Top Floor

She had no clear conception of what she had expected at the top of a staircase on an unknown world, but she knew this was not it. The seemingly neverending treetops yielded abruptly to a vast wooden surface, easily as big as her village back home. The smooth planks of the large floor, roof or whatever did not appear to be treated in any particular way, but there were several lines and symbols painted on it in garish colours that looked like they would be visible even in the dark. Joran got the impression that the lines had been put down to direct some kind of flyers in landing and taking off, but as far as she knew flying monkeys had never needed that kind of direction. Was this for someone else then? The symbols were unknown to her, but there were only a few of them, so they might be some kind of numbers.

For lack of better ideas, she decided to try asking her steed Steed. Even though flying monkeys did not talk as such, they did have quite a selection of noises for communication. She leaned forward, pointed down at the roof and made the noise Steed used to make at the approach of someone he couldn't identify right ahead. She thought of it as "Who goes there?" which wasn't exactly what she wanted to ask, but it was the closest she could get.
After a moment's hesitation Steed answered with the sound he made to get her attention. She had at first thought it was his name for her, bet then she had noticed other flying monkeys addressing their riders in the same way, and figured it meant something like "rider".
She had never heard of flying monkeys having riders on their homeworld though. The next sound Steed made, was even harder to translate. Finally she realized he was repeating the attention sound twice, as if it was one word. Rider-rider? That did not make sense... unless the base word meant something else, like leader or chief. A chief of chiefs? That would work, but what would that mean anyway?

Steed had been circling over the wooden floor while Joran was thinking, and there was no sign of life down there. From this altitude she could not see if there were any hatches or other things suggesting why anyone would want to land on a particular part of the roof either, but that didn't mean there weren't any.

1. She lands on the roof, following the lines.
2. She lands, totally disregarding the lines.
3. She makes Steed fly really low over the roof, then jumps off.
4. She keeps circling.
5. She returns to the ground.
6. She tries to find out where the stairs come up.
7. Suddenly, something appears down on the roof.
8. Suddenly, someone appears out of thin air right next to her.
9. Okay, who let Josh Burbank into this plot??
10. Sir Toby intervenes.

Add New Option

Go Back

View Forward Story Tree
View Back Story Tree