<br/>Aria gave Rose's hand a squeeze. "And to meet new ones," she chimed as they stepped through.<br/><br/>Although she experienced no vertigo or nausea with the sudden shift, the fact that they'd stepped into another world become immediately apparent: the air was suddenly cooler, the sky was now bright blue like in Faerun, and the greens of the foliage seemed somehow just a bit greener. They stood in the surroundings they'd seen: by a stone altar, within three concentric circles of standing stones. It seemed a ruin, yet still beautiful to Aria, with vines crawling and climbing upon the old gray stones. Beyond all this, trees rose like cathedral pillars, and cast branches chaotically in every direction, nearly reaching back to the center of the druidic site.<br/><br/>"Well met!" a greeting was shouted out in Elven, then repeated in Common. The voice belonged to one of a pair of male elves. They sat lackadaisically atop one of the trilithons of the outermost circle, a picnic blanket spread between, covered with wine-goblets and grapes and cheese and other picnic-fare. Both fellows were fair-featured, nearly ivory, with long ash-blonde tresses, almost feminine. They wore shirts of mithral chain which glittered faintly, clothing of fine green silk, each a quiver and longbow across his back, and a thin sword at a hip.<br/><br/>The other seemed to speak to his companion as much as to their visitors, yet still in Common. "I told you 'twas magic about this place! Just now was I wishing for a pair of fair lasses for us, and here they are! Dibs on the..." he scrutinized Rose and Aria, and flashed a grin, "How now, I cannot decide!"<br/><br/>The original greeter laughed, and called to the girls, raising a wineskin, "You'll stay and drink with us, surely? We'd be sore dejected and offended, o'erwise!"<br/><br/>"Yes," the other elf grinned toothily. "Most put out, indeed."<br/><br/>Something about their tone and the tautness of their smiles, though, would give both Rose and Aria a hunch that their greetings were a poor mask for more wicked thoughts. Looming above all that, quite literally, in the overhanging thick-leaved trees, Rose would spot two huge green-and-black bodied spiders, poised still and silent.<br/>