Living Quarters 1

Within the walls of the ruins are several buildings surrounding the central courtyard. Both the left and right display a single long, rather squat building running north to south. Beyond them and north of the courtyard sit two more large buildings. Though not as long, they are taller and appear even more solidly-built, with thick walls (where they still stand) and only a row of narrow windows below the roofline. Between them, the cobbled path leads up to a larger, two-storied building peering imposingly over the whole scene. The long building on the left has a large chunk of its roof missing, and most of its northern wall has crumbled inward. I picked my way over the rubble and pieces of wall to find myself faced with two hallways. Although the exterior walls were dark stone, I could see the edge of a paler kind splitting the building in two down its length, with wooden walls built off of it. I strode over mossy wooden floors rotted and eaten away in spots to reveal bare stone beneath, down each hallway, both lined with rooms. They were bedrooms. Their doors were open, others closed, some let go of their hinges to molder on the ground. Most of the rooms had two beds, their frames still holding bare mattresses now colonized by field mice. Each had a desk and chair, the tabletops sometimes holding crumbling paper, brittle quills, or scratched-in graffiti that looked as old as the holes in the roof. Most shelves and dressers stood bare and unused, most windows broken or at least cracked from wind-debris and hail. Behind one dresser, I saw a scrap of what looked like thread poking out. I moved the piece of furniture aside and saw a clump of old, nearly colorless yarn with a long thread and single large, blunt needle sticking out of it. I picked it up and realized that it was an old crochet project someone had forgotten about halfway through. In another room, I found a little wooden carving of a bear wedged between a mattress and bedframe. Further down, a fur cap had been left in a drawer, its hair nearly all having fallen away by now. Words had been carved in a few places at the edges of desks and in the nooks behind furniture. “John lived here,” read one. “Sivo is a dirty cheater,” read another. “You’re next,” “To the East!”, “F*** the monarchy.” There was one room in particular, though, that really held my attention. I pried open the door on rusty hinges. Shafts of light streamed down from small gaps in the ceiling and poured in through the window, which was still intact. One of the beds still had a blanket, thrown untidily across the mattress and draping down to the moss-lined floor. The warped dresser still held a few pairs of socks, a moth-eaten cloak, and a ripped tunic. Under the bed sat a pair of shoes still waiting for a pair of feet. Upon the desk sat a stack of moldy paper growing a few mushrooms next to a beaded bracelet. The shelf sat empty. I was about to turn away when I saw that a single book had fallen off the shelf and landed open on the floor. Even though it was in a relatively dry spot, its pages were still fused together and spotted with mold, only blurred shadows of ink remained where words had once lined the pages. I sighed with a sense of defeat and gingerly tried to pick it up, gently cradling it in my hands. The paper was utterly ruined, collapsing to near-powder at any force. To my surprise, I was still able to close it, the now-cracked leather binding having once been so well cared-for it had at least somewhat withstood unknown years of neglect. Now shut, I could see words still etched into its cracked cover. It read: “Techniques of Historical Swordcery” Meet you in the Ruins.