Weeks Later
After a couple weeks of living in the woods Daniel had somewhat forgotten the urgency of exposing Area 50. As she romped about and enjoyed her freedom, her sphinx mind began to warp her priorities. To her Area 50 slowly became the crux of her best riddle yet, her magnum opus only for the best critical thinkers to crack. She of course recognized the dangers of the place still, but she became far less concerned with it. Instead she grew more concerned with making the forests a comfortable home.
It was a good fit from the get go. The curving, winding paths of trees formed something of a natural maze one could get lost in for hours. For the first week or so Daniel had no permanent living area solely because she kept getting hopelessly lost while wandering. It all began to make sense after a while to her though and she found her own kind of order in the chaotic spread of the dark forest.
As she talked over riddles with herself in the woods she found her way of speaking permanently altered too. When she wasn’t trying to say a riddle, it would still come out as one. She could say “I want to go swimming” and it would spit out an elaborate string of clues that are solved by the answer “I want to go swimming” It was somewhat concerning at first, she recognized how much it would limit conversation with people after all, but the concern was fleeting. After all, if she had to pick up a bad speaking habit, at least it was something as fun as riddles.
Free from the confines of the facility Daniel grew much like a fish who had been dumped into a larger tank. Her body grew out more and more, becoming more imposing and large like sphinxes of myth. She never grew giant sized, but she dwarfed most of the wildlife that called the forest their home. Not that she concerned herself with the peons of the forest outside of the occasional bite to eat. It’s not like they could answer riddles, so they meant much less to her than people would.
Written by Kolaghan on 07 June 2018
