Bruno had managed to get himself moving again, thinking back to the last conversation he'd had with the woodpecker. Not long after that conversation, he'd fallen asleep, despite having heard that third voice that had filled him with hope. In all honesty, he'd had little time to search for the figure - that didn't appear to exist anyway - before his body started to sink to the floor. He'd been convinced of his ability to continue and yet in that moment, there had been nothing he could have done to save himself from sleep. And all night, he'd been stuck in a relapsing dream of Rose as a child: running behind his legs giggling to hide from her father's monster impressions and then playing in the grass with Bruno's own daughters. He'd woken in a haze of confusion to find himself sat amongst a very real, thick fog, bristling with memories of Rose and his shared love for her, and most importantly, his wanting to find her. 

      Immediately after he'd set off to continue his search, a stronger passion for her rescue in his heart, a certain woodpecker flew back over to him and landed on a branch not far from his head. "It is good to know you love her, and that you want to find her. I was very relieved to hear you work it out yesterday. You cannot take on a task so big without wanting the result for yourself as well as others," she spoke softly, in a sing-song sort of way. 

      "So will I find the oracle now? Which way should I go?" Bruno asked, still walking all the same, not prepared to waste time. He wanted to find Rose immediately, not daring to risk her life anymore than they had done by waiting the first sixteen years before this. 

      "The forest will guide you," was all the bird said. 

      "Thank you," and he remembered the way the plants had seemed to move around him, stopping him from going back on himself. "What's your name?" It seemed odd to him that talked as much as they had without having exchanged pleasantries as was almost law back at home. 

      "Nice of you to finally ask," the bird chuckled and, if Bruno had seen correctly, rolled her eyes. "Spriglet. Now I will go, good luck." She lifted off, her wings beautifully controlling the air around her, pushing downwards to suppress it to fire herself upward in a lightening flash of blue. And in her place, was a small collection of acorns balancing precariously on the branch. 

      Bruno held one hand underneath the branch in case he knocked them off and carefully picked up the acorns. He didn't know if they were left for him or if they were simply just boring old acorns, but he did know that they hadn't been there before, and that was enough. Putting them in his pocket, he started walking again, letting the forest leading him once more. The only differences this time being that; for one, he was looking for the oracle for himself, and secondly, he occasionally stopped to ask the forest itself for directions.

      "There are two paths here and I mustn't waste more time, please Lachinsinsi Forest, only leave open the one that leads to the oracle," Bruno asked of it, having learned that it only did as he asked when he used its full name. In truth, since it listened to him and responded so obediently, he didn't understand why it gave him more than one option to begin with. As it was, it did, and he enjoyed watching the plant life move with a certain fluidity he loved. Trees quickly bent down from in front, behind or from the sides of whichever path he wasn't to use, almost completely blocking him from passing. Ferns and thicker plants of similar likeness grew tall, covering the path. 

      And as he learned to work with the forest rather than fear it, he began to see more than the simple monochromatic costume it had worn before. Some leaves stayed as they were but became more beautiful as, instead of hiding amongst everything else, it stood out, its own individual self in the wider picture. Leaves that looked like large cabbage leaves - bigger than any man - took on a much lighter, brighter green with hints of yellow round its edges, a paler green running up each leaf's middle and breaking off into a million veins. Tall stalks that stretched towards the sky were no longer dull, just shadowed, and the possibilities of colours they'd be in direct light were endless. Grasses became brighter, giant rounded leaves got darker, small pointed shapes became deeper, long spindly things got paler, five pointed stars became bolder. Each was green, but each was different, allowing the scene to develop beautifully. 

      And then there were new colours. Not completely new, for Bruno could not have conceived the thought, but rather new to the forest from what he'd known of it so far. Tubes of yellow overlapping petals, ends dipped in red, like a child would make a telescope from paper. There were also bulging pink tubes splitting in a star shape at the bottom, where purple erupted into petals holding the long pink strands that dangled from their centres. Blooming at head height, were stark whites, pale pinks and lilacs, deep reds and purples, bright yellows and oranges in petals wrapping around one another, the outermost ones falling outward slightly, the brim of each petal decorated with a rippled effect, their stems lined with thorns. Smaller, more subtle flowers grew at knee height and below, dots of colour running through the undergrowth.  

      Bruno couldn't help but stop to feel and smell them all in his adoration of their multitude of beauty. The cabbage-like leaf felt as much, bumpy and smooth at the same time, soft. Others felt fluffy, silky, like velvet, plastic almost, rigid or spiky. He didn't dare touch the petals for fear of them getting ripped, as the flowers in the kingdom sometimes did. But he smelled them. Bending his head towards them, nose much too close for their liking, he attempted to separately take in the wonderful fragrances that clouded the forest. 

      All the while, he was walking forwards. And all the while, he had a pocket of acorns, listening to his endless humming to a long-ago song he'd forgotten the words to. 

      Eventually, the trees opened up into a clearing - the exact one he'd found the fruit and vegetables in, the very same rock sat waiting on the other side. He walked over and, having already walked for the most part of the day, sat down. Suddenly, he began to sink. Not into the rock, but with it, into the ground. Before it could go too far, he jumped off and watched it sink deep until its top became part of the floor, and something of colour flashed out the corner of his eye. He looked up, much too late to see what had caught his attention but his mind had wandered far from there anyway. For the sky was blue. 

      Wispy white clouds floated aimlessly in the light blue sky, no longer the dark dullness it had been the first time he'd passed through. The more he grew to love the forest, the more beautiful it seemed to become. 

