closed starter for @monstyrious
Alexander had been in the village for several days by then. Long enough to map its rhythms. He walked its narrow streets slowly, notebook tucked into his coat, stopping often to write. He spoke to the townspeople when he could, his grasp of the language imperfect but manageable. He asked careful questions, framed as curiosity rather than purpose. Most of them were kind. Some of them were not. The village wasn’t as isolated as it once had been, but it wasn’t welcoming to tourists either. He stood out no matter how quietly he dressed, no matter how little he said.
He was sitting outside a small café when he spotted her the first time. She looked like the descriptions he’d memorized from the manuscripts besides the obvious updating to her clothes to make her best fit into this day and age. He didn’t follow her then. He took notes instead.
The next time he spotted her while walking around the town, he made the decision to follow her, almost without thinking, careful enough to not draw any unwanted attention either from the townspeople or from the woman. He followed her to the edge of the village and into the forest where he watched her disappear into, now he was certain he had found her.
The following day, he waited near the forest’s edge, until he watched her emerge from the forest and head towards the village, he stayed where he was, carefully hidden between the trees. Once she was gone, he got up and walked into the forest. The woods were dense, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something magical about them, the air felt different there too. He walked int the forest following logic and instinct, guided by the maps he’d drawn in his notebook and the instructions left by his ancestors. Then he spotted the structure, half-swallowed by trees, unassuming enough to be missed if you weren’t looking for it, slowly he walked towards it and pushed the door open.
