[You are in a forest grove. On your left, a cliff of crumbling black rock towers up, the slope not quite vertical. It's overgrown with vines, orchids and flowers, and there are many handholds and footholds; it might not be a safe climb, but it wouldn't be a particularly difficult one. A thin, rapid waterfall splashes noisily white down the cliff, ending in a little clear pool with a black sand bottom, from which a little stream pours, cutting downhill across the clearing and into the undergrowth on the other side.

Ringing the rest of the area, and growing up quite close to the cliff base, are huge, ancient tropical chestnut and fig trees; their trunks are too smooth to shimmy up, their branches out of reach. All around the edge of the clearing, the undergrowth presses thick and high; the clearing itself has obviously been recently created by some human hand. The land has been cleared to the very soil, which looks fertile and rich.

It's very odd that nothing is growing here, when the plants in the surrounding jungle are unmistakably racing and competing for every inch of soil and sunlight, but it does seem to have been recently tilled... maybe it's been sown with something. Judging from the fact that sunlight is shafting through to the ground, obstructed only by the highest level of canopy, trees were felled to make this space.

The air is hot and humid, but a fitful breeze is blowing. Birds are singing -- some sweetly and some with harsh cries. If you look up, you can see them flitting about, but none choose the trees of this particular grove to land in. A well trampled path follows the stream out of the grove.]