Their remaining time trapped within the sprawling sands of the desert was rather uneventful. Both Jake and Alice had spent their time making idle chit-chat as they followed the shifting shadow of the dune above, sprawled out and relaxed in the sinking depths of the desert floor.

  When night came, Jake had been worried about a sudden temperature drop. They had nothing to burn and nothing to bundle up with. Yet fortunately, these concerns proved unfounded as night came and passed without too much of a drastic shift in temperature. While it certainly dropped, it stayed well above freezing. When the sun next rose, ready to usher them forth somewhere utterly new and unknown, Jake couldn’t have been happier.

  As time had gone on, and Alice’s condition had stabilized somewhat, Jake could reluctantly admit that this was not the worst desert he’d been stranded in so far. As the two laid back relaxing in the shade, talking and joking with one another, at times he could almost be tempted to call it pleasant. Still, he felt no joy for the endless sea of grit and particulate around him. He was all too eager to flee the burning sun up above, even if Alice felt rather differently on the matter.

  Alice, despite being the person who’d suffered a sudden collapse into the maw of the desert sand, felt a strange reluctance to leave the heat-kissed landscape behind. She’d been somewhat enchanted by the landscape when they first arrived, it was just so different from anything she’d ever seen before. While she treasured every new landscape and forest they came across, the overwhelming surprise of green grass and towering trees had faded away into a stock appreciation for their beauty. She no longer found them surprising. The desert landscape, on the other hand, had left her surprised.

  She’d wanted to explore more of it. Forcing herself upright, her head still swimming, she had half a mind to try and drag Jake back out into the sprawling dunes to explore the stretching sea of heated dust and sand. Yet she let these ideas remain simply whispers in the back of her mind. For as much as she may wish to explore the desert frontier, in truth, her body simply didn’t feel up to the task. While she may have been improving steadily, relaxed in her desert bed, the effects of the sun shining down high above soon took their toll. Her stomach still roared with hunger and by nightfall her throat was dry and rough.

  So come next morning, gripping hold of Jake's hand, she took one last look at the enchanted scenery around her trying to commit the picturesque scene of the stretching dunes into her memory before they fell. As the sun rose above bathing the two in the full morning heat of the desert's glow, they felt the sand give out beneath them as the desert disappeared, replaced once more with the unknown.

  What the hell…” Jake asked, struggling to stay upright as the pair landed with a start on a large, squishy mound. The mound squished and flexed beneath their weight, reminding both of the blob they’d eaten just a few days prior. As worry began to grow in the duo that they’d landed atop some massive creature, their balancing act finally proved ineffective as the two toppled forward, collapsing flat against the squishy mound.

  As they forced themselves upright, sinking ever deeper into the squishy mound, Jake realized the mound beneath them lacked any real temperature at all, neither warm nor cold. It simply existed. A dull brownish color, it was a large, curved dome-shaped platform that lay slanted slightly to the right and all around Jake could see similar domes sprouting up into the air. Some lay larger than the one the pair had landed on while others lay smaller. Something about the brownish domes littered around him sparked recognition in Jake’s head, and after a few seconds of analyzing his brain made the connection as he realized he and Alice now sat perched atop a massive portobello mushroom.

  Slipping one of his knives free from his pocket, Jake pocked the tip of the blade into the cap of the mushroom and carved a decently sized chunk free. Lifting the chunk, he took a small sniff before biting into the flesh of the mushroom. He’d never been the biggest fan of mushrooms, only ever seeing them in the store or as ingredients in larger more complex dishes so he wasn’t sure what to expect. As his mouth was filled with flavor and juice, he found himself pleasantly surprised. It had a mild earthy flavor that filled his whole mouth, and while not his favorite taste in the world it was certainly pleasant enough.

  “You’re just going to eat that?!” Alice asked with something akin to shocked horror on her face as she watched Jake take another bite of the brown chunk pulled up from the earth below. “What happened 'to be careful, it may be poisonous', huh?! Are you feeling sick or something, do we need to… would you stop eating the floor!” Alice asked, slapping the chunk of mushroom from Jake’s hand as he went to take a third bite. Jake’s stomach growled in displeasure as he glanced over toward Alice with a smirk on his face,

  “What's wrong, hmm? I happen to like the taste of the floor.” He said shit eating grin stretched across his face as he grabbed hold of the mushroom chunk again. Taking a massive bite out, he struggled to stop from laughing as he watched Alice stare at him with an incredulous look of disgust and confusion. Finally, he couldn’t hold it in any longer as she began to move away from him, worry evident on her face. Erupting into laughter, he tossed the mushroom chunk into her lap and wheezed out,

  “Oh relax will you, I’m just screwing around. I recognize it from my home, it’s edible. Try some, it’s not too bad… could use salt but what are you going to do?” Jake asked with a shrug, as Alice picked the scooped mushroom chunk up, some doubt still evident in her eyes.

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  “What is it?”

