Page 44 of Eight Embers

“Is that what I think it is? I haven't smelled that since...” Spencer closes his eyes and inhales deeply, tension leaving his body as he does. “It smells like the best cookies I've ever had in my life. The batch grandma made for my 7th birthday. Damn, they were perfect.”

“Cookies? No. It smells of rotting flesh. It's delightful.” How Rush says this with an actual smile on his face is actually not the most alarming thing we've encountered here.

Turns out they're both wrong. “Saladriel, why does this ominous tunnel of clouds with a river running through it smell exactly like Adam's cum?”

“Wait, does everybody's cum smell different to you?” Saladriel asks in earnest.

“I don't think anybody wants to know what I think,” Wil says dejectedly.

“Hey,” I say as I lift his chin. He looks at me, and happy silly butterflies erupt in my stomach. “What does it smell like to you?”

“The patch of grass where we went to convention when I turned 13. There were a lot of wildflowers that year, and lots of bees. Everything that grew there just tasted perfect.”

Saladriel walks to the side of the tunnel and opens what looks like a shed, the sound of scraping metal echoes and with a bit of resistance, he tugs a rowboat out into the stream.

He stands and he's about to talk, but then he thinks better of it and takes a few steps back to the side, hits a switch, and the entire tunnel lights up with neon pink and red lights. Music starts up, and then a big sign that reads, ‘Tunnel of Love’ descends from the ceiling right above us.

I stare up at it, dumbfounded. “Yikes. That's really... yeah, that's really there, alright.”

“Fairygoddess likes to encourage us to be immersed with one another, remember? This is the most direct route to where we need to go. I know it seems a little odd to you, but I thought you might like it,” he says with a shrug.

“Alright, love tunnel it is!” Spencer says as he rushes toward the boat. He turns to look at us, and one by one we shrug and reluctantly get in as well.

The second Saladriel kicks off from the bank of clouds, we begin to speedily float through the Tunnel of Love.

At first, it's mostly innocent things, like the lights and the music and the smells that seem to cater to each of us individually, or evoking something from our past that we enjoyed.

But as we turn the corner, a new section emerges. Sounds of flesh slapping together is faint enough where you have to strain your ears to hear it, present enough to give us all tingles and a little bit of a flush, but not substantial enough to truly enjoy.

Eventually, an animatronic flying cupid drops from a cable in the ceiling playing a violin, sprinkling down confetti that looks very much like the psychedelic stuff that fairy goddess told me would fuck me up.

I learned my lesson last time. I scoop some of that shit up and stuff it in my bra in case I need it later.

“The inn is just up here,” Saladriel says as his face flushes with embarrassment.

The boat does indeed move swiftly, and after listening to several awful ballads written specifically for unicorns, praising the silkiness of a mane, or the way a certain flank glistens in the sun, Saladriel is mooring us off to the side where there's a sign like you'd see on a highway back home. The exit simply says ‘Trope Inn’, and there's an arrow pointing off to the right. I’m giddy, looking forward to whatever is about to be delivered unto us.

“I should probably warn you—” Saladriel starts, but I cut him off.

“No, you shouldn't. We're on an adventure. I'll take whatever's about to happen at face value.”

He sighs resignedly, and I get my first glimpse of other unicorns.

It's not just an inn here, there're other buildings as well; what look like cafes with benches outside, roads made of cobblestones if cobblestones were made of clouds instead of stone, and plenty of grass patches where there are unicorns grazing helter-skelter.

Every single unicorn that sees us stops immediately and drops their jaw open, staring at us like we're some freaks from a different world or something.

Oh, wait.

I give them a wave and a smile, sidling a little closer to Saladriel as I do in case they think we weren’t invited here.

Nobody seems to want to talk to us, but that's probably because Rush is currently in the fetal position, rocking back and forth against the nearest wall he could find.

“It's okay Rush,” I coax. “They're nice unicorns. I promise.”

Just because they want to prove me wrong, a passing unicorn spits on us, literally turns his nose in the air while saying loud enough for all of us to hear, “Damn tourists,” before sashaying away.

Saladriel looks like he's moments away from bounding after them and accosting them in some form, but I assure him it's fine.

---