And so we continue with the story of Anna…
Day 45: It was quick.
It was quick. The spell slipped over her skin and nestled close. She doubted she would make it to the actual shields today, let alone get inside the shielding of the city so she decided to wait on the spell to protect her from potential contaminants as well as the ones that would let her inside the city’s shield.
With the spell in place, Anna stood and began her day’s walk, eating her breakfast as she moved. The landscape around her was shifting as she came down from the mountain. The air warmed slightly as the day progressed and the moisture she saw from the day before’s rain disappeared. In some places it looked like it was absorbed by a thirsty ground or the plants. After a while she realized she was below the line where the rain fell.
While she didn’t think the land was in as deep a drought as it was when it was evacuated, it was clear that this area didn’t get a lot of rain. The ground plants became sparser and the trees she passed became fewer. They also became more interesting. The varieties that required more water or had shallow root systems faded away as she descended to the plains below. The trees she saw were the kind she knew would handle drier climates well and had deep roots to tap into underground water sources. They also seemed to stay lower to the ground as though conserving their moisture by keeping it in a shorter trunk and smaller leaves.
In many cases the trunks looked slightly twisted. The soil was replaced by more and more bare rock and soon the soil she saw had been dried down to dust. The wind blew harder with fewer trees to block it and the dust swirled around her as she walked. It seemed like a baren place. She could see no sign of any human occupation or visitation and no sign of animals. It seemed even the trees were twisted in such a way as to try to lean away from the city.
The closer to the city Anna got, the more she realized that the trees were all leaning and twisting in one direction and it was away from the city. She studied the landscape as she walked. She knew the protections ensuring no one went into the Lost City were strong and would repel animals as well s people. She hadn’t expected it to be strong enough for it to affect the trees.
‘Maybe it is because of the wind or the sun or something to do with water,’ she thought. She tried to concentrate on the wind to see if it was coming from only one direction but it swirled, creating little dust devils. There was no single direction she could use to account for the trees. They weren’t wind blown. As the sun moved across the sky she realized it wasn’t due to the sun that the trees leaned. Which leaves the water or the spell. In her heart, she knew it was the spell. She wondered if her own magic was strong enough to withstand it.
‘Still the spell pushing everything away isn’t causing me to turn yet,’ she thought. ‘That has to be a good sign.
Anna walked through the day, pausing for lunch and to look in on Marcus.
Ten til Midnight 