This story contains male weight gain.)
Perhaps I should have brought a map, Diego wondered to himself. He’d explored the Red Mountain Woods and the ruins within enough by day that he thought he’d have no trouble navigating them at night with just a flashlight to help. So when he found an incredibly well-preserved ceremonial site and wanted to show his friend Hector as soon as possible, he thought nothing of going into the woods to see it after dark, when Hector would be out of work and Diego would be done teaching his classes for the day. Now, as he wandered around with just a flashlight and a vague sense of where he was, he was wishing they’d saved the trip for the weekend.
But it was too late to back out of their plans now. The sooner he showed Hector what he’d found, the sooner he could start his academic investigation of the site and publish what he discovered. He knew his colleagues in the archeology department would love to know what he’d found there. But first he had to meet up with his friend, and get them both to the site, or at least out of the woods.
Convincing Hector to meet up that night had already been enough of a challenge. Though Hector wasn’t an especially superstitious man, most folks had a healthy fear of the Red Mountain Woods, especially at night. The silence that permeated those woods, with nary even a bird calling out for its mate, was enough to make even a not particularly active imagination hear things. Diego knew that, and consciously, he knew he had nothing to be afraid of in those woods. They’d never held any threats to him during the day, and night would not suddenly bring out new ones.
But it did bring out his own fear, much as he didn’t want to admit it. Diego liked to think he was afraid of reasonable things as he walked through the woods that night: not meeting up with Hector and abandoning his friend, not being able to find his way out of the woods, tripping and injuring himself with no means to get help, all plausible ways his trip could have gone wrong. But the truth was, a part of him feared there was something more sinister in those woods, the same sort of sinister thing that kept folks out of the woods at night. And as scrawny as he was, with the lenses of his glasses being the only thick thing about him, if that something sinister meant him harm, he knew he would lose that fight.
Perhaps that something was nothing more than how difficult the woods were to navigate at night. The darkness made it hard to spot landmarks he usually used for navigating, forcing him to wander those woods largely by intuition. And though Diego considered himself a fairly intelligent man, he knew his intuition wasn't a reliable way to navigate those woods. He tried to stick to what few barely established paths existed in the woods, but even those were hard to find at night, with gnarled roots obscuring them and small trees and plants breaking them up.
But it was all Diego had to go on, and he had to find Hector. So he kept walking, hoping he’d stumble upon something that would remind him where he was. Flashlight scanning the horizon, he looked for familiar landmarks, or even a sign of Hector himself. Instead, what he the got was his foot failing to land on the ground in front of him, plunging down as the landscape rapidly rose around him, until he fell far enough that all he could see was pitch black.
Before Diego knew what was happening, he felt himself land on a thick patch of moss, cushioning his fall well enough that he didn't feel any worse for wear. Once he got his bearings, he felt around the area where he’d landed, feeling the moss give way to a flat, cold stone floor. To his relief, he felt his arm pass over his glasses, so he picked them up and found the lenses hadn't cracked.
With his vision restored, Diego looked up and could see the moonlight coming in through the hole he’d fallen through. He could also see that the wall leading up to it was far too smooth and featureless for him to climb out. It seemed he was in one of the old ruins. The scholar in him didn’t want to move, lest he ruin whatever archeological finds he’d stumbled into. But the pragmatist in him knew it might be his only way out of the ruin where he found himself stranded. After picking up his still-on flashlight, Diego sat upright and looked around the room.
