Forest of Words

Lilli, an adventurous but naive little girl, finds a magical book in her deceased grandma's attic. When she starts reading the book, she literally gets sucked into the story, where a kelpie and a giant eagle greet her and welcome her to the world of "Sylubre". Meanwhile, Lilli's family starts looking for her in the real world, where they slowly uncover mystery after mystery. "Forest of Words" serves as the pilot episode for an animated mini-series. After the events of the pilot episode, the story progresses as follows: Lilli has vanished and her family is frantically trying to find her. Noah, her brother, decides to go off and do his own research, after hearing the police officer say that people go missing all the time in that town. In the local library, Noah comes across many cases of missing people over the years. At the same time, we get a closer look at the rules of the world of Sylubre: gradually, we discover that every character in the book is actually a human that has been sucked into the book, just like Lilli. For every human that enters the book, a character gets a chance to escape back into the real world. This way, the universe of the book is balanced. If there are too many or not enough characters in the book, the universe becomes unstable and eventually collapses, meaning, the longer Lilli is in this book, the closer it gets to collapsing. In the beginning of each of the later episodes, we find out how each character got sucked into the book, while Noah draws a connection between the book and the missing people. King Atlas, the Giant Sloth, wants his servants to bring Lilli to him, because he wants to trade places with her and get back into the real world - his motivation: get back to his daughter. We find out, that King Atlas is actually Evelyn's father, which she believed had left the family when she was a teenager, but in reality, he also got sucked into the book. Neither King Atlas, nor Lilli, know of their grandfather-granddaughter relationship. Time in Sylubre also works in strange ways: characters lose their sense of time and thus forget how long they have actually been there. Thus, King Atlas doesn't realize that his daughter is now an adult with children of her own. He manages to trick Lilli into taking his place and escapes the book, then returns to his old home - where he finds an adult Evelyn. He realizes how much time has truly passed, that his wife has since passed away and that he trapped his own granddaughter inside the book. While he explains what happened to his daughter Evelyn, Noah starts his own journey into the book of Sylubre, with the intention of saving his sister. The series ends with the entire family coming to save Lilli from the book. Evelyn's father, Evelyn, Frank, Noah and Lilli are now all inside the book of Sylubre. There's only one problem: 5 people have entered the book, but there's only space for 4 people to leave it again. King Atlas explains to the book's characters how much time has truly passed, which leads to them realizing that they won't ever return to their families, since their families are long gone. King Atlas decides to stay behind, wishing to be reunited with his wife one day. The family promises the book's characters that they will destroy the book after leaving it. In the real world, the family now burns the book, which sets all of its characters' souls free, finally giving them the chance to reunite with their loved ones, while Lilli is finally reunited with her own family.