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The bird had not cared a whit for their worries and fears, or given them any kind of answer. When Rosalind had asked it, are you an agent of the Negaverse? all the raven had said carelessly was, "Should I be?" and poked at the ground with its beak.

But now it was hopping over to a twig, and taking it in its mouth was leading them over to a patch of softer dirt. Even the dirt in Elflands looked pretty. "You don't have a map," it said, after spitting out the twig. "So make one."

"Hey! We're not awful people! HRMPH!"

Scheelite trailed along, standing back as Rosalind started drawing. Right...heart marks the spot. Who the hell had ever heard of -that-? It should be an x! Or a star! Or...well anything but a silly little heart. Besides that her map was just plain wrong.

"Rosalind, I don't play a lot of games besides Guitar Hero but I have played enough to know that a straight line won't get you to your goal. If this -is- some kind of crazy quest complete with random pitfalls, weird forests, and awesome talking birds then a straight line is just too -easy-. They're expecting us to do that! It's probably full of traps! Gimme that!"
With a sigh he had flopped to his knees on the ground beside their map and snatched the twig. Clearly this map needed Scheelite's touch to 'fix' it.

"I played this game once, and rather than straight to their goal the heroes had to go down this path, then do a couple quests then go down another path and do some more quests. Then when they were done they had to go walk around in a circle for a while then double back the way they had come before and go down some more paths and rescue some villagers and....well okay I don't know what happened after that cause I kinda got bored."
He had been drawing the entire time. Now rather than a straight line, the map had lines leading this way and that, doubling back, criss crossing, and eventually (after one hell of a long path) leading to their goal in the middle.

"That and your map was wrong cause we weren't on it. What kinda map is that? Sheesh!'
Here he drew in two stick figures to represent them. His own, while crude, was at least rather accurate. Rosalind's....well, maybe this particular Negaverser should just stick to drawings of dragons mailed to his higher ups to beg for an awesome 'pet'. Senshi were clearly not his forte.

"There! Now -that's- a map! What do you think Mister Raven?"



((I WAS BORED))

"You're missing your bow."
It was said as if a tiny bow would really fix the entire drawing of Rosalind. In reality, it...really wouldn't.
"Besides, it's -really hard- to draw with a twig. I coulda drawn you better if I had a pencil. Sorry Ros...can I call you Ros? It's so much easier than Rosalind. ANYWAYS, what matter is it's a map!"

A map that after who knew how much walking, quest-taking, villager-saving, dragon-slaying, spider-dodging, and bird-is-the-wording would perhaps lead them to their goal of the center of the forest.

"Well, the cross is the center of the forest," she said thoughtfully, "which is where you said we needed to be, duh." Rosalind really couldn't think of a reason why she should be heading there, or what was even at the center of the forest.

Perhaps the Raven did not like the cross, so she kneeled and rubbed the little X away, so as to appease the bird. She looked at her hand and blew the dirt away, and continued, "there, now we'd be headed to nothing. Is that better?"

She would ask for Scheelite's help, but decided to just hand the twig to him without a word. She wouldn't degrade herself. It was the polite thing to do, even if he didn't add anything meaningful.

"I didn't want to head to a -literal- cross..it was more like on uh..treasure maps! X always marks the spot, so I thought marking our destination with an x was a good thing. Sorry for being confusing Mister Raven, I don't think a cross is a goal for either of us."

With the x already cleared of the map, the only thing left for Scheelite to do with the twig was draw a little bow on stick-Rosalind. It helped...a little bit.

"Nothing doesn't seem like a good goal either, but what -is- in the center? It's not home, it's not a cross, and it's hopefully not nothing at all. It has to be something."
He sighed, staring long and hard at their map. It wasn't often something caught his attention so thoroughly, but there just had to be something important here. Zink would be studying it just as hard, and since Zink wasn't here...well he'd just have to fill in for him. Poor, poor Rosalind.

Rosalind scowled. Why had it called her interpretation of the map stupid, but Scheelite's got an explanation? She huffed and snatched the twig away from him once more.

"Fine. You want a map? I'll give you the best map you've ever seen." Dumb bird and dumb Scheelite. She trudged her heels through the dirt until there was nothing left that resembled a map. A fresh start!

She started with a wavy line-- to represent a river-- and started to draw trees on both sides. One on the left side of the wavy line, one on the right. One on the left, one on the right. Left, right. Left, right. She continued this pattern (though it didn't take long since she just made the trees triangles) for the next few minutes-- it really began to look like a forest! Scheelite criticized her, saying there weren't enough trees, so she added a few dozen more on both sides. Then she added ugly, cross-eyed fairies flitting around the top.

But then she thought. Would she have to travel across whatever she drew? No, she most definitely did not want to do that. So she drew the two of them, this time represented by symbols (Rosalind was a heart, Scheelite a star), in the middle of her depiction of the forest, along with the pit they had fallen into.

"There, bird," she said confidently, "we're already in the center of the forest." Since she had no idea where they were, and it would be literally impossible to guess the geography of the forest, this seemed quite plausible to her.

"Ah," said the raven, sounding a great deal more satisfied. "Nearly, nearly! But what kind of goal? What is your goal? Maybe the girl's goal is a rich husband and your goal is to be a murderer. You're nearly there. Whose goal, whose goal?"