NEW: Phenomenon.

 

The room dissolved and Nathaniel found himself in a clearing - thin young trees surrounded him, but they seemed still, as if caught in mid-motion. He couldn't tell if it was night or day - a mist surrounding everything was so heavy that it could be either.

The air was thick and damp, though he felt nothing. He held out his hand, droplets from the mist clung to his outstretched fingers, though again - he felt nothing. He blinked - long and deliberate, but the view around him didn't change. He was either in a thick, near-real daydream, or he had been transported somehow, to another realm.

He galvanised his usual everyday senses, trying to make a clear judgement as to whatever this was. He curled his toes. He could still feel the thin threadbare rug under his naked feet. He couldn't see the rug, for all intents and purposes his toes were curling through the damp mulch of fallen leaves. He couldn't smell, hear, or taste anything but the dense silent clearing, but he knew he was still in the room, still within the walls of the cottage. This was no dream, and certainly no transportation to another realm. This was an illusion, a construct that had his mind trapped within its midst, like a fly in a spiders web. But how, and why? 

And then he heard something - a rustle, a shift, a movement amongst the trees, and he knew that he was no longer alone.