Everybody gangsta until the trees start chanting
Suddenly, green was all he could see. This time, it wasn’t one of the scenes that had been plaguing him throughout the fall, and his spidey sense warned him just in time to not become one with the sea of grass in front of his face (what was wrong with his sense today? Jesus…). Rapidly he shot a couple of threads to nearby trees (thanks for sending him into a forest, universe) and held on for dear life, hoping the force of his speed wouldn’t be too strong to break the trunks; luckily, small miracles do happen even to a Parker, and after bouncing back into the air and twisting into a flip to ready himself, Peter finally, FINALLY landed. His brain, however, still hadn’t caught up with the situation and everything was spinning. Badly.
Whoa… Okay, great. At least it’s only my brain that’s moving. Great…
Alright, so he would have to wait for it to stop, preferably on the ground, and preferably horizontally. While he lied with a pained grunt on the grass and willed the dizziness to go away, he tried to take in as much as he could of his surroundings.
The first and most obvious thing he noticed was that he was in a forest, and the second was the warmer climate. Where was he? Tennessee? Was he even still in the USA? It was early in the morning, so either he’d been falling for longer than he expected or… Well, he wasn’t sure. Peter took his coat off, seeing as he wasn’t going to need it for the moment, and after a while he started feeling a little bit better.
When he stood up (and took a deep breath, because damn was he shooketh), something was still… off. It felt as if he were in a haze, but he wasn’t sure if it was a side effect of his unusual journey or something else entirely. He tried to focus all of his senses, but the change from all the sensory input he was used to was jarring. It felt as if he were trying to go one step down only to find there were no stairs at all, and it was making Peter feel very, very on edge. The problem wasn’t that there was nothing his senses couldn’t latch on, no.
“What the hell…?”
There definitely was something in this place, something that made the grass vibrate without moving, the leaves shine even when clad in darkness, the trees speak a grave chant that didn’t need any sound.
After some minutes trying to pinpoint the origin of this feeling (and utterly failing at it), Peter decided he wasn’t going to improve his situation by just standing there. He couldn’t see any path clearly drawn on his immediate surroundings, and didn’t quite know which direction to follow. As he turned around, trying to take any hint he could grasp to get out of that place, the haze-like feeling intensified. He could sense it in his bones, pulling him into the depths and the shadows. It wasn’t too different from his Spidey sense, to some extent.
“...alright, hint taken. Yikes, Peter, some trees are trying to direct you through a forest after falling from the middle of the street, and this isn’t even the weirdest thing that’s happened to you.” He sighed. “What the hell is wrong with my life?" He took another deep breath to calm himself down, but didn't quite manage to do so. Hesitantly, he started moving into the woods. "Are these Ents? Have I traveled somehow to Middle Earth? Please let it be Middle Earth, that’d be so cool...”
Even though his tone was light and joking, the weigh in his chest turned his steps heavy.
He kept walking for some time, trying to ease his thoughts out loud with not-so-witty remarks (and with no noticeable success either). After the initial shock he started wondering if Ned and MJ were okay and how he was going to get back to them. Because he still didn’t know how he even got there in the first place. And yes, it was making him very anxious. Had it only happened to Peter or where his friends (and maybe even his classmates) dragged along with him? If he didn’t get back soon, what would May do? Would they think him dead? Would someone play the Mii Channel theme on his fake funeral? And would someone realize that Spider-Man and Peter Parker had disappeared yet again at the same time and finally connect the dots?
Aaand he was spiraling through the sticky, draining rabbit hole that was his anxiety. Hence the (not) witty remarks that no-one would be hearing.
With his mind totally focused on the “what if”s and definitely not on the road, Peter almost found himself in the depths of a cold and uninviting pond.
Holly heck, thank God I didn’t fall into that. This day already sucks enough, I don’t need to be soaking while I search for the exit door. Peter stood there for a couple of seconds, trying to gather his wits and understand what was happening. He furrowed his brow. Why are the trees leading me here? Do they want me to go inside? Or cross it? What if they want me to…?
He heard something that made his train of thought leave the station and never come back.
A haunting, desperate song colored by a young man’s voice traveled quietly, shyly, almost like it didn’t want to be noticed, yet it also carried an urgency that made Peter shiver, and he was sure he would have never heard it had it not been for his enhanced senses. He tried to find the source of the song and there, a little bit further on the side of the pond, he found way more than what he was looking for:
It was him, the boy Peter had seen a glimpse of at the Fall. Even this far away he could still recognize his silhouette and aura, and his face was both anxious and deeply focused on whatever he was doing. He was sitting, his head hovering over the water while his hands were doing figures on the surface. Besides him, a lot of small white stones and different kinds of flowers were displayed in God knows what array. He was still quietly singing the song, almost like he was talking to the part of the pond he was so desperately focused on, when his face contorted into a mask of total dread. He looked up, apparently scared, and then turned his face to look directly at Peter.
It felt like falling all over again, but this time it lasted just a couple of seconds and the only thing he could see was the young man’s figure. Before he could even process what was going on, the boy made a gesture with his hands, picked up everything he had sitting around and started running into the depths of the forest.
The first thing Peter thought was that he missed the song (such an enchanting song…!); the second thing, a heartbeat later, was “What the hell?”, and the third was that he was already screwed.
The trees, the leaves and the grass kept on chanting.