They could not keep their eyes on one place. There were golden, glittering fruits in the autumnal leaves of withering trees, there were silver strings and pearl beads of other kinds of vegetation strewn across gnarled roots. There was a scarecrow in a field of fur, soft and light like Tobias's. There was a scarecrow prowling, armed with the ambrosia it would spit at passersby, changing their fates forever. But Ampelio had nothing to fear from that, or that, or that, or anything.

The course of their destiny was already on the fritz. You could tell from the tangling of the grape vines — some twisted into a void, then twisted back out as if in a completely different place, in a completely different time. They were small enough to fit in a pocket dimension or a dimension pocket, they were alarmingly purple with an almost metallic luster, but they mattered to someone. Someone who loves grapes. They were a silent disorder, vibrating slowly in the graceless dance of life to the silent rat-tat-tat of silent men in fields. Silent as the world within a geode. Silent as a grave. Ampelio was not once for graves.

Or silence. "YOU, child." Swiftly broken. 'It's been a while since anyone called me that.' "I can call ya that! I can do what I want." 'You can.' He could. Banana Beard had been here ever since square one. He was a master of dreams! Ampelio had only been an apprentice for seven long cycles. And counting. "About time ya sprouted, young sap." 'Sure.' Seven long cycles of words that didn't make sense. Seven long cycles of counting sheep and being a star less in the world of astronomy, which I assure you exists, and more in the world of athleticism. Words always failed Ampelio here. How could a young sap grow without them? "Ought be ABANDONED!! T'the weeds. They like your stench." Contact felt brief, then weightless, like drifting through space. "But that one won't let me." Gestures felt grandiose, cartoonish, like Tobias. But unlike Tobias, they weren't real, they didn't feel real, and you couldn't pat a gesture's face to show it that you cared. It was more like watching a movie, or looking at a neat painting. If you liked it? You watched. If you disliked it? ....You watched. This painting's perspective shifted, the camera tilted, and suddenly our focal point became: ....a carrot?

But there was no exit. Every other time, there were doors, traps, deaths, voids — anything that would keep Ampelio away. But not this time. "YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE," the entire world boomed. The roots of the carrot, like a pipe organ, filled the ground and the trees and the sky, all behind the scenes. Ampelio's fantastic wizard of Oz. It was all the machination of.... the carrot. "TODAY YOU WILL HEED MY WORDS. AT LAST. YOU WILL LISTEN. THERE WILL BE NO ESCAPE." The boundary between fear, comfort, and excitement grew thinner in a place like this. The stage of the mind was an experience like no other, vivid and shifting like some uninhabitable, foreign terrain. Imagination without much limit. Ampelio turned orange, and could not move.

"YOU WILL LISTEN. YOU WILL LISTEN. YOU WILL LISTEN." Ampelio could not refuse, and yet it was also impossible to comply. What good were elvish ears in a land where sound was fictional? "YOU HAVE ALWAYS POSSESSED IT." Ampelio could not smell anything, they were acutely aware.

They could smell gourds and flowers and fall but nothing else. Not the dirt rising high into the shape of a beast that might swallow them, nor the oncoming chill. "YOU WILL BECOME MY APPRENTICE. UNDERSTUDY. STUDY UNDER ME." Like a tidal wave when it builds, the level of the dirt went down and made a hole. Ampelio was swallowed by the roots, not the sky. "YOU WILL ROOT YOURSELF." Ampelio was flung into a wall of dirt. The mouth collapsed and they moved into the digestive tract. "YOU WILL BE ROOTED INTO." Ampelio was shaken clean like some kind of toy, or a precious stone. They tried, but they could not fight back — they could not move. "YOU WILL BE MY ROOT." Ampelio was plunged into more and more dirt, but felt no pain, no constriction, no loss of breath. "I WILL BE YOURS." Ampelio was freed into a dark cave, even darker than the last. The hole they had made closed above them, and their impact crater closed around their limbs, leaving them motionless. The only spotlight, dim and dusty, shone unyielding on a little orange carrot.

Now they matched.