The chill morning air ruffled the curtains framing the one window in the loft. It would be sunrise soon, and though Faiye had a couple more hours to go, the breeze that rattled the leaves just outside the window already had her awake and alert. A quiver in the pointed tips of her ears, listening in stark silence to the world inside and outside the little cottage she'd built into the mountainside for anything unnatural. She had disappeared into another map in the hopes that her hunting brethren wouldn't find and follow her trail, but there was always that possibility and she was not one to let her guard down.
A few more minutes of listening helped her feel more at ease. The creak of the house around her settling against the wind. A rustle of one mob or another outside in the flower gardens. Not a player, too light and skittering. She assumed a rabbit, given its lack of a call. Assuring herself that it was only her and the wildlife, she rose from her bed and strode across the floor to the window. Even in the morning grog, every move was precise and graceful.
She cautiously looked out the window, her eyes focusing on the expected culprit of the noises; a rabbit was scurrying beneath her bushes and through her roses just within the circle of lantern-light on the stoop. The tips of her ears shivered again and she was made aware of the squeak of a fox nearby, likely hunting the smaller brown animal now rummaging around in a bed of lily-of-the-valleys scattered in one corner of the yard with a cloud of cornflowers. A pack of wolves were barking in the deeper valley taiga and when she focused her eyes into the still-dark world beyond her cliffside yard, she could see the wavering silhouettes of a herd of cows a little further off.
Faiye focused again briefly on the two mobs in her yard, watching their body language. The rabbit was hungrily nibbling away at the cornflower blossoms, unaware of the fox slipping quietly behind it through the rose garden. There was nothing to indicate the intrusion of other parties as the hunt continued and before long, she turned away from the window to descend the stairs to the main floor, her paranoias put to rest.
She moved to the front door, opening it and taking a deep breath of the chilly predawn air. The far horizon was already starting to tint pink with the sun just below it, and the exhale gave her a brief cloud of breath. It cleared any stale air left in her lungs from sleep, and she could taste the difference, the fresh morning air tinged with the acidic shock of pine and the smooth freeze of wind dusting from the snowy peaks above the house.
She reached to the left of the door, pulling one of her twin swords from the rack that held it and walking out the door onto the stoop. The wood was cold against her toes and the balls of her feet, something she noted in passing as she shut the door behind her, pulled her hair back into a messy ponytail at the nape of her neck, and made her way down the front walk. The grass blocks that made up the bush-lined yard had been laid by hand a few years prior, and it helped considerably to properly landscape the yard as she had it, a splash of color to the cold grey mountainside in reds and blues and purples.
The fluttering breeze dinged the cluster of tuned bells hanging from her eaves, rustling leaves and bushes and tugging at the shaped weighted tail of her shirt. The edge of the stone wall that kept her plot from eroding over time was an abrupt shift in temperature from the night-chilled grasses and wood to nearly frozen and she was loathe to admit she shied from touching it at first. After a moment of steeling herself, she trotted across the stony edges of the slope into the expansive evergreen forest that started at the base of the mountains and thickened the further it went into the distance.
The sky was beginning to brighten, the colorful sunrise giving way to the start of the blues of the sky, and she touched down with a light shuffle of greening grass scattered with fallen pine needles. She was grateful for the warmer grass and dirt, having a distaste for the frigid stone. Than again, having been born and raised in the hot dry climate of a mesa, anything cold was distasteful to her and the warmer confines of the evergreen forest pulled her in hypnotically, tugged at her core with a metaphoric string.
The herd of cows she had noticed before had moved some ways further into the wooded confines, the creaking trees and clicking needles offering a strange accompaniment to the bovines' low bellowing punctuated with the snort of a few pigs that had joined them. Their dark eyes watched as she passed them, weaving carefully between thick needle-fall and the occasional berry bush, taking short passive note before returning to their grazing habits.
The smell of pine was thicker than it was on the mountainside, shadows cast by the rising sun hiding the pack of wolves she'd noticed, as well. They also watched her, cautious and alert, until she moved away from them. The sounds of sheep somewhere deeper in the wooded landscape drew their attention immediately and like a unified shot, they all bounded off to hunt their own breakfast, streaks of grey in the patches of creeping sunlight.
