Ch. 1 – No. 1: Discoveries

A wanderer encounters an abandoned house in the Circadian Forest.

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A creature lay curled up in the hearth of a wide stonework stove. This stove was the most intact part of the crumbling, one-room house by which it was surrounded, save for a lonely ceramic cup sitting on the cooktop. No warmth, aside from that of the creature’s body, had occupied the hearth in decades.

During those decades, the world had steadily reclaimed the house, making entropy from order as the structure sat untended. The surrounding forest had cast decay upon the roof, the front door, the window frames, the floorboards. People had come and gone, taking with them stone, glass windowpanes, the metal handle of the front door, which had fallen to the ground as the wood moldered.

All the while, the creature remained. When the soil was first leveled here, when dexterous hands placed the first stones carefully upon the floor of the Circadian Forest, the creature arose. And when the last scrap of the structure perishes, so too will he.

The creature was roused from sleep by soft footfalls on what was left of the floorboards. As he awoke, inklings of the person’s intent became clear when his senses reached her. She thought to claim the house.

“Hm…,” she mumbled to herself as she strolled, careful with her footing, keenly inspecting the decrepit structure.

“The foundation still seems good…

“Excellent stonework…”

She ran a hand along one of the more intact walls, then turned toward the stove. Scuttling out of sight, the creature hid himself in the enclosed front corner of the hearth. As the person approached, the creature’s discerning nose caught her distinct scent: sweat, woodsmoke, scrubland rose oil, and the residual scent of a beast — her steed.

Halting in front of the stove, she ran a hand along the cooktop, across the marred and scratched surface that had clearly seen many hot meals, seasons of preserves and tonics, countless steaming kettles.

“A metal stovetop!” she exclaimed in a hushed tone. “How has this not been looted?”

The person held the handle of a fishing creel. Peering around the stone, the creature was unable to resist the scent of the freshly caught fish therein, and to his delight she set the vessel onto the floor in front of the stove. Slyly, the creature crept his pointed snout around the stone that concealed him to find that peaking out from beneath the lid was the tail of a fish. Ever so slowly, he worked to pull it out.

Meanwhile, the person picked up the ceramic cup. She glanced down at the creel as the lid softly thumped shut, the creature having secured his desire, but her mind was elsewhere and she dismissed it, turning her attention back to the concentric rings engraved onto the cup in her hand.

“Please, give the house to someone who needs it.” The previous inhabitant’s parting words echoed through the mind of the creature. He had driven off others who had intended to claim the house. They hadn’t been right for it, nor had they been right for the forest, and the creature’s chief sense of purpose was that of protecting both.

The person who stood before him was different. He could see her, smell her, hear her soft sounds, but he could also sense her by more ethereal means. Her flavor in his mind was that of seeking; and perhaps, simultaneously, fleeing. She was sharp yet weary; solitary and modest in her taking.

Yes, thought the creature. She is the one.

And she could fish. The creature really liked fish.

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