I awoke in the Phantom Forest again, with my head pounding. My latest life integrating, piece by piece, with the previous. This time I was conscious enough to watch my homespun cloths shed grey dust and change into a much rougher textured suit. I watched as my 7-year-old body grew to an adult size, while the pain was brief, and comparatively light, it was not an enjoyable experience. After everything stopped moving, I stood and brushed the remaining grey dust off my cloths, and looked around. I was standing on an animal path that ran through a thin, deciduous forest. 

- It's not the same clearing from before, and the forest seems to be a different from the dark pines of my latest life. Not to mention the fact that this side of the door/rift is completely different world! 

“There is Magic, and I'm not stuck in a tree!”- Me 

I jumped and danced a bit in sheer giddy delight. A squirrel chittered at me from a nearby branch, then ran when I turned and stomped the ground in his direction. 

“Humph, teach you to scold me!”- Me 

I grinned, then straightened my jacket, brushed my shoulders, and began to walk down the trail. A short time later I caught a gold light coming through the trees, I hunched down and started to sneak my way towards the light. I got to the source of the golden light just in time to see a pale sphere disappear into a tree and the golden sun fade up. I held out my hand, locked a leader on to the black whirlpool that was greedily thrashing around, and zapped away with glee. 

“Die black scum!”- Me 

The pool was blown apart into glittery dust. 

“Yes!”- Me 

I jumped up and down, shaking my stinging hand, then promptly fell down as all power left my legs. It felt like I was a water balloon that had a hole in it. 

- That might be a really good analogy. I think I just used up all the magic I had. 

Looking inside I noticed how thin the magicicle cloud was, and that there were some new additions to my inner system. The glittery crystal core was still spinning, with its two cloudy magicicle cyclones, while a thin disk spread out like the ring around a gas giant. Now two striated moons revolving around the core, splitting the disk into ring.  

- Those look like soul marbles. Wait, those look like …. 

I reached into my breast pocket. It was empty. 

“Oh, I think I just pooped myself!”- Me 

- I think that the fairy's and my slime buddies’ marbles got crushed into me when I got sucked into the tree. And what the heck is up with my word choice? 

I watched the new ‘moons’ spin their way around my crystal core, both disturbed, and oddly happy at the same time. Shaking my head, I slowly walked over and picked up the slivery grey marble that was left behind. I then sat down on log nearby, avoiding getting near any of the trees. 

- I must be developing ‘Hortiphobia’. 

I giggled at my how silly my made-up word sounded, then looked at this latest marble. It was on the larger size and was the glittery frosted silver colour that happened when I zapped the ugly black whirlpool after a creature de-rezzed. 

-I wonder if I have enough juice to process it into the blessedly memory free, clear state? 

Looking at how thin the magicicle disk from my inner system was, I frowned.  

-I might be able to zap it into a crystal veined, almost memory free state, but then I'd be completely empty, and probably couldn't move. 

 "Then, I'd probably make good wolf chow."- Me 

The irony of a lightening wolf eating my soul marble made me chuckle. 

“Maybe I'd get a new power if I ate this one? Nah, I don’t need to know what anymore grubs taste like. Bleck!”- Me 

I looked over at the closest phantom tree. 

- Well, I can wait and see if my core produces, or draws more magicicles in. Or I can always try ‘plugging in’ to a tree where I know there is more. 

The idea of getting stuck into another tree wasn't very appealing. 

“Save it for winter. That's what mom used to say.”- Me 

- At least my latest mother that is. And why does that phrase not sound right? 

“Save for Fall. No. Maybe it is Winter is Nigh!”- Me 

As I continued trying to figure out what was bugging me about my mother’s saying, I stood up, put the marble in my pocket, and headed back to the trail. 

… 

I stood on the edge of a road. Not a paved road, nor a phantom road, but a real graveled road. I squatted and ran my fingers over the wagon ruts, pressed into the road`s surface. 

-No, it`s like the rocks and the rest of the ground around here. Not a structure built here, more like a reflection of live world. 

“It doesn't feel like the forest.”- Me 

The roads ‘silence’ gave me a sharp contrast to the ‘buzz’ that I could hear/feel from the forest at my back. 

- Guessing that there are no magicicles running through the road. Maybe only ‘natural’ things are part of the phantom network? 

I ‘looked’ down into the road. Quite a way down I could feel a slow current of magic that ran along with the road. It felt different from the magicicles that I had seen it the ground when I had come through the rift to this world’s after-life. 

- Is it the people that move on the road, the road itself, or the change in the ground under the road that is guiding the flow? 

I looked up at the trees. 

“Ahh, I don't think I'll try looking into a tree. That would make me too much like the one of the nut munchers”- Me 

I rolled the four marbles around in my pocket. I had found two soul marbles on the ground, one of which I had to scare a determined squirrel off to get. Another one came from a 2-meter-long, purple and black snake that had de-rezzed in front of me. The last had come from a really big brown rat that had attacked me. It had de-rezzed after being slammed, hanging from its teeth in my arm, into a tree several times. All the woods craft that I had been learning in my latest life had also come in handy when I hide from any of the larger creatures. 

Standing up I looked left and right down the road. Just grass fields to one side, and phantom trees on the other. 

“If I had a stick, I could try that random drop thing you see in cartoons”- Me 

A deep roar broke my reverie, as a massive green bear walked out of the forest and onto the road on my right. 

“Ahhhh Goblin poop!”- Me 

I Clapped a hand over my mouth not sure if I was more horrified by the fact I made noise, or what I had just said. 

The SUV sized bear snarled, and pawed at the road. 

- OK now we just sneak very quiet like back into the trees, before another horticulturist bear grafts me to another tree. 

Keeping my hand over my mouth I attempted a slow fade back into the forest. I kept my eyes on the bear as it slammed its claws repeatedly into the road, growling like it was talking to itself. As soon as I hit the tree line I ran.