Found a village in the middle of this forest, right at sundown. Hollow Shades.
I was pushing through the forest when I found a path. Not paved, but it looked very beaten down. It was heading north, so I figured why not. Kept following it, then suddenly came into a… not-clearing is the best way I can describe it. It was an area with barely any trees, but the trees there were so big, so tall, and so wide that their leaves and branches blocked out the sun anyway. They were BIG, so big you fit at least one house in them, usually more.
How do I know this? Because there WERE houses in them. Most of the buildings in the village were normal on-the-ground stone-and-slate-roof houses, but built on and in the trees were more houses. Hanging from branches, sticking out of the trunks of trees, carved out of the trunks, you name it. The town hall was the inside of a tree that must’ve been at least several hundred feet around. The branches had their own roads, with bridges connecting tree to tree to tree. With the leaves so thick in the air, I almost felt like I was underground. I could, however, see a soft glow through the leaves, the remainder of the sunlight.
There were plenty of ponies up and about, not minding the gloom (well, dark; it wasn’t gloomy, more like the warm darkness just after sunset). At first, no one noticed me as I entered the tree-cavern (?), but after a few moments, as I was reading the “Welcome to Hollow Shades” sign on the path, a pegasus flitted up, lightly poked me in the shoulder, and asked me what I was doing there. It was the curious form of that question, not the aggressive kind, so I just said I’d been traveling through and happened upon it.
The pegasus, introducing herself as Skydale, said that she was happy to meet someone coming to visit, if only accidentally, and asked if I needed a place to stay, since it was almost night. I said sure, and Skydale promptly offered a spare room in her house. She quickly added that she was only offering because there wasn’t a proper inn in the village; it was so isolated that barely anyone came over, so there wasn’t much need for an inn. When the need arose, some pony or another would rent out a room or two in their house, dirt cheap. Here, she was just the one who saw me first.
For some reason, paying money made me feel better about staying in someone’s home, and the price WAS dirt cheap. When we started walking towards one of the giant trees, I had a brief moment of panic that, since Skydale was a pegasus, she’d have a house that I couldn’t get to. But, no, her house was just on the other side of the tree, and I felt silly; she’d be thinking of that.
Skydale also provided dinner. It was good, and there was a blue-y purple-y melon I didn’t recognize. Tasted real good, real sweet; wondered why I hadn’t seen it before. Skydale said it was shadowberry, a rare kind of fruit that only grew in shady places like this. Very expensive, and Hollow Shades’s Shades’ primary export.
Writing in a room with a decent bed. Bare, but that doesn’t matter. There’s a low sound that may or may not be Skydale snoring. Quiet enough that I can live with it. Glad that she offered me a bed so easily.
…I hope she’s not conning me somehow.
A surreal city,
Not underground, but no sun;Trees are a
The trees block it all.