Ksunarka Village, in the Jungle Mountains, as Marsha awakens

It was the quiet humming that woke her. This gentle sound, like flowing rain, washed into her ears along with the scent that was like a pure summer breeze. She knew almost immediately where she was, because she had had this sensation before. When she was younger, she used to go scouting with a few of her friends around her home. Those days were so carefree. The bubbling creeks lead to rivers, the rivers lead to higher places, and the higher places sometimes would have water falls. Yes, it was the sound of a waterfall, she knew it instinctively! But… something… something was different. Something… wasn't quite right. The difference was subtle, to a motionless partially sleeping Marsha. Nevertheless, it was there. That humming… was it really… a waterfall?

Eyes opening wide, she stared up at what could only be determined upon immediate glance to be the cavernous ceiling of a cave. Thus, instinctively she looked towards the direction of where she thought she would spot the waterfall… and screamed.

At the mouth of a cavern, appearing in some respects similar enough to her initial hypothesis of a cavern room behind a waterfall, there lays no beautiful flow of water, but a mass of wriggling, thin tentacles. Some, to Marsha's eyes, look like they're covered in barnacles. Marsha stares at this mass of horrendous-looking, perhaps to a human a somewhat disgusting looking formulation and cannot make herself look away. If she had calmed down enough, she would have noticed the subtle psychedelic effect from her prolonged stare. Perhaps, in a more functional state, Marsha would have started analyzing this effect and how these tentacles could be generating the consciousness altering sensations she was feeling at the time. Variation in movement, color and some form of chemical emittance would have been noticed. The smell would have been realized as curiously at once invigorating and nauseating. Yes, in a more sound and rational state she would have been noticing these things. Instead, all she was struck by was this blinding sense of fear that generated an autonomous response. Screaming… of the very loud and feminine piercing variety.

With the piercing force of her scream, the humming abruptly ceases to exist like water vapor disappearing in a desert, or the sound of a motor engine silencing itself in the night.

The tentacles slide apart, moving with a kind of graceful fluidity that scares Marsha for reasons unknown and unacknowledged to her currently frightened out of her mind self. Her screaming gets louder thus when she realizes that something, or someone was about to enter into her space. Irrational panic ensues, and she scoots back on her hands and feet from the approaching menace, crashing her into the side of the cavern that interestingly feels like bumping into a person until she realizes it's just the wall to the room. She slides up against this wall, somehow almost in a way seeking comfort from it. The wall radiates a kind of soothing energy… She twists herself towards it, and pressing both hands to the wall, she begins to pretend that none of what she is experiencing is real. Closing her eyes, and breathing hard, she almost can believe in her own delusion for how much she wished she was not in this moment so potentially close to an impending demise.

Nothing happens. The room is silent. Not a sound, not a sentence, not a gurgle or spot of sound to indicate motions… just a wall radiating this soothing energy. Reason and rationale slowly return to Marsha, but in slow and steady beats. No indication of time. No indication of location. Marsha wonders what she has managed to get herself into. She silently asks the heavens in her mind… but gets no response from a potentially nonexistent entity.