You analyze the options, none of which seem particularly good. The carnival...well I won't go through your diatribe about it again, but it's a no. You ponder the cottage and shake your head. You know what' going to happen, you just know there's going to be a witch in there to turn you into a frog or something.
"Actually there's not a lot of frog TF stories." You say "Odd, that, when you think about it-" but you don't think about it. You've no time to think about magic you're trapped in a TF story. You reject that as a possibility. That leaves the tree and the inn as options. The obvious choice would be the Inn. After all it's where someone who is seemingly normal would do when trapped in a strange location is to go and ask how to get out (or they'd go to the carnival, but...well...your diatribe, remember?). You're all ready to head down that path, but you stop. One thing you always hear people complain about it that there aren't enough plant TFs out there. So the tree, which seems like a sure fire way to get transformed into a tree is actually a safer choice by virtue of the fact that no one's going to follow a Plant TF setup.
"Tree!" you shout and walk down the path. As you get closer the huge tree looks even larger. By the time you're right up to it, it's so tall and wide that you almost could fit inside. You can hear birds high up in the trees chirping away at their songs. Greyish brown squirrels run about at the bottom picking up acorns and either noshing on them or carrying them off to be eaten alone or perhaps buried. The path, unfortunately, ends with the tree. Also unfortunately there's a big juicy delicious-looking apple sitting on the ground.
"Oh come on. What am I an amateur? Every one knows how this goes. Big tree, guy eats an apple from it, turns into a tree. On the few plant TFs there are on this site that's how they always always ALWAYS go." you say. Then you think about your last statement. Perhaps that's what the Guardian wants you to think. To make you think that eating the apple is the obviously bad choice but then have it be the thing that could have saved you. Much like eating a plant at random saved Odysseus from the wrath of Circe.
"Oh for the-you're not fooling anyway you know. You're just trying to fill me with self-doubt so that I'll pick up the apple and bite into it like a moron. And by the way, Mr. Narrator, if you'd bothered to do any homework you'd know Odysseus didn't eat a plant at random, he was given the plant by Hermes when he warned him about Circe." You grumble.
Then again, you think, in every TF story since EVER the victim inevitably gets some piece of advice, but waves it off as pure bunk and ends up getting transformed because he didn't follow that advice. Damn narrator, you think to yourself, I hate it when he's right. You also think that-HEY don't you DARE think that about my mother.
"Then don't read my thoughts anymore." you say. Still the question remains, eat the apple or leave the apple alone?
"Damn."