Greetings! The following is part of an interactive fiction project we’re running on Meh for April Fools Day. Feel free to join in, or, if you’re just shopping, ignore all this and scroll down to the features.
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The wall of stone is completely smooth. You run your hands over it, desperately hoping to find some tiny crater, somewhere to insert a foot and maybe hoist yourself up, grab the lip of the cliff and pull yourself over.
There’s a tree at the top, bonsai-like in the intricacy of its branches, growing improbably from some small unseen pocket of dirt. You think: if you could get up there, maybe you could take shelter under it when the rain starts.
And just as this thought occurs to you, a ribbon of lightning splinters through the sky, striking this very tree. You are looking up at it as it’s hit, and it seems to be reaching down to you, offering you a hand. But no. It’s falling!
You duck and roll just in time so as not to be pulverized. In the moment it takes to catch your breath, the sky clears. The brunt of the storm has missed you. And now the tree is the perfect ladder to the rest of the path.