The rest of her walk went mostly without incident, though she did almost trip over a family of foxes bedding down for the day in a patch of berries. They squealed indignantly at being accidentally disturbed and skittered away to another dark hovel to continue their naps, leaving the considerably taller Xibalban to huff in mild annoyance at them before straightening out and starting off again.
It wasn't long after that she came on a broken stone path that lead over a ridged hill, overgrown and scattered. The tips of her ears quivered, zeroing in on a new sound of running water just out of sight. There was a creek just on the other side of the hill, and she could smell it almost as well as she heard its playful waters. The stone and brick bridge was warmer than the stone on the mountain, although it was still chilly enough she didn't want to dwell for long on it. The sun rising above the horizon would fix that before long, the light glittering temptingly over the water in the flowing creek fed by snow run-off from the mountains.
The bridge was in surprisingly decent condition, considering the ruins they lead to. She didn't know who had made them, if they were an installment of the map's Moderators or if they were there long before they arrived. It was an idyllic sight, with the high stone and brick arches and overgrown trees of types that didn't belong in a taiga to the crumbled benches and overrun flower beds and the silent broken fountain in the center. However, all the main builds on the map were in places she was certain were far enough away no player could find this corner of the world. It was the reason she built her cottage in there, for isolation from the main crowds. The gardens and decrepit ruins beyond were simply a lucky stumble, a place of solitude and contemplation.
They were not natural generation, clearly. The aesthetic was not the same geometric patterns of the natural styling. These had been fluid and organic, circles and spirals only a player could build, something outside the Coding. She didn't ruminate much on the deeper history, moving through vines and over flowers gone wild from lack of pruning. Beneath the elegant arches, passed the ruined tower of a fountain that might have bubbled in its youth and brought all manner of people and animals, to the half-buried path that lead into a valley once cleared to frame a mansion or a castle. It was a mystery exactly what had been there, when all that was left of it was foundations and the taiga seeping in to reclaim its space.
The sound of something larger and more methodical rustling through the overgrowth halted her progress on the path to the ruins below after a few steps, the tips of her ears twitching to try to zero in on any specific tells. A player, no doubt, but not Xibalban by any stretch; she would not have heard them coming if they were and the intruder was doing nothing to hide themselves. It was instinct to grip the sword in her hand a little tighter, knowing as soon as she saw the outline of the newcomer in the shadows of the giant bordering oaks that it was too late to hide and not be seen. It was better to be prepared, after all.
A young man walked into view, illuminated by the patches of sunlight streaming through the canopy of leaves hanging over the garden space, a sword glittering from his hip and a crossbow on his back. He glanced around at the space with a mesmerized familiarity, and it was obvious he knew the ruins. He did not know the towering figure on the path in front of him and it gave him reason to pause. There was a brief surprised silence, punctuated only with the creaking leather as Faiye shifted her grip on the scabbard of her sword. The shock dissipated as he put his hands up defensively.
"Hey. Didn't think anyone else knew about this place." he started.
She relaxed a little, just enough to respond in kind to his lack of hostility. "I come here every morning." she replied, her voice low and deadpan.
"Yeah? Same, though usually I come later." he admitted, putting his hands down slowly after seeing she wasn't a danger to him either. He added after, "Hey. Since we're going to the same place, maybe we can keep each other company?"
It came out more a question than a demand, she could almost taste the uncertainty. She thought a moment more before giving a small nod. "I think this morning could use a companion." she answered, turning to continue her trek down the path to the ruins down the hill.
He wasn't long behind her, perfectly happy with doling a history lesson of the server and ruins. She listened to the story of the decadent original operator and the castles and palaces she built across the server, left to rot on her passing, swallowed as this one had been by nature.
It wasn't hard to imagine how it might have been, but Faiye felt that the sweeping devour of the taiga added more charm to the space that was hardly more than stacked stone and eroding brick with the occasional flash of green and bronze particle ghosts between block seams. It was more beautiful now than it would have been with manicured tree-lined boulevards and elegantly arranged stacks of wood and metal and stone. It was a reminder that the world didn't stop for natural generation, it reclaimed everything with spiteful scorn.
A love note that ends were only beginnings, and beginnings lead to ends, tucked away behind knotted ancient oaks and mossy mushroom fields.
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