• Ryan was completely and utterly out of luck, which was why he ended up in the middle of nowhere in the first place.
    He'd known it was a dumb idea from the start. As he wiped blonde hair off his sweating forehead, he briefly wondered how you knew which plants were edible. He was hungry. He was tired. He was oh-so-very lost. Karma, he thought. This is all karma for losing my job and being a jerk and breaking up with Sandy after that flower pot fell out the window, which was really mostly my fault.
    And then he'd gone and went of with some proffessor in search of some lost secret or something (he only really remembered there'd been money involved) and now he was stuck in a freakin humid rainforest with freakin psycho mosquitos and the sudden urge to tie his t-shirt around his eyebrows.
    Ryan took a few more steps forward, and then slumped over a rock. He was a slacker by nature. He liked microwaves and tv remotes. Not walking. And not. Freaking. Rainforests.
    Am I gonna die out here? he moaned mentally. All alone... and hungry... and missing Sandy's tofu chicken enchiladas...
    He slipped further down on the rock, the image of picturesque despair. He stared at a plant and blew on it. Over. And over. And over.
    And...
    What....
    There was.... a jingling noise.
    He cocked his head. It was annoyed. An annoyed jingle. Like Santa's sleigh, but... well, not jolly. More like... the sound had somehow developed a conciousness and woke up on the wrong side of the bed...
    Suddenly... he felt... groggy ...
    The sound grew more insistant, louder and louder and...
    His eyes, endless fields of blue, closed.
    From the plant, a tiny hand poked out and prodded his eyelid.

    Glingle...
    "Aia?"
    glingleglingle...
    "Yes, Aia, what is it?"
    GLINGLE!
    "Oh. I see..."
    ...glingle...
    "How interesting..."

    Ryan's eyes opened. Jingling? What? And... some guy's voice?
    He looked up.
    A tiny head bent over his nose. It had bright green eyes. Dark hair. As of this second, it had decided to raise an eyebrow.
    It was a person? A tiny person? With... little... gossamer... wings...
    Ryan close his eyes and passed right back out.