It was a two-hour trek to the edge of the city, where the buildings merged into woodland. Well, it wasn't so much a merge as it was a sudden break. It was as if the forest had existed before, and somebody had simply dumped a piece of city on top of it. There were even splintered branches and split trunks, where they should have overlapped the road.

The architecture of the city confused her. It was difficult to navigate without landmarks, all straight lines and huge, wide roads, nothing like the crochet pattern of streets she was used to. There were no quiet alleyways to hide in, no little tunnels between buildings, not even any elevation changes, which was the strangest thing of all.

Still, she had spent the morning trekking out here, so she would make the most of it. She planned to follow the edge of the woods until it got dark, and then to camp out in the city until morning.

She doubted she would find much, but it was as good a plan as any.

Despite all her searching, no bakery had been forthcoming as of yet, and the clothing stores had never returned. She suspected something was going on in the upper stories of some of the locked towers, but she had found no ways in yet

She whistled as she went, enjoying the walk, as hard work as it was. Reaching the forest instantly made her feel better, greeting her with the sounds of birdsong and the sight of small, scurrying animals.

It was like a great weight had lifted off her, as she realised she wasn't alone in this world.

Squirrels, small birds, rabbits, a glimpse of something with bright red feathers once. She wondered if she was the first human to ever set eyes on those creatures, the first human to ever walk this road.

The snow was littered with tracks, and the trees dripped melting snow.

"Did you muck the weather up too?" She asked the air, "just made it snow in the city, and the forest just has normal weather?"

She walked along under the treeline, glad of her straw hat.

"That's gonna kill off all your trees, ecosystems are fragile like, they don't do well with sudden breaks like that!

"Ack!" There was a flutter of wings up above her, and a sudden drift of snow fell from above, covering her and somehow managing to get down the back of her shirt.

"Okay okay, I get the message!" she yelled at the air, causing more birds to startle and several previously-hidden rabbits to make a break for it.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

She pouted for a moment as she walked, brushing the snow out of her clothes and grumbling about the cold, but it didn't take long for her to perk back up.

"Maybe I should head out, into the woods or somethin', maybe there's somewhere else out there that ain't quite as broken. Maybe I'll the village that this place is a backdrop for.

"Seems kinda dangerous though, what if you've put wolves out there or somethin', or dragons. I don't wanna get eaten by either o' those."

The morning sun was cheerful, and although there was still snow on the ground (and down her back) it wasn't too cold, and she swung her arms as she walked.

"Man, I should stop saying man, I don't know you're a man, in any sense of the word, but man, you shoulda met my dad. He was the best."

She kept talking, enjoying the sounds of life it inspired in the forest around her.

"We used to go camping together sometimes, out in the woods behind our building. They weren't real woods, o' course, but if we walked off the path enough we could hide from all the old biddies and the dog walkers and pretend we were in the wilds."

Her breath fogged in the air, and she stopped for a moment, breathing differently and trying to make the biggest clouds she could, holding the air in her lungs and letting it out slowly.

Then, with a shrug, she carried on her hike.

"We had a little tent and a camping stove, and we'd take flasks with us, and a picnic, it was fun. My ma never liked it though, said it was stupid and dangerous."

She glanced up at the huge grey towers, looking for any changes, but they were all still identical. She would go over in a minute and check in on a couple, to see if they had void floors or not.

"Then he got sick, and there was nothing they could do."

-

She walked for a long way in silence after that, feeling like she was walking on a treadmill. The endless trees, and the identical buildings, like the background in an old cartoon.

"He wasn't meant to get sick." the words came out without her bidding, "he was supposed to be big and strong and…"

She kept walking, listening to the crunch of the snow beneath her feet and the shrieking of the birds, not seeing her path, but not needing to. It was all the same, anyway. She was dead, she was trapped in hell. She was a ghost, still in the real world but unable to perceive it.

Maybe somebody had found her cellar and shanked her for her blankets. God knows, she hissed to herself, she didn't have anything else worth stealing. She spent any money she got as soon as it came in, on food, on fucking laundry, and when she wasn't begging, she was just trying to survive the days, letting the time pass by.

She kept walking as the headache hit her, sharp and piercing, right above the eyes. But she wasn't going to stop thinking, what good would that do? She was already dead.

The world had ended. Her dad was dead.

Her breath hitched in her throat, as she let out a sob, unsure which pain was worse, the headache or the grief.

The world had ended, and there was no going home for her. She remembered now.

Her eyes were filled with tears as she moved, the headache waning, but still grating. A dull knife through her brain, dulling ever more every moment until she would have sworn somebody was trying to break through her skull with a wood saw.

She kept walking though, forcing her way through the pain, out of spite, out of grief.

And that's why it was a little embarrassing when she tripped over the cat.