Our story continues:
You follow the magic thread towards what you hope is the girl next door. You think you're running out of time. The fiery sky seems lower, somehow. And around you, the world is growing darker.
It's also growing stranger, melting and changing as you move through it. You're in a wasteland, and then in the ruins of a city, and then in the middle of a forest. You think they're all illusions; they don't feel real. In fact, this whole place is beginning to strike you as an illusion.
Is it just random? Is it meant to fool you? Was the old man on the mountain part of it?
As you try to move through a shifting landscape that probably isn't real, you think back over the last day. Everything was too easy, and also more than a little cliched...as if someone, somewhere, was making up a not very good story and sticking you and the girl next door into the middle of it. And now...you think maybe things are less solid here because you're not really in the story any more. The girl next door is, though. Surely the landscape will firm up as you approach her.
It doesn't. You think you are getting close, but everything is still in flux. That doesn't seem right.
And then the ruined city grows around you again. And it's full of statues.
You've read books. You know that when you come across a bunch of human-looking statues somewhere they shouldn't be, it's never a good sign. You're pretty sure you already know what you're going to find.
You find it fairly quickly. One of the statues looks just like the girl next door.
You may have a brief "I told you so" moment at this point. But you can't dwell on it. You have to figure out what to do next.
We're back to the accordion because it's good at weird chords that evoke creepy otherworldly journeys. Our Heroine gets both dark and light versions of her leitmotif here, the former as she begins to realise how problematic her situation is and the latter when she finds the girl next door and gets very, very determined.
@thedutchwidows Feb 2022
Some awesome playing here; may favourite bits were the pulsing bass notes (at around 2m30s mark and around 4m10s). Such a cool effect.
I love the self-referential elements to the story - "if someone, somewhere, was making up a not very good story and sticking you and the girl next door into the middle of it." Very meta.
I was ok with unexpected statues until the whole Doctor Who Weeping Angels thing. Now I'm not so keen...