Question For the Reader's:

If you were to follow an author on social media, especially one who wanted to take input on changes to current works in progress or input on upcoming works, what platform would you prefer to use?

Discord? Twitter? Flote? other?

Would you prefer that page to be solely about writing, or the random shit in the author's life as well?

Early Spring

1.2

Everyone was staring at her. As uncomfortable as it made her feel, she didn't blame them. A girl standing alone at the train station with a large duffle bag was one thing. Having a puffy pink jacket tucked under one arm was another. The temperature in the city ranged from sixty-five to eighty, any higher and management scheduled a rain shower to cool things down. A thick jacket ment she was going outside, and everyone who saw the coat knew it.

The doors opened, disgorging its passengers and silently sitting agape waiting for new ones. With a deep breath and a mental reminder not to look back, Yari boarded the westbound monorail. Four stops later and she was standing on a platform at the very edge of her world. No one stared at her anymore. She wasn't the only one carrying a jacket. The clear edge of the dome that encapsulated Alexandroupolis rose into the air. An almost unnoticeable monolith to civilization. Her heart pounded as she walked through the tunnel to the outside.

The sky was so different. The blues were bluer. The clouds whiter. The sun was painfully bright. Only now did she understand the reason one wasn't supposed to stare at it. She still wasn't outside. Out of the city, yes, but not out in the open. The thought momentarily terrified her, but she kept moving. People left the city all the time. There was nothing to be afraid of. She hoped.

A world Yari had never seen with her own eyes blurred by. The levitation train made almost no sound as it sped along its track several hundred feet above the ground. Areas full of trees, large fields, and even tiny towns with only an apartment building's worth of inhabitants flashed past in a mesmerizing stream of colors. From the levitation train, she took a bus northward. It was strange. The vehicle made weird sounds as it trundled slowly over rolling hills surrounded by dense wilderness.

The bus stop at her destination was about the size of her apartment back home. The tiny town was sprawled out in a highly inefficient waste of space. The whole thing could have been shoved into her apartment building and wouldn't have filled up half. Then again, that was the whole point of this vacation. To get away from the city. To take a good calming couple months in this tiny little town.

She about jumped out of her skin when one of the vehicles nearby sounded its horn. The man in the beat up looking red truck waved to her.

"Oh. There's my ride."

She walked up to the passenger side and gave Alex a weak smile.

"Hey."

"You look tired." He said. His voice not really the same in person and far more mature than last time he visited her in Alexandroupolis.

"I am."

"It's unlocked."

Yari stood there trying to unpack the meaning of "it's unlocked". She stared down at the mechanism in the door and realized she had been waiting like an idiot for the door to open itself.

"Oh." She gave the mechanism a tug and the door opened. "Sorry."

"It's alright."

Alex turned a key and the truck rumbled to life. "Buckle up."

Yari stared at him for far too long before realizing she had to do that manually as well. Such a weird world already. Once strapped in, Alex manipulated multiple petals, a wheel, and a moveable stick that together somehow made the vehicle move rather smoothly down the road. Yari tried to relax, but instead of rolling up to Alex's apartment, she found herself again looking out over fields and trees as the town disappeared behind them.

"W-where are we going?"

"My land. I did tell you I moved."

"Right. I just thought, I guess that, you were still in the same town."

"Sorry."

"It's fine." She said with a tired sigh. She had a headache and couldn't wait to be out of a moving vehicle, but the truck kept rolling down the road through empty country that she had only ever seen on TV. The forest on either side of the pavement was occasionally broken by a dirt road or a lone house. Yari wondered how anyone could live out here in the middle of nowhere. Did they have to defend themselves from monsters?

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

It was nearly another ten minutes before Alex slowed down and turned onto one of the random dirt trails. Yari was too tired to panic, but her heart did race a little as Alex stopped his truck in front of a tiny building not much bigger than the vehicle.

"Whe-where are we?" She asked, afraid she already knew the answer.

"Home." Alex replied while getting out of the truck.

Yari looked around, but failed to see anything she would consider a house. A couple sheds, a covered pile of something, and a tiny house looking thing connected to a cage. Four large reddish-brown birds stared at her with their beady eyes as if trying to decide if she were edible. The whole place was surrounded by scraggly, white, leafless trees. Yari slowly exited the truck, pulling her fluffy pink jacket tightly around her. She wondered how Alex could stand the cold in just a sweatshirt, but then, he had always lived outside.

"I did say it would be tight for a week or so." Alex said while pulling out her duffel bag and throwing it over his shoulder like it didn't weigh almost forty pounds.

"What happens in a week?"

"The ground is finally warm enough that I can start building again."

