When I saw the piece of land I was able to afford, a plot of abandoned national parkland, I almost cried. Sure, it’s my own land, one of the biggest plots in all of Windenburg, but after buying the land itself, all I could really afford to build on it was a tent.

Not that a tent is a building, but still.

The morning after my first night there I did cry. I woke up and the second the fresh air hit my nostrils tears pricked in my eyes.

Tears of sadness and joy.



I ate my cereal in a golden silence by the old tree the park ranger said was too deeply rooted to be rid of. Frost covered nearly everything living, but as the world, I too was in the spring of my life. A new beginning, and I could feel myself begin to wake up from under the heavy frost.

I started the fire and surprised myself by not catching myself on fire. Though my thoughts were still on the sad side, the fire warmed my soul and my body.

I decided to sit and write, a pastime I hadn’t been able to do in so long. I felt rusty.

Rusty from the frost I had been living under for a while maybe? Oh gosh, I sound like a teenager writing poetry.