[Adelie]

Honestly, when she'd first seen the flyer, she'd dismissed it as a scam. It wasn't quite 'beleaguered Wilt'no royalty seeks assistance transferring fortune out of country' or 'make thousands peddling hisper oil to your friends,' but she couldn't help but be skeptical of unsolicited mail that floated the promise of untold riches for simply showing up to an address.

If she were more of a cynic, she'd call it a half-hearted murder gambit - one no person with even with the slightest bit of common sense would fall for; one which she could feel rightfully offended to be targeted by. As things were, she simply picked up the flyer and transferred it, gingerly, into the trash can.

So it came as a complete surprise when she picked up the phone - a call from a friend, too, not another robo-call offering her tree removal service or claiming she had unpaid fines - to hear, 'So, did you check out that flyer I sent you?' Another surprise, too, when she looked at her kitchen table and noticed the flyer sitting there, unrumpled, unconcerned with the rest of the unread mail surrounding it - looking just as much of a scam as the day she first laid eyes on it.

'I guess I have to now, don't I?'

[front gate - 1]

[Adelie]

Regret.

Looking at the timeworn iron gate in front of her through the fine mist of steam rising from her warm breath - that was the first thought that sprang to mind. Regret that she'd come this far, regret that she'd ever listened to the hare-brained and often dangerous schemes of her friend, regret that she'd not put the flyer in the trash bin like she so distinctly thought she had.

It was just a farm, after all. A decidedly decrepit, suspiciously abandoned farm - but a farm nonetheless.

Despite her misgivings about the whole prospect of treasure hunting off random tips and poorly sourced information, this wasn't really her first time showing up to an address with nothing but curiosity and apprehension. That was why her friend had forwarded the flyer to her, after all - he'd known this would be bait she'd take.

But there really wasn't much to look at here. A gate, a fence, a wide swath of snow and nothing. If anything, the lack of something to look at was the most eye-catching part of the scene.

[front gate - 2]

[Adelie]

She has half a mind to call up her friend again; maybe text him a photo of the empty landscape and demand, quite courteously, that he tell her exactly what she was supposed to be looking at here. Half a mind - because she'd even pulled out her phone and pulled up her contacts before noticing she didn't have a single bar of service.

Strange. She'd definitely had network coverage only a few minutes' walk away - and she didn't see much around that could contribute to interference.

On a hunch, she stepped away from the fence, tracing her steps backwards. One, two, three - it takes maybe twenty or so, almost enough for her to give up on her wild guess, before her cell phone network pops into being at full strength.

Stranger still. She steps forward - nothing; she steps backward - perfect. A little bit of walking later, her footsteps in the snow have traced a perfect path, parallel to the line of the fence, and her mental map has also traced out a perfect division of where she has cell phone service and where she doesn't.

She can't help but smile a little at her discovery. Now this was getting interesting.

[front gate - 3]

[Adelie]

A few last looks at the fence - unremarkable - and the gate - also unremarkable, even to her most careful inspection - and there was nothing left for her outside; nothing left to do but to go in.

The gate was stiff, to say the least. Even though it didn't look particularly stuck - and it was already ajar to begin with, albeit not enough for her to fit through - it didn't come free to her preliminary gentle taps. A firm push didn't do much either; she found herself forced to shove the gate roughly - and then it came free with great momentum, slamming against the edge of the fence with a loud clang.

She hadn't really noticed how eerily silent the whole place was, before - or if she had, the thought hadn't filtered up into her consciousness yet. But having the silence broken in such a fashion, with the faintest bit of a metallic echo after the fact, brought that directly to the forefront of her mind with a shock.

After such a sudden reaction, she simply stared at the gate a little, as if willing the past to have not happened. As might be expected, there was no reaction from the gate.

'Ugh,' she sighed, her words crisp and clear against the frozen air, now returned to abject silence. 'Time to go in.'

[front gate - 4]

[Adelie]

If this were a movie, maybe the soundtrack would shift gears; a quiet strand of delicate piano hitting a crescendo, a strained violin chord cutting in to dramatic effect. If this were a video game, perhaps there'd be a sudden cutscene or even a loading segment as she gingerly stepped over the hearth and into the abandoned farm.

Instead, silence.

That was only to be expected. Before, there had been silence; after, there was only silence. Even the crunch of her steps on fresh snow had seemed lighter, strangely muffled in the crisp winter air; the tiniest exhalation, which should've been firecracker-loud against the silence, was nothing at all.

Perhaps that was worth thinking about - but for now, she didn't have enough information to come to even an informed guess about what was going on. Cautiously, she took a look around, processing all the sights beyond the gate - a barn, a chimney, and a vast emptiness.

The chimney was what struck out at her immediately - a normal chimney, just a stack of bricks reaching into the sky, would barely have caught her notice, but this one had a narrow plume of smoke extending from it into the sky. Perhaps the place wasn't so abandoned, after all - but she couldn't be too sure.

[front gate - 5]

[Adelie]

Of course, when trespassing on someone's private property - well, she hadn't exactly pulled up ownership records before visiting, but 'private property' seemed a safe assumption - with no knowledge of who or what it might belong to, one is usually not in a hurry to investigate signs of life and introduce themselves to the potential owners.

Especially considering that even now, she didn't know where, exactly, that flyer had come from. When her friend had mentioned that he'd forwarded it along, she'd asked him where he'd gotten it from and he'd been decidedly cagey on the subject.

Honestly, she was an idiot. This was probably some kind of prank - probably one where she was supposed to break into the house of some famous and well-armed individual who just happened to have a signal jammer around their estate for privacy, and maybe there was a candid camera hiding somewhere that would record whatever hellish shenanigans she got into while trying to work her way out of the mess.

Honestly, she really was an idiot for coming here. She had half a mind to turn around and just leave - but since she was already here, it only made sense to continue in and take whatever happened as it came. Entirely logical decision.

[front gate - 6]

[Adelie]

So - house, barn, forest. Given the options and given that she wanted to scout out the place as much as she could before approaching any signs of life - the choice was obvious. Twirling the fringe at the end of her scarf in her hand, she set out for the trees.

She crossed the flat plain between the gate and the trees easily, using the travel time to sneak peeks at the chimney and barn when she could. Not that there was much she could derive from just looking at it - and with the path she was following, it didn't seem like she was actually able to see much more on the horizon than what she'd already observed.

And so, trees. Perfectly normal pine trees, perfectly normal pine branches, perfectly normal dead logs sitting on the ground, rotting away slowly. This seemed to be quite the trend with most of the place so far - extensive normalcy, interrupted only by some doubts on just how uniform everything seemed to be.

[frozen forest - 1]