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Noa stared warily at her research partner, Valentina, as she paced back and forth across their shared office. 'This is our chance Noa!' she insisted. 'We've spent years finding out everything we can about Aksum civilization, and now we have got the opportunity to make an actual discovery of never-before-seen artifacts. It'll be revolutionary!'

'What makes you so sure the maps are right and the artifacts are actually there?' Noa asked suspiciously. 'We could find an Aksum temple, but we could just as easily stumble into a pit of quicksand and die in the jungle.'

Val rolled her eyes. 'Don't be ridiculous, that's why I've already found a guide native to the area. She's an expert, we'll be fine when we stay with her! And the maps don't lie - I'm positive it's there.'

'I don't see why you need me to go with you,' Noa hedged. 'You're better suited for it than me.' Her partner was a 180cm tall, thin, fit woman with short wavy black hair, blue eyes, and beautifully tanned skin. Val went to the gym on a tri-weekly basis, and whenever their research required field work, she was the one to take it on. In contrast, Noa was content to stay at her desk, figuring things out with her books and laptop. At 165cm tall, with light, freckled skin, long brown hair, brown eyes, and glasses, Noa knew that she was more of a bookwork than anything else. 'I'm not cut out to go into the jungle.'

'I can't do this without you!' Val insisted pleadingly. 'Besides, you can't miss out on this, it's the discovery of a lifetime, of our lifetime! It'll be a fun adventure.'

'Oh of course, this will be a "fun adventure,"' Noa grumbled while she pushed aside vines as she tiredly hacked her way through the jungle. 'Thanks for nothing Val.'

In spite of her apprehension, the first leg of their journey had started out well. Their guide Juana, a short, althetic-looking dark-skinned woman with braided black hair, dark eyes, and a pleasant disposition despite her rather dangerous line of work, had taken them into the jungle first in a car. When the road ended, they'd started out on foot. That had been fine, until Noa had gotten separated from Juana and Valentina, both due to her own incompetence and their pace outmatching hers easily.

'I can't believe this,' Noa complained, grunting as she pushed aside another large vine that was in her way. Not only did she have no idea where she was going or how to return to where she'd started, she was trying not to panic about her likelihood of survival on her own. In her pack she had one knife, a compass, water and a few days' worth of food if she rationed, but that was it as far as supplies - most of the space in her pack she had devoted to her notebooks worth of information on Aksum.

After another two-hundred meters, Noa sighed and threw her pack down, wiping off her brow. She knew she wasn't getting far, but she hadn't anticipated just how exhausting it would be trying to get past all the rocks, ferns and other plant life that blocked her way through the jungle. At least Val had forced an outfit on her - Noa had her hair tied back in a ponytail and her glasses perched on her nose, and Valentina had talked her into a white cropped tank top, a pair of khaki shorts with a thick belt, along with a pair of sturdy hiking boots. While Noa had protested at first, she was grateful now for every bit of skin that showed, as the heat in the jungle was nearly unbearable.

Frustrated, Noa began to pace in the small clearing near her pack. 'I have the compass at least, and copies of the maps to the temple,' she muttered to herself, 'and I do know how to read a map. There's at least a chance I can figure out the way there and meet-AHH!'

Noa let out a yelp as she tripped over a stone, sending her flying into a clump of hanging vines. She sighed heavily as she lay face-forward with her upper body suspended by the vines and only the tips of her toes still touching the ground. 'Great, just great, will anything ever go my way?' She began to struggle to stand up, but as she squirmed and tried to get purchase on the ground, she only seemed to be succeeding in getting herself more stuck. Somehow when she fell she managed to get her arms wrapped up in some vines, and she could feel another twined around her leg. 'This- is- ridiculous!' she grunted, struggling more as she tried to break free.

She jerked her left arm down, trying to pull it free, then froze abruptly. Instead of loosening at the movement, the vine had begun to tighten - on its own. For no obvious reason the vine began twisting around Noa's arm until it was wrapped tightly around her arm from her elbow to her wrist. 'What's going on?' Noa whispered in panic, as the vine around her right arm started doing the same.

Frantically, a memory appeared into her head from when she, Val and Juana had first began walking through the jungle. 'Now, stay close and be wary,' their guide had warned. 'Strange things often happen here, especially if you are not careful. Some say this forest has a mind of its own.' At the time, she and her partner had both laughed. Noa hadn't thought their guide was serious.

In spite of her desperately renewed struggles, the vines continued to move of their own volition. Soon, Noa's arms were encased in vines and had been pulled up above her head. Her legs had been wrapped up as well, lifting her feet up off the floor. As she hung over the floor of the jungle, trapped by the vines, she was at a complete loss as for what to do next. It wasn't as though she could talk or reason with a plant.

Suddenly, she felt another vine creeping across her soft, chubby, exposed belly. Instead of wrapping tightly around her stomach, the vine -incredibly- began to wiggle its tip over the lower portion of Noa's extremely ticklish bare belly. Noa let out a loud laugh of surprise. 'H-Hehehey, what's g-going ohohon?' she asked herself in amazement. She tried to crane her head back to look behind her, up at the treetops, positive that there must be someone up there pulling strings or... or... or something. 'Thehehere's n-n-nohoho way this p-plahahant is t-t-tickling mehehe!' she cried in disbelief through her laughter.

As if to punish her for her denial, more vine-tips began poked down and began wiggling over her sides and the upper portion of her belly. She jerked in surprise and began to laugh harder, with her laughter only growing in volume and desperation as more vines began to tickle under her exposed armpits. 'Thihihis i-isn't h-h-hahahappening!' Noa squeaked while yet another vine wiggled across the back of her neck. 'This isn't p-possible! Hahahahah!'

She knew, intellectually, that vines didn't have ears nor anything in the way of higher reasoning skills, but it was like when she voiced her disbelief the vines began to tickle her more rapidly, and she felt even more vines joining the ones that were already tickling her tummy. 'This c-can't be reheheal, this cahahan't be hahahappening!' Noa chanted to herself, unable to hold back her laughter as the vine tips crawled over her belly, wiggled under her arms, scurried across the back of her neck, and poked at her shoulderblades. 'This isn't r-reheheheEEAL!' Noa squealed loudly as the tip of a vine poked inside her deep innie navel and began swirling around her belly button.

'Nohohohohoh, n-nohohoho, lehehet me gohohoho!' Noa cried, struggling in the clutches of the vines as she laughed uncontrollably. 'Stohohohop!' If anything, the pace of the tickling seemed to increase.

Well, one thing was certain. If she ever got free and found her friend and guide again, she would never question anymore of Juana's statements - especially about the nature of the jungle.