  “Mushroom, though this one’s pretty big. The ones back where I’m from are a lot smaller.” Jake said as he hopped up, wobbling a bit on the unstable surface of the mushroom as he inched over toward the slanted edge of the mushroom to try and see how far up from the ground they were. Alice took a sniff of the mushroom, concern clear on her face. The only mushrooms she’d ever known were the ones that grew from the dead left to rot in the district. She’d never considered those to be very edible. Then again, she had heard tales about wealthier Unbroken enjoying mushrooms as a foreign delicacy, and if Jake said he recognized it…

  Still uncertain Alice took a slight nibble out of the mushroom chunk. Her eyes opened in pleasant surprise as the taste spread across her tongue before she began to devour the chunk with gusto. Before long it was gone, and Alice lay back into the springy mass feeling satiated, juice from the mushroom dripping down her chin.

  “Hungry, huh? Thanks for leaving me some.” Jake said sarcastically, having watched Alice polish off the last of his mushroom chunk.

  “Sorry…” Alice said, guilt spiking through her, though when she looked upward she saw Jake simply wave his hand in a dismissive motion as he took his knife to the mushroom, cutting another, much larger, chunk of mushroom free. Sitting back, he took a bite from the mushroom as he said,

  “Bad news, I couldn’t see a clear way down from here so for the time being, it looks like we're trapped up here.”

  “Well…” Alice said, wiggling her body so it pressed further into the squishy mound of the mushroom, a contented sigh escaping her, “There are worse places to be trapped.”

  “Well, that is true.” Jake said as leaned back slightly, “You feeling alright?”

  “Me? I’m fine! Certainly, much better now I’ve had something to eat.” Alice said with a grin, a slight yawn escaping her as she realized for the first time in a while she felt truly relaxed, pressed into the top of the mushroom. It felt odd to her now, alien to be so at peace. Internally she began to stress as she waited for some unknown threat to come and claim her now she’d let her guard down. “Can we look through the book now?” she asked, hoping to distract herself.

  “Hmm? Sure, I guess. Just let me finish this.” Jake said, carving another bite out of his mushroom chunk. In truth, this conversation was one they’d started yesterday as they lay unmoving in the desert’s embrace. Alice had told him about her ever-improving ability to grasp the strings, her ever-improving ability to feel the curse pulsing and humming within herself. She’d been eager to keep digging through the magic book, yet Jake was forced to stop her.

  For one, he was worried about her. She’d just collapsed from the heat of the desert, unconscious for who knows how long. Forcing herself to try and wrestle with her curse that literally pulled her body apart could wait at least one day. Another reason was he was struggling just to make casual conversation with her his throat so cracked and dry. He didn’t feel physically up to reading through the magic book at the moment, all of which he told her yesterday. So, she waited on bated breath for this moment now, when both had recovered enough that she could hopefully make new strives in her understanding of magic, of her understanding of the curse.

  “Your magic should easily pool within you, flowing like the tide to each pore of your body. As you are now, reading this book, your body may have blocked dams that stop the natural ebb and flow of your magic or prevent you from pooling it together properly. With careful steady practice, these restrictions can fade away…” Jake read aloud, finding himself falling into a trance-like groove as he read the textbook aloud. Yet with every sentence he spoke, Alice found herself growing more and more confused, more and more alarmed.

  “Ok, the next few pages start referring to ‘Basic Spell Craft Volume 1’ which we don’t have, but summarizing it says you should start repeatedly casting the same one or two spells over and over again to help improve the flow of your magic and its overall strength. There's also some diagrams here which I don’t understand fully, but maybe they’ll mean something to you?”

  He flipped the book around, towards her, and flipped through a series of diagrams showcasing various parts of the human anatomy all with illustrations of flowing rivers or pools of liquid coalesced within. Jake could guess these illustrations were showcasing the ideal way magic should flow and pool through one’s body, yet as he had no magic at all he had no idea how accurate the diagrams were. Looking up at Alice as he flipped through them, he was met with a deep-seated frown and a look of confusion.

  “This is wrong…” She said in almost a whisper, before taking the book from his hands and flipping wildly through the diagrams. Yet no matter how many she checked none of them matched. None of them made sense.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Jake asked, concerned he’d maybe mispronounced or misspoken something while reading.

  “This, this isn’t what the curse feels like at all. None of this is right. It doesn’t flow or pool! It pulses, vibrates, and hums its way throughout my body. It isn’t dammed or blocked off, it’s tied up in knots, weaved into webs!”

  “Is it really that different?” Jake asked with innocent curiosity.

  “ITS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!” Alice shouted, tossing the book back toward him, gripping the side of her head she began to curl tight into a ball, all the excitement she’d built up to pour through its contents disappeared in an instant. The book was useless to her.

  “Ok, ok. Your curse must be different from whatever is described in the book. Still, though, you said you could feel it now right, which means you're just one step away from controlling it. We just need to find a different book or do it ourselves if that doesn’t work. We’ll work it out, you’ve already made tons of progress just feeling it in you, how hard can controlling it be?” Jake said in a hurry, rambling now as he tried to comfort the distraught-looking Alice.

  Alice sat a while, listening to Jake ramble next to her feeling her breathing begin to steady and calm. Jake was right. They’d already made massive progress so far. She’d lost sight of that in the moment seeing the first real hope to her survival disappear. Uncurling a bit now and watching Jake continue to rant at her, a small smile broke onto her face. She felt the despair that had permeated her begin to fade away. Things weren’t hopeless yet, not by a mile.