Compendium by Alia Luria

faint hum. She pressed her ear close to the wall, and the noise grew stronger.
    Mia marveled at the texture and fine quality of the moss. It was completely unlike anything she’d seen or felt before. By the time she reached the bottom of the descent, the moss had thickened and now covered the walls and ceiling of the corridor. It hummed ever so slightly in every direction, the sound comforting her.
    She continued along the corridor, cautious in her movements, waiting for the tunnel to open into a room or split off, but it continued on as it was for quite some time. Then, suddenly, the hum grew louder. It deepened and reverberated through her body, squeezing her heart gently and relaxing her muscles.
    It almost sounds like the forest. Almost.
    She stopped and stood with her ear close to the mossy wall. At the point where the hum was the strongest, she rapped her knuckles lightly along the wall, methodically from side to side, starting near her head and moving back and forth and slowly downward along the point of concentration. There was no discernible change in the feel or sound of the stone. She was almost ready to give up in frustration when one of her slippers came in contact with a particularly squishy piece of moss near the ground.
    Crouching near the stone floor, careful not to step on her robes, Mia pressed her hand along the mossy bottom of the floor. Where her slipper had given, her hand did as well. It sank into the moss with an odd sensation, and she rooted around among the slick green until she found a hole in the stone wall. She groped urgently and felt out the edge of a square shape in the corridor wall.
    It was a bit larger than the width of her shoulders, slightly taller than her crouched figure, and completely disguised by the spongy moss. Ingenious! She pushed on the moss at the center of the hole experimentally, tentatively at first then with greater force. She squeezed her eyes closed, expecting to hear a ripping noise. Instead the moss gave way under her fingers. As if burrowing through a thicket, her hand slipped past the moss, and warm air swirled past her elbow on the other side. Mia stared at her arm, which was stuck in the moss, and twisted it back and forth. It moved freely. She pulled it out slowly, expecting to leave a hole. To her surprise, when she’d fully extricated her arm, the hole sucked itself closed. She saw no sign that anything had passed through it at all. She touched the surface of the moss again, and it sprang against her palm just as before.
    “Amazing,” she uttered quietly. “Just brilliant. This must be one of the access tunnels.”
    Her heart thumped in her chest at the prospect of getting a peek at the complex system that ran the Compound. She took a deep breath and leaned her head and shoulders into the moss. As with her hand, it stretched against her cheek. It was soft and fresh smelling, like when she had rubbed her face into the grass as a child. The moss gave way, but before she was able to open her eyes on the other side, footsteps resonated along the passage.
    Nervous excitement dissolved instantaneously into panic. Mia wasn’t sure where the footsteps were coming from or where they were going, but she retreated back into the corridor. She pushed herself with such force that she came out of the moss too far on her heels and lost her balance, collapsing hard on her rear end with a thud. The footsteps quickened, and to Mia’s horror, Brother SainClair’s face appeared around the corner. She tried to scramble to her feet, but it was too late. He’d already spotted her.
    She cringed as the roar emanated from SainClair’s lips. His boots slammed on the hard stone as he bored down on her. She braced herself for the impact of a blow. Instead he grabbed her by the neck and dragged her to her feet.
    “You! What are you doing snooping around this part of the Compound?” he yelled into her turned face then shook her roughly.
    Mia instinctively tried to squirm away from