>Nothing for it, take follow the most nearby path and try to wend deeper into the garden. Take a moment to dowse every so often for anything around that feels different enough to be noteworthy.
>With some measure of trepidation, you descend into the valley and approach the edge of the flowers. The air grows thick with their scent ? it's almost a little overpowering, if you're honest ? but nothing more ominous or threatening presents itself. You take a slow and careful look through the thick tangle of vegetation; it is difficult to make out very much of anything, but no flashes of movement catch your eye, no signs of animal or artifice. Just endless rows of flowers and hanging vines.
>You circle around the outside, past a procession of bellflowers and scarlet trumpets, to a path you spotted earlier. It is scarcely easier to notice up close than it was from afar; the wall of blossoms thins just enough to allow passage through for an individual of modest size, but only just, and curtains of honeysuckle nearly hide it from sight. You peer along its length, but the trail curves out of view after less than fifteen feet with no indication of where it leads. The ground look faintly trodden upon, but no footprints are visible.
>Well, nothing to be done but press onward. Taking a deep breath, you duck beneath a dangling vine and step into the garden.
>The space is quiet and cloistered here, cut off from the wider world by endless curtains of virid color. Yet, rather than feeling tranquil, it feels... claustrophobic somehow, almost oppressive. It
is beautiful, without a doubt ? awe-inspiring, even ? but you cannot shake a nagging sense of antipathy, like the garden itself is judging your trespass within it.
>That's nonsense, surely? They're just perfectly ordinary flowers and clearly no one else is even nearby, or they're being incredibly quiet about it. And yet, as you walk slowly past the silent blooms, you feel a chill run down your spine. Are you that on edge? Are you
that nervous about Yuuka, after all that's been said about her? Perhaps it wouldn't be wrong to be so, but you've already faced down murderous spiders and an entire band of sky pirates ? you have standards!
>You continue onward, pausing now and again to take another scan of the area. It is impossible to use your dowsing rods in this confined space without brushing up against the plantlife, but you do your best to avoid disturbing things unduly. There is still that damnable sense of...
something pervading the garden, but it grows neither stronger nor weaker as you walk. Nothing else changes; there is only flowers and the gentle rustle of your passage among them.
>Why is it so quiet, anyway? Have you even heard so much as a bird? That can't be right.
>The path forks, then forks again, and soon you are spiraling ever-deeper within this labyrinth of color and ominous beauty. You cannot escape the feeling that you are being slowly swallowed by some kind of vernal behemoth. No two places in the garden are the same, every step there is some new combination of plants, some new interplay of form and color. It is a magnificent showcase of floral beauty in all its forms, from clusters of the most impeccably tiny blossoms to towering red hibiscus, each nearly as large as your head. You try to swallow your ill-ease enough to appreciate it, or at least keep an eye out for a bittercress, but even though you've seen a drawing of its flowers, you could surely spend days roving this valley and never spot it among all its brighter cousins. Did you even know so many kinds of flowers existed in the world?
>An ear twitches. You think you just heard something rustle in the foliage, behind you to the left ? the first such sound you've heard beyond yourself in much too long.
