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Author's Chapter Notes:

More M/f stuff. 


-
Mary stretched as she yawned, as she woke up from a good night’s sleep. The blonde former college girl, smiled to herself as she began to dress herself. 


She knew she was one of the lucky ones. Most people didn’t even survive, much less retain actual property, what the rest called, the event. 


Mary’s entire world, not just her neighborhood and her city but everyone within ten thousand miles was uprooted from the ground and placed...here.


The problem was, no one knew quite where here really was. It was deeply forested, with gargantuan brown trees towering right up to the sky. The “trees” lacked leaves of any kind and were sort of like massive spires.  The trees were big too, 45 miles in diameter on average. No one knew how tall they were, no one had the equipment to climb into the vast sky. The forest seemed to go on forever. Despite not knowing what the trees really were, it was decided after the event, to rebuild the city with a large tree as the basis for the shelter.Mary knew it was a wise decision. This place was plagued with heavy rainfall and tremors. Clean rain fell daily like clockwork from unknown skies well-beyond the altitude of the trees. It was a nice convenient source of freshwater, but they had groundwater too.  The tremors though… that was the real problem. Less predictable than the rain, the daily (at least) earthquakes easily shook even the mighty trees, causing them to bend.


The ground itself was a sort of pinkish color, not that many citizens really saw it that often. The city itself was built in levels in the tree, in a marvel of engineering. Inhabitants first took pulleys and then lifts to the various parts of the city. When the government wanted to expand, they simply built new levels up the tree.
The air itself had a thick omnipresent humidity and an overwhelming scent, though in the upper levels of the city it was somewhat less extreme. 


Mary lived in the lower levels, where she could bask in the smell of the land. She was not alone, the lower levels of the city were prime real estate for precisely that reason. 


“Crap, I’m going to be late for the council meeting.” Mary muttered to herself, as she checked her watch.


She quickly hurried out the door and into the nearest elevator. Great elevators lined the tree. Taking them up or down was one of the most common forms of transportation in the city. “Level 10” she pushed the button.


The City Council was on a lower level than even herself. It took only a moment for the elevator to arrive. The door’s opened and Mary took a deep breath of air, enjoying the scent.


A brief walk later and she walked into the council chamber.


“Mary…happy you could make it,” The lead councilwoman, a brunette woman in her mid-30s with glasses, hair in a ponytail, looked at her with something vaguely approaching a smile.


“We were considering your proposal.”


“Yes.” Another councilwoman, a redhead continued. “You want to explore beyond the reaches of the Great Forest?”


Despite being there for a few months, no one knew just where they were. It didn’t help that they were the smallest on the size totem poll, nanoputians, a tiny one inch tall relative to microputians. Everyone knew it was likelihood mischief of one of the many larger sizes that put them in this precarious situation.


“We don’t know anything about what goes on outside our area. We don’t even know how tall our tree really is?”


They lacked the equipment to make the journey.


The redhead frowned, “You do realize that everyone of us who have attempted to make the journey has never returned? Hundreds of explorers were sent out in the first few days. All of them either drowned in the floods or were killed by the regular tremors.”


“But our understanding of what goes on here is much better now than then. I can climb to avoid the floods, and I know where to seek shelter from the quakes.”
The redheaded council frowned. “How do you plan to get back? The trees all look very similar.”


Mary grinned, determined. “I’ll find a way.”
-
The blonde arrived at the ground level with a completely full backpack, mostly of food and water. She brought some supplies like a flashlight and a pedometer. The blonde basked in the scent. The musk was overwhelming down here. Mary loved it though, she breathed in it, reveled in it and willingly allowed herself to be smothered by it.


“I didn’t think you would go…”


Broken from her distraction, Mary turned around to see a tall, skinny, light haired, girl wearing an equally large backpack.


“Hailey!”


Mary jumped up to hug her friend.


Hailey beamed, “I just had to join you. This is going to be a great adventure, isn’t it?”


“Let’s go!”


“Which way?” Hailey asked.


“Ummm….Right.” as they left the great tree for the first time since they got here/


“Do you have any idea where you’re going?”


“Nope!”
-
God. It was infinite. Step, after step on the pink ground, mile after mile. The miles-wide featureless trees were of seemingly infinite number and tangled with one another. 


They were only on mile four, according to the pedometer. Barely a tenth of the diameter of the great home tree! 


Hailey had the brilliant idea of to try to mark their path in the trees, using an obsidian knife. A steel blade just wouldn’t cut it. Even still, it took some effort and the vast featureless nature of the unbelievably huge trees meant that she had to mark everywhere or they might miss it on the trip back.


-

“There”


Hailey marked a very long line on the side of one of the trees. The carving indicated that this was “Mile twenty” and had an arrow on which way to her city.


“Let’s set up camp here and rest for the night.” Mary suggested.


“Good idea. We need to keep our strength, we don’t know what might be ahead.”


They didn’t have to wait long for the rumbling of an earthquake to start.  Their whole world trembled in a rhythmic motion.


Boom


The huge trees easily bent and swayed to the unseen but apparently enormous forces tearing the world asunder.


Boom


The pair huddled together for comfort, if not for protection as they were easily thrown by the forces at work. Each of them held their ears for protection, the noise was unbelievably loud, completely deafening. Boom
It was almost like it had a beat. 


“Woah”


Mary gasped as one of the many-mile-wide trees came crashing down with a huge thud landing somewhere nearby. It was only by pure luck it didn’t take down the tree Mary and Hailey were underneath as well.


Boom

 
The quakes continued as if nothing had happened.


“Ah!”


Hailey was thrown horizontally into the tree. “I’m fine” she tried to say to her friend but the incredibly loud noise made it utterly impossible to talk.


Boom


The rhythm of the quakes continued, indifferent to the suffering of two cowering nanoputians.


Mary knew from experience this could go on for only a few minutes to an hour, and she steeled herself for the latter.


Boom

 
-


Mary wasn’t sure how long it had been when she noticed the pool of groundwater rapidly forming. 


Boom

 
She was thrown across the tiny encampment. “Ow”


Holding her head, she reached down for a sip of the water. It tasted somewhat salty, not surprisingly. Groundwater here always tasted like that.


Hailey desperately pointed out the water level to be rising.


“Shit. Climb the tree.” The pair were expert climbers, they had to be. Each one had gloves and boots they could use to grab holds in the trees.


 Boom


Still, expert climbers or not, surviving the unassisted tree climb with this awful a quake and a massive flood at the bottom would take an act of god.  Mary supposed she could take solace in the fact her favorite scent seemed to be getting stronger.

-

 

 

Chapter End Notes:

A/N: Not to worry, we will return to the microputian girls and their trip soon enough but first, world building. Surprise! Microputians aren’t the smallest race, just completely and utterly insignificant next to a prodigan. How do you think the nanoputians would feel when they discover what their world really is? What about when the microputians discover that there are people even tinier than they are? 

Just imagine what their god is going to do when he finds out? 

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