Always Look for the Helpers

A Road Between Trees by Johannes Plenio (Pexels)From Prompts: Isekai - Skateboard - Slingshot There had always been stories. If a ring of light appears in front of you, one where it feels like you're gazing into another world, do not approach. It was the way people disappeared and never returned. As if that hazy image of another world was real. Grucius knew to listen to his mother—to the elders of his clan. They warned of this in the stories they told around the campfires, alongside the differences between poison and medicinal mushrooms and stories of the magic tricks of the fairies. But hearing of such things and experiencing them were worlds apart. Grucius had once eaten the bright red mushroom and experienced no more than a world in much more vivid color, and he had been fine. He'd conversed with the fairies too, and come away with a magic spell to make the flowers bloom. Would this not be the same? Old fogies were always making things seem worse than they were. Grucius was…