Under the canopy

Under the canopy, the sun shone only in dapples that caused shadow and light to strike in a kaleidoscope. The resulting distraction danced under heavy leaves and across imagination. Not a bird was heard to sing here and the quiet lulled and dulled them within moments of their entry, Izra's heavy warnings to take care, stay upon the path and not touch, instantly gone. Pushed from their minds by a canopy that squeezed. Barely a head above them it hung, entwined vines reaching like the hangman's noose to brush unsuspecting shoulders, jolt unsuspecting throats. The ground underneath them was no more forgiving, coarse, filled with obstruction; tangled roots lying half-risen from their muddy graves, their exposed flash of white the startling stretch of shallow buried bones. Then the trees. Huge. Whispering. Each one broader than the last. The hidey-holes within them... uncountable.

“This place could send a man mad.”