[Sarah]

Snow was not one to take a job based off of a sketchy flier he found on the corkboard of his grocery store. He was honestly a bit surprised his grocery store still had a corkboard to post things on. Oh, how he loved the mystery of it all though. He’d looked up the address that had been written on the very vague flier and had come up with nothing. It wasn’t that the place didn’t exist, so far as he knew, but that everywhere he looked he came up blank for where exactly the address led. It wasn’t until he took an old paper map that he found the area the address could be listed under. From there he worked his way through old paper maps until he had written a comprehensive set of directions to lead him to this strange place.

Sekudui Farmlands. He wasn’t unfamiliar with the area, but that wasn’t to say he’d spent any amount of time there either. The farmlands were a boring stretch of miles, and the jobs that came from there were few and far between.

This job grew stranger the closer her got to the farm. He was idling outside the gate; his car parked some distance away. The expanse beyond the gate was just as foreboding as the gate itself. Allegedly there was treasure, and Snow was eager to get his prize and leave. He only needed to work up the courage to enter the place first.
[Section 1 – 247 words]

[CookingwiththeCobra]

Stopping her truck she realized she could drive any further. The snow was too deep and the road that lead to the adress she had hadn’t been plowed. Onix got out and started the trudge through the snow with a flier in her hand. It was vague and ominous and earlier had swept through the wild and smacked her in the face. At the time it had seemed interesting. The idea of a treasure to be found peaked her curiosity enough. The address was old. She had to go the guilds library and search actual books to find where it was located. When she found it was in the Sekudui Farmlands she wasn’t too surprised. The rare jobs that did lead her to farmlands always ended up being very mysterious and off putting.

The snow hitting her face stung and she pulled her scarf over her nose. The closer she got the she felt something. It was too distant to tell but someone was definitely nearby. She hoped it was the person that made flier ready to give her more instructions. She was almost there now and she could see someone standing by the gate but now the feeling she had earlier felt familiar.

She reached the iron gate. It looked as if it could have been elegant at one point but now it was rusted and run down. “Snow? Is that you?” she asked when she could make the person out.

[Section 1 - 242 words]

[Sarah]

Snow stiffened for a second at the sound of another voice. He turned from where he was scrutinizing the farm. “Onix?” Snow asked. He was shocked to see her here. Well, he wasn’t shocked, but he was shocked. The flier had been out in the open for anyone to see. Snow could easily understand the fliers making their rounds to make curious eyes. He just hadn't expected Onix to show up, and he especially hadn't expected her to show up when he showed up. “What are you doing here?” he asked, trying to sound curious and not incredulous. It felt like forever since he’d last seen her.
[Section 1 - 107 words]

[CookingwiththeCobra]

She openly showed surprise. It sure it was Snow. She would not have thought he would of gone for something like this. The only reason she had gone was because she wasn’t really up to anything. It was Christmas time and the guilds boards were barren of anything worth while. Most guild members weren’t even around due to them being with family. Her last weeks had been boring so she thought this might be something to occupy her time. The gate used to have a sign hanging from it but now it was laying on the ground. Walking over to it she rubbed the snow off. The words that had been there were too faded and unreadable.

She turned to Snow and shrugged, “Not much to do this time of year. I was bored and this looked interesting.” It had been quite some time since she had seen Snow but by the looks of it he hadn’t changed much since they last worked together. “I don’t suppose you would mind if we team up?” She looked past the gate. The farm was huge and spread out pretty far, “it’s a lot of area to cover. I was just thinking it might be easier if we work together.”

[Section 1 - 207 words]

[Sarah]

“Not at all,” Snow said. “I was thinking about how I really didn’t want to have to tackle this one on my own,” he added lightly. He walked over to look at whatever Onix had uncovered. Unfortunately whatever it had been was obscured by time. The faint indentation of the original text was covered by wear and tear. The gate looked about as old as the sign, and Snow wondered how long it’d been abandoned. Surely it was abandoned. From where they were standing the snow muffled any sounds that might come from farther in the farm.

