a place for us

Plants grow here in wild self-organization, over patches of mulch.(click:"mulch") [In one corner of the space, a rusted wheelbarrow, filled with mulch is sunk into the ground. Ghost pipes peep over the top.] Between the flower patches, lighter grass rectangles make for convenient walkways. There is an elevated, thick patch of hypnum towards the middle of the room. (click:"hypnum")[ The moss is softer than any bed. If you slept here, you wouldn't have to wake up soon.] In stone and wood beds grow lavendar, valerian, and poppies. (click: "poppies")[Purple flowers and green bulbs hang, serpentine over their own beds, neatly apart from the mitigated chaos of the garden. Some of the stems appear to be cut.] Through an iron gate, you can see a meadow. [[the meadow]] [[covered place]]

All around you are red, teacup-like flowers gazing into the sun, and green bulbs dangling from hooked stems like lampposts. The poppies fill the meadow to the woods surrounding it, vanishing only as the neat lines of the world run together impossibly. She left a trail through the field towards the woods. From here, you can see home for what it is. A rectangle of stone with sloped rooves, the walled garden to the right of its entrance and dry room fused to its left sprawl toward you like it could not decide what shape to be in. The thatched roof is bleached by the sun and vines climb the stone walls, grasping into the narrow windows. Beside the garden wall, your firewood has dwindled. [[go inside->covered place]] [[go to the garden->walled garden]] [[go to the woods->the beginning of the woods.]]

The main chamber has a stone roof, but some light filters through patches of thatched twigs and branches, supporting sown or fused-together patches of unnaturally-colored fabric. The walls are stone, and the sun makes long, colorful beams through the windows. Lined with metal-frame intricacies, colorful glass twinkles around the [[entrance->the meadow]] onto a raised area. It is humid here. The ground is decaying wood, mossy and spotted with mushrooms. Crumbled pews form rows before the raised platform with a table in the center. On the table sits an ornate box. (click: "ornate box")[\ \ The design on the bezeled, dark cherrywood gleams in a ray of light. Decorating the artifact is only a silver flower bulb. Tenderly, you lift the lid to find a tray beneath. On the tray sits an open glass bulb with an octagonal metal base, debris outlining the flowers embossed on it. Underneath the opium lamp a poppy in bloom, recreated in silver adorns the tray, and beside it rests a metal pipe leafed with the texture of flowers melting. The box also contains ceramic modules that look something like doorknobs, and seem to screw into the pipe, a glass vial with a twist-off cap, and various metal implements.] Not on the elevated area, in a darker part of the room and between the wall, the platform, and two bookshelves rests a two-person-sized mattress covered in assorted blankets and stitched pillows. While the lower area is mostly damp, the ground is less rotting here and it seems to have been kept clean. Through an entrance, you can see a [[walled garden]]. On the opposite side from the door to the garden, a curved wall and entryway open into a [[kitchen]].

You close the [[trapdoor->kitchen]] sealed behind you. It seems appropriate. The circular room is significantly more dry(click: "dry")[: on the edge of the room, a metal pail sits with a layer of salt on top of it]. Sunwise from the entrance, there is a work table consisting of two large, jagged stones and a dark, polished wooden board lodged tightly between them. (click: "work table")[On the table are glass bottles of chemicals, with different colors of twine tied around around their necks. On the edge of the table, closest to the door, a brown poppy bulb rests on a metal dish, dripping order.] Beside the table, a deep oven seems to be carved into the wall of the room. On the floor in front of it rests an iron cauldron, that seems to just fit into the oven. Beside it, a glass jar of white latex with a screw-on lid.

The kitchen is a circular room, lined with shelves made from the stone of its walls, holding glass jars of seasoning, pickled vegetables, and aluminum cans. Herbs from the garden dry on an old table in the middle, beside a pepper and an onion. A staircase circles the room sunwise from the far wall, descending through a trapdoor [[beneath you->dry room]]. To the left of the [[entrance->covered place]], a weathered iron oven reaches its exhaust pipe into the stone chimney of a fireplace.

The woods are easy to become lost in, but she always finds a way [[out->the meadow]]. You follow the parted-flower path into the woods, following the sound of [[chopping->infinite woods]]. The air is different here(click: "different")[: not so thick, and the homely sense of decay is complemented by the sweetness of life and the bitter of tannin]. You look down, and notice ghost-pipes among the mushrooms at the root of a beech tree.

You hear the sound of chopping from the north. The nicest absence from the infinite wood is the fear that you will ever run out.  [[go north->Found]] [[go south->infinite woods]] [[go east->infinite woods]] [[go west->infinite woods]]

You arrive just as the tree falls. She looks up and smiles at you. "I, uh. Only brought one axe," shyly. But you're content to just watch. Dedicated to Amber