Lugh ran after, hampered by the shaking ground.  He glanced back over his shoulder to see what was happening and nearly fell.  He saw ground cascading off of what looked like stone pushing up from the earth. 

The girl, Oatey, had reached her goat.  He hadn’t seen she was armed, but she took from the waist of her loincloth a knife.  She tossed away her bundle of items and approached the goat.  The goat was already struggling at the tether and Lugh expected that she would cut the goat free. 

Oatey used her body and one hand to shorten the lead, moving up the line until she could grasp the goat.  It was struggling madly from the shaking ground.  The girl expertly grasped it by one horn with her free hand, wrenching it around she plunged her knife into the goats neck and then twisted it as she jerked it out.

Lugh gasped, the sudden violence was not what he expected

Oatey released the bleeding goat that bucked and plunged to escape this new danger.  The girl slid back along the lead line and after wrapping it several turns around her arm stretched it tight from the peg and cut it loose.  She stuffed the knife into a sheath and gathered her things, all the while holding on to the plunging goat.

The girl glanced at Lugh, a fierce smile on her face, and then she let the goat have its head, letting it pull her along toward the treeline.

“What is that?” Lugh asked, looking back at what appeared to be stone ripping free of the sod.  He turned back only to see that the girl and the bleeding goat were nowhere to be seen.  Lugh shouldered his pack and settled his weapons for pursuit, then began to run toward where he had seen the girl and goat heading before he’d stopped to marvel at the geologic wonder that still shook the earth.

It was no difficulty to follow the blood trail that the goat was leaving.  Lugh decided that perhaps that was her intent, but he couldn’t help feeling disconcerted.  Oatey Moss, whatever else she might be, was unpredictable and likely dangerous.  “Why am I following her?” He thought to himself, but he already knew the answer to that.

The night was dark save for one star.  I breathed and felt much pain.  My voice echo in the hollow earth when I cried out.  I had fallen into a sidhe and there I lay atop a mound of broken timbers and sod.

There was no flying out of this, nor could I climb up the walls as if it were a well.  Panic gripped me, I confess, my breath came too quickly and as sod was still drifting down I breathed so much I began to cough.  I struggled to my hands and knees.  The fight to breath focused me.  I was not dead, nor even that injured.  I was in the home of my friend, the girl who had laughed, Jella.

At first this was small comfort.  I was in darkness and knowing that none of my folk would ever find me here brought rising panic again.  I tried to remember the place in my dream, it had been lit in the middle and around the perimeter. In truth it wasn’t that large.  I walked down off the pile I had ridden to the floor and promptly tripped over something hard and sprawled on stone flagging covered with more of the result of my descent.

I rose again, walking like a blind man, arms waving, I headed off in what I thought a straight line toward the wall of the place.  Eventually I must find it, surely.  Before I did, I found a wall of stone.  I followed it to a quick turning and felt along one side to the back.  Reaching, I found a screen richly carved with images my fingers could not puzzle out, but I followed it to stone again.  Now I hurried, trusting this was a back wall and was rewarded with slamming my knee into something hard.  I fell into more hard edged items and then the stone floor.  In agony I clutched my knee.

Light was gone from my world.  I was lost.  Lost in a big room, not much more, but it was frighteningly strange for a boy who had always lived with not much more than some leather between himself and the sky.  I felt stiffled in the dusty hole.  I cried out for the only friend who I thought could help, “Jella!” Echoes died quickly and silence mocked me, “Jella, where are you? I need you now.”

I felt my way back to the wall and was too wounded in spirit and frightened by the dark to try to find my way.  I leaned back against the wall and stared, marvelling that eyes opened or closed it made no difference.  “Jella!” I closed my eyes.

The sun was rising where she was.  I saw it color the clouds before it mounted into the sky.  There were herd deer everywhere.  The north deer all have antlers and they are all colored alike, I could not tell which was male and which female, I was in a sea of tawny, antlered, steam breathed herd deer.  There were snorts and a bellow and the creatures shied from where I was.