Snow went up closer to the gate then. The iron bars sagged with age, but the gate was tied together. It only took a push and the gate separated and opened. The plain on the other side was vast and snow-laden. Far to the left stood a barn, and to the right the farm tapered off to a forest. Somewhere yonder smoke rose, as if from a house.
[Section 1 - 165 words]

[CookingwiththeCobra]

Happy he had agreed to the working together Onix had followed Snow to the gate. How the thing was still standing was beyond her. The fact that it opened so easily wasn’t surprising. It hadn’t even been locked. It was on that thought that made her think that they could be trespassing. It wouldn’t be the first time but she knew farmers to favor shot guns and she wasn’t particularly interested in getting shot. She shrugged the feeling away and took a better look at the farm, “do you wanna try the barn first? It looks like the only that isn’t going to fall down if we touch it.” She took out her sunglasses and put them on. The blinding white snow was starting to give her a headache.

[Section 1 - 129]

[Sarah]

“Yeah,” Snow agreed. He wondered what sort of treasure they were even meant to find. Who kept treasure on a farm? Were they meant to find a farmer’s treasure? Snow did not think that sort of treasure would be very interesting at all. The plain from the barn to the gate was surprisingly flat. Underneath his shoes he could feel stalks of some harvested and now-frozen plant being crushed.

“What do you think grew here?” he asked idly.

The closer they got to the barn the newer the barn looked. It was too new in comparison to everything else they’d seen of the farm. It was new on the standards of other still operating farms, Snow would guess.
[Section 2 - 118]

[CookingwiththeCobra]

As they ventured past the gates Onix pulled her coat tighter around her. Trying to rid herself of the cold that was creeping in. Her feet were completely covered in snow and it was still currently coming down. She couldn’t make out what was under it all only that it was a lot harder to walk on than regular grass or dirt. “I have no idea, farming is not my speciality,” Onix answered honestly. She didn’t have the faintest idea what went on at farms beside the basics of raising farm animals and harvesting plants. Looking around she didn’t see anything that could give her a clue either. There might of been corral fence at some point but they could have fallen due to the state of the place and be covered in snow now.

When they drew closer to the barn she realized just how giant the thing was. It was massive in size. If both barn doors were slid open two vehicles could drive in at the same time. It was painted the basic barn colored red with white trimming. Why was this brand spanking new when the rest of the place was abandoned for many years?

“I think…” she trailed off and placed a hand on the barn. “I feel something, it’s very faint but I think someone might be in here.” She could tell it was coming from the barn but at the same time it seemed so distant that it made her feel uneasy.
[Section 2 - 249]

[Sarah]

“Can you get a grasp on who? Or what?” Snow asked. He frowned slightly at the news of the barn being occupied. It wasn’t particularly surprising, there could very well be animals in the barn, or a third party could have gotten their hands on a flier... It could also be whoever owned the farm inside. Snow was betting money it the barn containing mice, especially if the feeling Onix got was faint. He wasn’t an expert on her powers, but he did sort of understand how they worked.

Snow joined Onix and placed his hand on the structure as well. He couldn’t feel anything, he didn’t have that skill, but he did notice the barn was made out of metal. The whole thing was exceedingly strange given the surrounding state of the farm.

“Should we go in?” he asked.
[Section 2 - 140]

[CookingwiththeCobra]

“I can’t make anymore than there is a life of some sort in the barn. I guessing it a human because I can normally tell if it’s an animal. There emotions are normally so open,” she removed her hand from the cold metal barn.

“Yeah let's go in,” she pulled one side of the giant sliding barn doors open. It was fairly easy. The track that the door was set in was recently greased and it glided open without resistance or noise. She thought it was odd that there wasn’t even a lock on the outside of the barn or a hook of any sort for a lock to go on. It was a newly engineered barn with probably important stuff inside. Wouldn’t whoever had built it put a lock? Walking inside she looked around. It was massive. A giant tractor was parked to one side which explained why the doors were so large. On the other side were bails of hay stacked almost to the roof. Directly in front of her she could see that against the back wall of the barn there were stairs going up to a small loft.

