Nell had already worked her way deep into the woods, or as deep as you 
could get in a narrow greenbelt made to separate one Leased Territory from 
another. She fell down a couple of times and banged her head on a tree until, 
with childish adaptivity, she realized that she was on one of those surfaces 
that wasn't flat like a floor, street, or sidewalk. The ankles would actually 
have to show some versatility here. It was like one of those places she had 
read about in the Illustrated Primer, a magical zone where the fractal 
dimension of the terrain had been allowed to struggle off the pin, bumps 
supporting smaller copies of themselves, repeat until microscopic, throw dirt 
over it, and plant some of those creepy new Douglas firs that grow as fast as 
bamboo. Nell soon encountered a big Doug that had blown down in a recent 
typhoon, popping its own rootball out of the
ground and thereby excavating a handy depression that invited nestling. Nell 
jumped in.