It was brief, close yet distant. As if he were in one room and the child to whom the laughter belonged stood in another next to him. He started, and his fist clenched, grabbing a handful of gravel on the ground beneath him where once there had been dirt. He opened his eyes slowly. The world still seemed to sway and shift but that mattered very little in comparison to what he saw now. The forest had given way to a road. It was a long, wide, winding path paved with gravel and small stones, bordered with uneven rocks demarcating it from the steep inclines on either side, leading up to the impenetrable forests either side of him. Mist seeped among the trees, strange shapes and forms winking in and out of existence but never spilling over down into the road below. The trees soared high above him like buildings, still and peaceful. The wind, for once, was missing. The trees reached towards one another and came together in an arc above him, the canopy's false starlight peppering the ground with tiny orange sunspots in the dying light of the evening.