"For me, it is a presence. A nudge. A gentle hand slowly turning my chin towards the windows, where their white trunks reach skywards and their golden leaves glow in the three-sun dawn. I find myself pressing my fingers to the tempered glass when I'm supposed to be conducting experiments or tidying up the mess hall. My feet work their way into the airlock without conscious reason."
"Flynn dreams of papery bark unrolling like scrolls of wisdom. He sleepwalks and wakes with a hunger our freeze-dried rations can't satiate. Avery hears music - a rustle of branches in the generator's hum, in the static of the comms, in her head. For Cooper, it manifests as phantom smells, carrying flashes of warm childhood memories. The richness of soil. The sharpness of leaves. "Like the woods by Grandpa's old cabin.""
A mysterious gravity from a vast forest of white trunks and honey-coloured leaves draws a four-person landing crew toward the trees. Each crew member experiences the pull differently: one senses a presence nudging attention to the windows, another dreams of unrolling papery bark and develops an unrelenting hunger, a third hears music in machinery and static, and a fourth experiences phantom smells evoking childhood woods. The crew debates reporting the phenomena, delays official documentation, and advances an early excursion. On the first walk they collect feathers, leaves, soil, bark, and photograph the landscape while curious birdlike creatures observe.
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