(sometime between then and some unremembered duration, things change drastically)
At some point, you receive advice from an unremembered wise non-tourist character.... that to reach my destination i strive to reach, i must have a particular elf/fairy (?) accompany me. apparently he can be summoned from a nearby stump that seems to grow up out of the ground. he emerges and there is a puzzle i must solve first on a manuscript or a board? to begin my journey. i'm not sure if the buffalo is with me or if the fairy takes the shape of a small animal (the buffalo was never that big), but i have engaged an animal-like companion somepoint close to this. at one point the puzzle bores me and i need to take a break, but i am lying on a animal-skin bed in a natural setting and put the book of the current puzzle of the whole story itself down and say i need a break, and there's a tv embedded in a tree truck and start to watch a different story, but it's the same one, so there's mixed media messages here, that i can't quite pick out. just before the puzzle was delivered (looks alot like mahjong-with overlapping symboled tiles), i was explained the nature of the journey and what would have to happen to me- it seems i would have to undergo some sort of adaptation to be able to manage the trip. so, eager to do so and get on my way, the transformation slipped up upon me rather early on, but slowly without my noticing- signaled by a moment when the elf/fairy-guide, who in his early moments upon emerging looked like a stirring energy sandwiched between two half-shells, small almost like a broken open nut-- he looks at me and i, in turn see my 'character' and with admiration, remarks on how well my changes are going. already there is hocks of hair around my feet and lower arms, i have a more hearty tone, filling out my tshirt, and stronger jawline/visage. either its the growing muscle tone or sense of pride, my chest swells. the journey, back in this natural setting of resting the first night (?), i cuddle up in the animal skin bedding with my companion, the new companion animal or elf-turned-pigmy donkey , i'm not sure. i wakeup with the images somewhere along this point.