Later that afternoon, you find another excuse to get away, and you follow the trail that leads to the south.
After only a few more minutes you can sense the forest changing around you. It feels lighter somehow, even though the trees themselves are closer together, and you're sure that less sun is making it through the branches, not more. The leaves on the birches and maples are a gentler shade of green, casting brighter shadows over everything, and your feet crunch more softly as you walk, as if something were protecting them from the sandy soil of the forest floor.
The air is growing ever so slightly cooler, and it carries a faint scent of…something different. Spring flowers? Lilacs. But it's the end of June. How can there still be lilacs?
You feel a faint tingle in the part of your brain where your magic lives. There is something magical going on here, definitely. You can feel it in your mind, in the trees, in the spring breeze—all around you.
And then you see where the path leads. It ends in a perfect circle of trees, still with the first spring blossoms on them.
There's a village here. And there are lilacs growing in the middle of summer.
Chapter 5: Into the Circle