his feet desperately, the only parts of his body touching the tree.

He seemed to feel the warm blue current in his body touch another cooler pale green current perpendicular to his feet, melding together seamlessly.

Connecting them, the time seemed to speed back up, his own loud gasp receding into the distant forest, no longer repeating in his own buzzing eardrums. The rushing cool air of his fall abruptly ceased.

Le Lingyan was stunned.

With both his arms out mid-flail from the fall, he was standing perpendicular to the trunk, literally against gravity.

LeLingyan_has_stopped_responding.exe

'I'm... defying gravity!!' Le Lingyan almost had the urge to laugh out loud from how crazy it felt.

He snapped out of his daze when he realised that the surrounding forest had been unusually silent. No snapping, and even the forest insects had completely stopped chirping.

Swallowing, Le Lingyan slowly lifted a foot uncertainly, stepping down quickly just a centimeter away from his previous position.

Le Lingyan: ….!!!

It turned out he could really walk up a tree this way! No more painful...rock-tree climbing(?).

But this happiness did not last long.

He heard a very, very soft hiss, accompanied by a slight rustling that seemed to be speedily approaching his direction.

Le Lingyan immediately threw away any reservations he had to the back of his mind and started running vertically up the tree trunk.

Newton? What's that? Can it be eaten?

However, as Le Lingyan was running, he could also feel his strength draining from his body, the warm current fixing him to the rough tree trunk gradually weakening. He could also hear a hissing and a rustling sound uncomfortably close to his back.

Taking a deep gasp, Le Lingyan leaped with all his strength just at the moment the warm blue current fluctuated and disappeared with a poof. He could no longer sense the pale green current either.

Grabbing hold of the edge of the decently sized tree hole, Le Lingyan dragged himself upwards with the last of his strength, releasing a wheeze that sounded like a deflating balloon as he flopped into the hole.

Feeling the softness of the interior, he barely managed to crawl to the deepest part of the place, flopping down lifelessly while breathing laboriously.

The hole was dark and dry, and just the place to spend the night. There were no scary huge snakes chasing him, no jumping grey blob mice. It was soft and comfortable.

Le Lingyan passed out.

Back to reality, he was definitely sure what the dark silhouette had been now. The owner of the nest he had invaded was a huge, dark bird, who was currently ruffling through his long-ish hair with its beak affectionately.

Le Lingyan: ...it seems she thinks I'm her child.

Le Lingyan sighed helplessly. This was at least better than being eaten.

The big bird nipped at his shirt, dissatisfied. "Caw!"

'Why does this child have no feathers? Just this thin piece of hide? He must be cold!'

The mother bird used its wings, pushing him deeper and deeper into her thick and warm chest feathers.

Le Lingyan, who was sinking in slowly, moved his aching arms to try pushing so that he wouldn't be suffocated.

The big bird paused, looking at him...sadly?

Le Lingyan sighed again, resigned. 

Nevermind, his entire body was aching from last night anyway, this softness and warmth was so comfortable, maybe he should rest more.

The big bird, sensing his acceptance, chirruped happily before pushing Le Lingyan into her feathers, but this time, she made sure to face Le Lingyan outwards so he could breathe.

"Ah," Le Lingyan yawned.

'So warm.'