Star Date #12

So I slung the backpack they gave me, made from loincloth leather (unworn hopefully), over my shoulder. Containing enough provisions to keep my girl well fed and me safe in the face of danger. Took her hand, waved at the forest People, tripped over a tree branch and hurt my face. Got up cursing interiorly, dusted myself off, and started walking.

Finally letting go of my own stupid self-consciousness enough to join my girl in laughing her ass of at my expense. And turned round one last time, tears in our eyes, to our forest friends who also burst out in a fit of riotous laughter.

With the hoots and hollers of a whole tribe of super advanced alternate reality people behind us. Slowly dying out in little gasps for breath and chuckles, between the leaves and branches into which we saw them slowly disappearing. Me and my girl stepped into a dense jungle forest with which we had only the slightest acquaintance.

Giant trees, very thin for how incredibly long they were, stood amongst all kinds of crazy foliage. All sorts of colors, red and green and blue and purple. Some luminescent, others deep and dark. As if this whole environment had evolved out of all kinds of butterfly wings.

Imagine that world from the movie Avatar (you know, Pocahontas x The Smurfs x Ferngully and a bunch of other things) only real, tangible, alive, and very heavy smelling. Something the 3D CGI version of James Cameron didn't really translate to audiences. Probably for the better.

I had read about the sickly smells of jungle forest. But I had never been completely swallowed up by them. At some times very fresh and leafy, like a forest after rainfall. And at other times so sweet and damp it was hardly bearable, as if someone was trying to suffocate me with a pillow filled with honey and Hibiscus flowers.

As we slowly walked away from the up panning camera, the audience had time to really take in these strange new surroundings. Seeing the two protagonists struggle casually through the dense leafage. Fading to black to indicate a coming jump in time. Probably to a camp at nightfall.