Hearing footsteps emerging from the lounge room door behind her, Dryadia started down the hallway toward the lawn and freedom.   When suddenly her escape route was cut off.

“Who’s that?” asked a tall, grey-haired man, Deni Curran, starting down the corridor toward her.   “Is that you, Sally?”

“No, it’s…” began Deni’s son-in-law, Harben Lomax.

Again Dryadia shrilled her woodland shriek, “Eeeeeeeeeiii!”

“What the…?” said Deni.   The two men started down the yellow-carpeted corridor toward the woodland nymph.

Squealing again as the two men started toward her, Dryadia reversed direction and started back toward the lounge room door.

“Look out!” warned Sally Curran as her daughter stood in the doorway cradling young Suzie in her arms.

Squealing in shock as Dryadia raced back toward them, Sandy backed into the lounge room as the nymph raced toward the front door of the house.

“Open!   Open!” thought Dryadia, trying to will the front door to release her into the outdoors.   She had seen and heard humans entering or leaving the house through the doorway many times.

“How is it done?   How is it done?” thought the woodland nymph slapping at the metal lock with her slender hands.

“Who in the world is she?” asked Deni Curran.

“And what is she doing?” asked Harben as the alabaster woman continued to slap-slap-slap her hands against the lock.

Entirely by luck, one of the pale hands slapped the knob on the lock the right way and the door suddenly sprang open.

“Eeeeeeeeeiii!” squealed Dryadia in shock as the door flew open, almost slamming into her face.

“Eeeeeeeeeiii!” squealed Suzie Lomax in answer as the strange pale-skinned woman raced forward and out onto the front patio, then beyond, to the lush lawn of the Lomaxes front garden.

For a second, seeing two fern saplings beside the bay window outside the front of the house, Dryadia considered transforming into a sapling.   She wondered if the pursuing humans would notice that there was suddenly a third sapling in their yard?   But as the Lomaxes and Currans raced out through the front door behind her, the dryad realised she had missed her opportunity and turned toward the front of the yard.   Only to be confronted by another obstacle: