Amanda wandered through the dismal forest wearily, unsure of her both her direction and her purpose. "Where am I?" the young girl tentatively squeeked, with only the cries of some far off wild animal to answer her plea. The forest canopy was impossibly thick, with only the slightest lancelets of twilight shining through the leaves to light the way. Although it mus be mentioned that in reality, the light did less than reveal as much as it "intensified." The fading light seem to make the shadows sharpers and trees more alien. This effect was hardly lost on Amanda whose senses had been sharpened so much by fear that even the smallest snapping of a twig seemed to resonate in her imagination. Nonetheless the timid girl pushed on in her night gown, little more than a thin fleece slip, colored a girlish pink. With only the nightgown on her body and faintly burning candle in her right hand Amanda pushed on through the wood, following what seemed to be a long dried up riverbed. She seemed to walk for miles on that riverbed, but no matter how far she went, no sign of civilization rose up to greet her, and soon her candlelight was brighter the lancelets which had illuminated the trees before. The young girl stopped and turned her auburned haired head all around, dazed by confusion. "I'm scared," the young girl cried with a small voice. In desperation she stepped out of the riverbed onto the bank, carefully gaurding her lit candle. She shuffled over to the closest place of rest to her: an enormous white oak tree, with branches that extended high into the canopy. She sat down hard with her back against the tree as the light above grew dimmer and dimmer. Once the only visible place was the circle of light surrounding Amanda's candle, she set her tiny torch on the ground and began to cry. She buried her face in her hands and let out all of her confusion and loneliness into her tears and wails, which caused the forest to echo with the sounds of her sadness. She cried if only to get rid of a little of the loneliness... but what the poor girl did not realize... was that she was hardly alone...

"Damn it little beast, why can't you howl in the fields like the wolves do!" a booming voice rang out. Amanda's crying quickly faded and she raised her face from her hands, half-confused, half-frightened. Suddenly Amanda jumped up to her feet. Had she just felt the bark of the tree move beneath her back? "Finally! It's hard enough to concentrate on feeding on the moonbeams without a darn animal wailing throughout the night!" the enormous voice echoed out again.

"Wha-what? Where are you?" queried Amanda, gazing intensely at the base of the tree against which she had sat.

"I'm right here, in front of your eyes child! Goodness, what do these elves do these days? How can their children not even recognize a dryad when they see one?" the tree groaned with indignation.

“Elves? Dryad? I hardly have any idea what you’re talking about you… tree… thing…”

“Tree thing?” the dryad-tree-thing asked appalled at such a name. “Little girl, how can you show such irreverence to such a noble spirit of nature?” The trees branches seemed to stiffen. “I am the renowned oak dryad Lucien Poth’lass, a sturdy 657 years old, and an elder that you should learn to respect young lady!” the dryad scolded.

“Why am I arguing with a tree?” Amanda asked herself as she threw her arms up in a gesture of helplessness. “This is ridiculous, trees can’t talk, this is stupid!” snorted Amanda as she folded her arms. “I mean, they don’t even have mouths!”

“Says who?” came the reply from two oversized lips that stretched across the bark on the front of the tree.

“Abuh-buh.” Was all that Amanda could stammer.

“What? You act like you’ve never seen a tree’s face before!” the tree said, as if seeing enormous talking lips on oak trees was an everyday occurrence. Before Amanda could venture a reply, an enormous nose and enormous eyes grew out of the bark of the tree forming an enormous face baring a queer smirk.

Amanda opened her lips slightly as if to say something when her eyes rolled back in her head and her body collapsed to the ground as if she were the rag doll of a little girl too bored to continue playing. “She certainly is a queer elf-child,” the dryad spoke to himself. “In all my years I’ve never met a youngling who acted like she did! Why, it’s almost as if she’s never even HEARD of a dryad before!” A thoughtful look showed on the tree’s “face” before it dissolved into the wood and let the young, very confused, very unconscious girl sleep the night the away.