Natalie 3

Taken down, have some Lovecraft instead

In the tunnels of that twisted wood, whose low prodigious oaks twine groping

boughs and shine dim with the phosphorescence of strange fungi, dwell the

furtive and secretive Zoogs; who know many obscure secrets of the dream world

and a few of the waking world, since the wood at two places touches the lands of

men, though it would be disastrous to say where. Certain unexplained rumours,

events, and vanishments occur among men where the Zoogs have access, and it is

well that they cannot travel far outside the world of dreams. But over the

nearer parts of the dream world they pass freely, flitting small and brown and

unseen and bearing back piquant tales to beguile the hours around their hearths

in the forest they love. Most of them live in burrows, but some inhabit the

trunks of the great trees; and although they live mostly on fungi it is muttered

that they have also a slight taste for meat, either physical or spiritual, for

certainly many dreamers have entered that wood who have not come out. Carter,

however, had no fear; for he was an old dreamer and had learnt their fluttering

language and made many a treaty with them; having found through their help the

splendid city of Celephais in Ooth-Nargai beyond the Tanarian Hills, where

reigns half the year the great King Kuranes, a man he had known by another name

in life. Kuranes was the one soul who had been to the star-gulls and returned

free from madness.