Onix walked over to the hay, “I think the feeling is coming from behind the hay. It kind of feels like whatever this is it can mask itself so I can’t read its emotions.” She turned to Snow, “how would this thing even know that I was capable of doing that?”
[Section 2 - 243]

[Sarah]

Snow watched warily as Onix opened the barn door. He wasn’t really sure about entering, but it wasn’t locked so they weren’t technically breaking and entering - they were just entering. He followed behind Onix, and while she explored the barn he noticed that there was indeed a lock on the barn. The heavy metal chain hung limply from the inside, once wrapped around the barn door and a loop installed into the barn wall. The padlock itself was broken, but its age and how it had broken escaped Snow. It didn’t look like it’d been cut off, but he couldn’t rule out that a tool of some kind had been used to break the lock. From the look of it, it could have even been crush by something or just fallen apart from age. The lock itself didn’t look old, there was no rust or discoloration, but given the strange nature of the farm Snow wouldn’t pause at the lock being less modern compared to the barn.

“That could be the most unsettling thing you’ve ever said,” Snow said in response to her further investigating the living creature in the barn with them. He was by no means a coward, but he also was not exactly falling over himself to find out what was hiding from them. “Whatever it is, perhaps we should leave it alone?” he suggested. If it was hiding itself, then it was probably best to leave it alone.
[Section 2 - 242]

[CookingwiththeCobra]

Not needing to be told twice she stepped away from the hay. Her focus went to the stairs that led up to the loft. For the barn being so new on the outside a lot of the features on the inside were matching up. The stair were old and looked like just single pieces of wood nailed lazily to a simple frame. It also lacked a railing to hold onto. Hesitantly she started the climb up afraid she would get half way and it all come crashing down on her. With a few steps to go she quickly jump up the rest of the way.

She let out a sigh of relief and looked around. “I think someone was living up here,” Onix stated as she looked around further. There was an old makeshift bed from the hay and a crate that had an oil lamp and a book laying on it.
[Section 2 - 152]

[Sarah]

“Living?” Snow muttered to himself. That was strange. This whole situation was becoming stranger and stranger when it had started out about as strange as anything. Snow abandoned his scrutiny of the lock and walked to the bottom of the steps. The stairs themselves were shockingly put together. He hadn’t expected something to rickety. “Living here how?” he asked as he walked gingerly up the stairs.


When he reached the landing of the loft he took a look around. The area seemed to be a makeshift room haphazardly put together. “A hermit was living up here,” he said, answering his own question from before. He carefully made his way over to the discarded housing. There were blankets and old clothes, some paper and pencils, and a leather-bound book of some kind. Snow picked up the book and opened it. Inside was blank from cover to cover. Without really thinking about it he put the empty book in his bag.

“Think it belongs to whatever’s downstairs?” he asked, gesturing to the living space.
[Section 2 - 172]

[CookingwiththeCobra]

Instead of responding to his statement she just gave him a weird look, “are you a hoarder? Why do you need that blank book?”

With all the weird stuff in the barn building up she just wanted to leave. Trying to be careful Onix started down the stairs. Grabbing his shoulder so if she fell he would either catch her or they would both fall. When she made it to the bottom she noticed that the faint emotion of someone else was missing. Either the thing was able to completely mask itself or it had left. Walking outside the barn she got her answer and she wasn’t liking what she saw. There were footprints in the snow leading to forest and the footprint weren’t something she recognized. They definitely weren’t human but no normal animal could have made them because they were sets of two feet not four.
[Section 2 - 148]

[Sarah]

Snow looked briefly offended. “What if I need it later?” he asked. One never knew when a blank book was necessary for success. Snow followed Onix down the stairs and begrudgingly allowed her to use him for support. Why they had decided to both go down the rickety stairs at the same time when they feared injury by stair was beyond him, but that’s how it happened.

By the time they reached the door to exit the barn the snow had stopped falling. Whatever footprints they left from entering had been covered and destroyed. A fresh blanket had left the snow unpenetrated besides a set of tracks now leaving the barn.

Snow crouched down to get a better look at them. They didn’t appear human, or boot-shaped at least. And not even by a sort of, oh snow marred them, they straight up looked alien to him. He held out his hand against the track, nope that didn’t match either. Strange.

“These look like anything you’ve seen before?” Snow asked, glancing at Onix. Perhaps she had seen something in her travels that could help. Look back to the tracks it seemed they led towards the tree-line. The flat expanse from the back to the treeline was empty of any creature Snow could imagine as big enough to fit into the strange tracks.
[Section 2 - 222]