Alex started toward the door of the tiny building. Shed. That was the word for it. His usual deadpan expression gave no cues as to what he ment. The shed was only eight feet wide. It had a four foot covered porch and the rest of the structure seemed to be about twelve feet long. Some basic math said that Alex lived in a tiny building that was about the size of her bedroom. Yari was already at her emotional bottom, so this whole disappointment of her arrival seemed just par for the course.

The inside was worse than she imagined. The loft area above the porch was stuffed with things. The walls were just vertical boards with brown paper stretched between them. The ceiling wasn't much different other than being slanted. The kitchen was nothing more than a tiny sink, a mini fridge, and a microwave stuffed in one corner. A large amount of the room was taken up by a black metal box thing with a pipe rising out of it then angling to go through the wall. The rearmost wall had what looked like a heater and a small door. The whole place smelled like leather and smoke. Yari's stomach managed to sink even more when Alex opened the tiny door revealing a small wooden box with a toilet seat.

"Rear hole is for solids, the front is for liquids. There is sawdust for after your deposit. Let me know if there is any issue with your tail, I obviously built it for myself."

Yari stared at the not toilet, in the tiny room of the tiny shed in the wilderness far from civilization and tried not to cry.

"Are, you okay?" Alex asked. His face blank and visually uncaring.

"I just… I really need to pee and I… I can't close the door on that."

"Oh. I'll go outside. Just let me know when you're done."

Alex scooted around her and left the tiny building. She stood in the center, her cosmopolitan world reduced to whatever this was. This had been her idea. It was her own fault. Holding back the tears long enough to shuffle to the toilet, she lifted the seat and stared down at the two holes. She could see into the larger one. Yari closed the lid and started balling into her fluffy pink jacket.

Alex put a black pan on the equally black box. The box was called a wood stove. Which made sense as it was filled with wood and Alex was using it as a stove. He had first loaded it with crumpled newspaper topped with a piece of cardboard and some small sticks. Then he stared at the paper and mumbled to himself until the paper burst into flame. The sudden spark up of flame caused Yari to jump. She had known he could do that of course and she logically understood how the process worked, but she had never seen it in real life. She supposed there was no reason for people in the city to learn such tricks. It didn't take long before Alex was cooking eggs over the woodstove. "How long has it been since the last time I cooked?" Did microwaveable ramen count?

Alex unfolded a cot for her and laid a mat on the floor for himself. Before bed she sent a text to her mom that she had made it safely, deciding not to elaborate on the primitive living situation. Changing into her pajamas was a bit awkward. Privacy was going to be an issue. Yari lay on her back on an uncomfortable cot staring up at the paper covered ceiling of a ridiculously small home in the middle of nowhere. Was this really the best idea she could have come up with?

Yari woke to Alex's alarm. It was freezing in the tiny building. She curled herself into a tiny ball as Alex started loading the woodstove and blowing on the coals.

"Sorry." Alex said. "Last day of work."

"What do you mean last day?"

"It's my last day of work. I quit. Would have been done a week ago, but they didn't have a replacement yet."

"I'm going to be here alone?" Yari asked, slight panic creeping up into her chest as Alex crawled back into his bed.

"Yeah, sorry. I'll turn the heater on before I leave and we'll get dinner in town when I get back. Sound good?"

Absolutely not. She thought. "Sure." She said.

Alex was gone. The wood stove made sudden, erratic pops that caused Yari to startle each time. Visions of fire consuming the tiny shack with her trapped inside kept her wide awake. The mini fridge contained eggs, milk, sausage, and half a pint of yogurt. Yari figured she could cook an egg in the microwave since the heavy iron pan and the woodstove were a mystery to her, right up until the point where it exploded, covering the entire inside with bits of egg. She tried sitting outside in the open air, but it was cold and the pale trees loomed over her, swaying menacingly and making all sorts of weird noises. She then had to face the toilet.

The singular plus to her day was finding out that Alex had left his wifi unsecured. She considered how she would berate him for about thirty minutes before she realized there was no one for twenty miles that could pirate it. Alex returned home in the afternoon to find Yari hiding under a blanket, cold, hungry, and glued to her phone.

"Hey."

Yari glared at him. How dare he have to work on her first day stuck out in the middle of nowhere.

"I probably could have brought you into town. I didn't think about it until it was too late. Sorry."

He gave her a pained, forced smile. Which was well performed considering all his expressions were forced and this one was supposed to telegraph its "please forgive me" sentiment.

"You promised lunch."

"Yeah, you ready."

"I'd like to take a shower first, but I couldn't find one."

Alex pointed to a metal bucket on the edge of the loft.

"You're kidding?"

"No. Plumbing is on my to-do list."

"Just… Give me a few minutes."