Remnant House - Spring 2023
In the late afternoon, the expedition stops by the pavilion at the summit of a grassy hill. You had sighted it that morning as you followed the old highway through meandering valleys. From far off, its curving frame resembled the shell of an ancient bug come down from the mountains.
Now up close, you find it uninhabited. Years of dust and ash have swept into its main hall. Compass plants have broken through the slab and breathe their onion odour. Scrambling tendrils of honeysuckle blanket the floor among them, sign of the prolific summer just starting.
But evening is falling fast, so you elect to rest at the pavilion. There are four of you seated around the fire: Claret Wolf the firewatcher, Green Serval the surveyor, Finn Caracal the herbalist, and yourself.
Index
Do you want to consider your options?
One
Into midsummer
And yourself, Alabaster Baycat the archivist.
This pavilion is the first structure the expedition has come across since it left behind the plateau and its seemingly endless, treeless horizon and descended into these forested valleys, the highway winding around small hills and fast flowing streams. The first structure, notwithstanding the monuments on every mountain summit, four-legged figures crowned by black discs and watching over your transit up the old highway.
Having now climbed up here, the view to the east discloses a deeply ruined city at the foot of these mountains that looks to be slowly tipping into a great fissure in the earth. Totally silent.
But now we move into midsummer, with its long days either dangerously hot from the first light, or else in deluge, or else threatening the inevitable storm that will start off the fires. In this season, you cannot travel further.
The expedition must remain at the pavilion for now.
Two
The pavilion
The segmented concrete and metal building resembles an insect shell. Light fills its main hall through an oculus in the ceiling.
The wide entryways at each end of the hall look over the surrounding hills and valleys, and over the disappearing city. Nearby to the west is another grassy hill, taller than this one, with one great pine at its summit. Beyond it and across leagues of thick forest are the first peaks of the alps, extending off to the north and south. Further away to the east, on the other side of the highway, is an isolated mountain.
There are lamplit alcoves and corridors branching away from the main hall, opening into smaller, unused rooms. Sitting in this one, you hear conversation and footsteps echoing down from elsewhere in the complex.
Green Serval is sitting by the entrance watching the world.
I explored one of the wings of the pavilion the other day. It was an inconspicuous alcove, that turned out to be a corridor curving around and downward, as though it were descending into the cellar, but then which opened into a small, octagonal room with a high ceiling.
There was a small oculus up there, mostly obscured by the weedy tendrils creeping in, but still letting the light through in slivers. The floor had been overtaken by stickyweed.
Three
Wandering
You set out from the pavilion. A dense fog descends on the landscape. The road continues its course around the base of the pavilion hill. The ground is covered in unidentifiable weeds.
You wander between open hills. Across the plains is a mountain with something like a monument near its summit, obscured by the dense trees.
The road descends into forest. Its sides are crumbling and torn up by tree roots. Here grow cork oaks with knobbly, spongy bark. You find the stream a short distance away. It flows through a steep, ferny gully, descending in little waterfalls and disappearing further along.
The weather is clearing. You reach a low river crossing, a submerged and potholed concrete causeway. You roll your trousers to your knees and cross it barefoot. The silver wattle puts out round, bright yellow blooms. Ensconced among it, a nearby wildcat seems to be regarding you
You climb the sides of a rocky gorge. Below, the river follows a narrow course between the boulders. You see the water flowing into isolated pools and imagine yourself whiling away a sunny day away by its banks.
Soft rain is falling. You are wet. On all sides rise forested mountain ranges. Across the plains to the north you see the tops of four square towers.
The mountainside rises up in a steep, dense tangle of gumtrees and underbrush, offering no overland passage. The road dips and curves down to the mouth of the tunnel. It is a brick archway covered in mosses and creepers. You stand at the entrance and the sound and heat of the world falls away.
You descend, leaving the overworld above and behind. It is pitch black down here. You progress with one hand touching the wall, walking very slowly. The underpass is cool and silent, although you think you still hear water faintly trickling.
The tunnel briefly emerges into open air. You are sweating. You are in a steep and narrow valley, almost a gully, between the mountain ridges. The undergrowth presses in on both sides of the road.
Four
Do you want to consider your options?
You are Alabaster Baycat the archivist. You distinctly remember you arrived at the pavilion on December 21. You think it may be now January. You are less sure of this.
You are not carrying anything. You do not have enough rations, you suspect, to make it back anywhere settled.
You are becoming delirious. Do you want to consider your options?
You dissolve into the landscape. Why fight it?