She was actually the mother of the young girl gone missing in the woods. I was surprised that she would be willing to do this for me despite still being under distress of her lost child. She told me that I reminded her of her little girl and that she would expect someone else to do the same for her lost child as well. We walked around together greeting other villagers and animals past the carrot garden to finally reach her house. It was a space big enough for just two people, her and her daughter. There were still traces of her daughter throughout the house as if she had never been gone. Before I could observe the space any more in detail, the lady came out to offer me some tea to calm down my shock from landing in this unfamiliar location. As I sipped on my tea, I also told her more of where I came from and how I could have possibly ended up here as well as to why I might have been sent here.

As I was speaking, I had felt something moving around in my pockets and so I reached in to grab out an old wrinkled piece of paper. I laid it out on the table and it seemed to be a map of some sort pointing to a spot marked with a big X. I showed it to the lady asking if this map looked familiar to her and her eyes immediately grew wide. She took the map and brought it closer to her face to observe it in better detail. The map was a drawing of the island where this village was located. The villagers have been told by generations that there is a great treasure hidden in the island somewhere, but no one so far had found it because there was no other information about the placement of the treasure. The lady told me that I must have been a gift sent down by the gods for the village. Their only resource of glass was running low and to prepare for winter all they had were the crops grown in their gardens so the discovery of the treasure must be a miracle for everyone. She grabbed my hand and the treasure map in the other while running out to the center of the village. When we arrived and everyone gathered around us wondering what could possibly be going on, the lady held up the map for everyone to see. Unlike me, who needed some explanation on what this piece of paper could be telling, everyone seemed to catch on pretty quickly as I heard more voices overlapping each other out of excitement.

Then the silence broke when the men who I encountered earlier that day in the forest came back. The missing girl was still no longer to be seen and all they had found was her shoe torn apart by what seemed to have been the bears living in the forest. It had already been a week since she had gone missing and everyone was pretty tired of the search. One mad had even been attacked by a bear during their search two days ago. With this shoe, the villagers decided that the girl had been taken by the bear and that the search can now be ceased. The lady accepted this decision as if she had already seen it coming.

The men then quickly turned their journey to a different direction in searching for the treasure that I brought upon to make everyone in the village happy again and so that there would be no more worries about an abundance of resources or people. The journey seemed like one that would take quite a long time and a larger number of people so they started to take volunteers to join them. Strong men and wise women offered to go and search for the treasure and when there was finally one more spot left, I volunteered as well. Everyone, knowing my situation, suggested that I stay at the lady’s house and get more rest, but I insisted that I should come along. Afterall, I was the one who had brought the map and so I believed that I could somehow help in the search as well. The villagers also agreed and allowed me to join them for this reason and so we quickly went into preparing for our leave tomorrow morning. We used the last bits of glass leftover to make weapons and tools, gathered crops for food, and protective garments for this long search ahead of us. Like how I tossed and turned in my bed that night, I tossed and turned on the cold floor struggling to get any sleep again. However, this time I did not wake up in a completely different room or space. I was in the same spot now getting ready to search for this treasure I brought upon.