      While he was staring face up at the new sky, trees to his left that he hadn't been able to see the top of earlier started to bend downwards and fold themselves into stairs. All of the folded trees moved closer to one another so that each step became five times wider, and the leaves parted, moving towards the edges and underneath of the stairs. The ridges and fissures that carved years of history into the souls of the trees flattened out to join the five trees as one for Bruno's ease. And he didn't notice any of it. 

      By the time he turned around, there was a perfect set of stairs leading high into the canopy of the forest, the emergent layer still towering a million miles above. He hadn't seen them form, but knowing they hadn't been there to start with, and remembering the sinking of the stone, was enough to make him pull himself up onto the first of the tall steps. The trees seemed to realise their miscalculation and slowly shifted themselves into more frequent, shallower steps without him noticing. 

      Though of course, eventually, the change became obvious, and he smiled at how easy they had made it to climb their stairs. "Thank you," Bruno said gratefully, picking up his pace along the dark brown wood, glinting a brown-silver in the sun. Behind him, the stairs folded up in a zigzag, looking ready to spring back out. 

      He ran his soft hand over the smooth banister of small intertwined branches, his feet still climbing the eternal staircase. 

      Until he reached the top.

      At the height of the canopy layer, he could see for miles: the kingdom in its entirety, for it was very small; the mountains in the distance - he forgot their name; the Chilakolako River that ran between the mountains and the kingdom; the vastness of the Lachinsinsi Forest - it beat the kingdom's size by miles. 

      But what interested him the most, was what was right in front of his nose. A woman - shorter than him, but not by much - with short, choppy blue-green hair, pale green eyes, a silver ring through one side of her nose, and the beginnings of an intricate tattoo poking out from behind the collar of her golden tunic of silk, which Bruno didn't think at all matched the rest of her look. 

      "Stop staring," came the voice he'd learned to know so well. Spriglet was watching him from the new woman's shoulder, the blue of her feathers making the woman's hair seem dull - though it clearly wasn't. She laughed at him again with that strange bird call that would soon become such a normal sound that he would miss it when he left the forest. 

      "Don't worry," the woman said in a voice that was more normal than he expected for a lady of the forest. He didn't know what he had expected though, perhaps a more gentle, delicate voice like Spriglet's, or magical sounding in someway. But it just wasn't. She sounded just like any other person he knew might sound. "Yes, listen now though. I will not stand here and tell you everything you want to know, you have to ask the right questions, okay? That's how this works. Also, just a warning, all of the answers will be in rhyme." With a casual wave of the hand, she explained, "It's how everything worked in the old ways and magic doesn't change, even when people do."

      "Wait, so you're the oracle?" Bruno asked, clearly having pictured a being so different - more fairy like, maybe. Technically, it was a question aimed at her that she should have answered in rhyme, but as it was so simple, she just nodded. "Okay, so I will start by asking where Rose is, if she's alive." 

      She didn't answer. Watching him expectantly, she waited. 

      Confused, Bruno looked to Spriglet for help. Again, the laugh came forth and he almost found himself rejoicing in the true happiness of it, something that he found was lacking in his normal life. His daughters were they only bright spark in his world that consisted of Gus' darkness. "Bruno, buddy," Spriglet chuckled, "I'm not allowed to tell you what you did wrong and advise you on what to say next but you need to rethink what you said and that's all I'll say." She fluttered once, an old feather falling from her body to the floor in slow motion.

      "Oh," Bruno said, blushing from embarrassment. He'd thought hard about what he'd said and how he'd said it and it had taken a minute before he realised: He'd said he'd ask one question if something else was the case. But he didn't yet know if that was the case or not, and he guessed he was supposed to start there. If he was wrong after that, he'd never know what to do, but as it turned out, he wasn't. "Then, is Rose alive?"

      The reply came:

"Alive she is,
but not forever.
Watch out for Brendan;
Don't be too clever."

      Her voice came soft and sweet as her pale eyes seemed to fade even more. It was as if she was being possessed by something - a creature of a much more gentle nature. The lady's unique and loud exterior disappeared completely as the gentle rhymes flowed from her lips in a river of much craved words. 

      "Can I find her?" Bruno asked quickly, excited to find that she was alive and quite worried about how Brendan came into it and what she was suggesting he was going to do. He decided he must either find Rose first, lock Brendan away, or assume the oracle was wrong. As much as he felt the second option would hurt the king, the third was much too dangerous and the first had no more certainty than whether rain would come the next day. 

      And again, came his answer: 

"You cannot find Rose,
but that's not to say
she won't be found
some other way."

      Bruno, not so happy with this answer, was about to ask again if there was a way for him to find her, maybe a loop hole in fate. Before he could get his words out, the oracle put a finger to her lips to silence him. Bruno stared at the oracle with half closed eyes, tiredness suddenly sweeping in. His surroundings became a green haze, every shade merging into one giant blur. Feeling his feet fall from under him, his legs turning to jelly, he tried to put his arms out to catch himself, but it was hopeless. He was much too tired to do any more than think about moving. Luckily, his landing was cushioned by the living moss that somehow grew as a blanket across the whole canopy. 

      The last thing he saw before passing out completely was the blue hair of the woman flashing past as she replaced the acorns into his shirt pocket. When had she taken them from him? Had he given them to her? He couldn't actually remember anything more than the longing for sleep that he'd felt in that moment, and at once, he was out. Unaware of the conscious world, Bruno drifted into a wonderful place of dinosaurs and pixie dust, which he could never explain to anyone, because the idea, name or image of dinosaurs had never existed to anyone of the kingdom before. At least, not that appeared anywhere in their current collection of shared memories and knowledge. 

      He woke hours later, at the edge of Lachinsinsi Forest with no memory of how he got there or even falling asleep in the first place. In his pocket, the acorns felt heavier than the earth he lived on.