It felt as if their fragile smulip bodies were being pulled apart by space and time. Strand by strand, petal by petal. They were in a realm where up was down; all their senses combined into a singularity… Their vision distorted into a pin drop of white and purple light. The smulips lost all sense of connection to their former life. They forgot what the Garden was. What smulips were… Finally, darkness overcame them all…

Gradually one by one the smulips re-entered the conscious realm. Their senses crept back as well as their thoughts… The elders… The Gate of Arbitrum…Their mission. They could now feel the air around them again. The ground beneath their feet. With the force of a roaring dragon, a gust of wind ripped open the deep black and revealed the world around them. They were suddenly in what felt like a violent blizzard. Adjusting their eyes, they realized they were in a flurry of flying smulip petals as far as the eye could see. “Hurry, I see a forest in the distance! Run for cover!”, yelled one of the adventurers. The petals swirled around them in a vortex as they battled the wind step by step. As they crossed the threshold into the trees, the chaos around them calmed.

In unison, as if a spark ignited in them, the group of smulips turned southwest and spoke aloud, “The Shed...This way..” They turned to each other, one as baffled as the next. Led by a deep knowing, they marched forward in that direction. Much time passed on the journey through the woods. Every so often they would encounter a glowing glass bottle on the mossy floor. The bottles seemed to point them on a certain path. Not having drunk or eaten in what felt like days, the smulips were on the verge of collapse. Almost consciously, at that moment, the forest gave the travelers what they had been searching for… THE SHED appeared before them. Cautiously opening cabin- like structure, the smulips entered and collapsed on the floor in exhaustion. They had finally made it. A smell of honey wafted in the air.

They looked up and saw the room lit up in multicolored hues radiating from the vast collection of glass bottles on the shelves. One of the smulips rose and stumbled to a bookcase full of vials. “FERTILISER… SMOL POTION…”, read the other bottle. “It smells like the honey from the Garden…”, said the smulip in a daze…. The others turned to look at him. POP! In a state of hunger, thirst, and bewilderment, the smulip flicked open the cork of a SMOL POTION and FERTILISER and guzzled the contents. CRASH! The young smulip dropped the glass vials on the wooden floor and keeled over in pain. All the group turned and realized what their fellow smulip had done… The smulip lay on the ground, convulsing– It began to almost… MUTATE-- The SMOL POTIONS and FERTILIZERS clinked on the shelves in a chorus of sound-- their colors brightly flashed on the walls- the front door of the Shed then BURST open…

To be continued…