LOCATION : ???
A loud crash of wood and thatch snapping under weight echoed through the cold, brittle air of the night. Soon after, a series of very loud but distant crunches and snaps, followed by a ruckus-like roar of displaced stone and dirt, also distant. A village was startled awake by yelling and rancor, if the initial noise did not wake them first. People slowly began peaking out from their shared homes, strong and able-bodied first. They made their ways towards the sounds in the night. There was no rush, because as far as they knew, a tree branch had simply rotted and collapsed over someones house in the night. It could had been bad, true, but it probably wasn't given that no one was screaming.
"What happened 'ere? Branch drop on you or somethin'." A male voice consoled in the dark, lit only by candles.
"No branch I' ever seen. Damn it all." An irate, deep voiced man responded. He was tall. At least twice as such as the man asking.
The voyeur in the void approached the small group forming around the two, holding a candle of her own. She felt its warmness against her fingers. No one looked towards her. She walked straight towards the door. Once she was near, the men finally looked down at her. They stepped aside as she went through the doorway of the house. They continued talking.
"Well, damn. S'pose we oughta get to fixin' it tomorrow. Yall accounted for in there?" The softer voice asked.
"We'are, thankfully. Any'o'yous got a guest bed?" The deep voice shouted in query. By 'guest bed', he meant a pile of straw. A common rural idiom.
She scanned the room she was in with the dim light of her flickering candle. A pale, exaggerated face stared at her from the darkness, shaking. The family's child, of course. She nodded at the traumatized kid, then looked to the hearth. Debris were everywhere; wooden planks from the ceiling having fallen through to the dirt floor underneath. In the center of the fire pit was a moderately sized chunk of... something. It was shiny. She brought her light closer to it. Some kind of iron. Shaped in a strange way. Similar to a pot. She reached her hand out to it, curious. Quickly, she withdrew it. It was warm. If she had touched it, it would had burned. She looked at the ashes of the hearth. The amount of heat it was giving off was not enough that it would be from sitting on hot embers. Not in this amount of time. She brought her candle close to her body and stroked her chin. Very unusual indeed.
Cold air was drafting in from the hole in the rafters. Outside, the grumbly man seemed to find a place to stay. Probably for the best, it was already getting chilly in here. She turned from the mess in this house towards the door frame, and walked through it.
"Whatyathink?" The soft, masculine voice asked.
Her voice hummed thoughtfully, then spoke in a hoarse, high-pitched tone. "Surprising craftsmanship. I do not know why it came from the sky."
"Craftsmanship...?! What fell exactly?"
The larger man responded in place of her: "Some rock. A metal thing." He waved.
"An eruption, maybe?"
An older woman replied from the small crowd. "Nay. Hasn' been an eruption in generations."
"Whatever it is, we're fixing my damn house." The giant chuckled. The laughter was hiding genuine anger that anyone in the village would understand.
And with that, they separated. The man recovered his child from the abode, and the people returned to their own housing. Morning did not come with much difficulty, aside from some late night pondering. The woman arose early, at the very cusp of dawn. Her eyes were already well adapted to the dark. She started gathering some standard gear. Cloak, unstrung bow, quiver, sword with sheathe, some stale bread that she stuffed into her pack. Most importantly, she took her trap setter, her treasured ropes, and some fresh wooden traps she had not yet set. She quietly left through the door. There were others still sleeping in her house. She then skulked through the half-lit darkness towards the trail not far from her house, that stretched through a field towards the deep of the woods.
No one was stirred by her leaving. This was routine. In fact, someone was eating some bread of their own, staring at her as she left. That was more unusual. But they raised a hand at her in greeting, and she did the same, otherwise not acknowledging the encounter. Now she had to do go to each of the traps she had previously set, check on them, reset them or take them back if needed... Of course, the hope was that one of the traps had something in them. Alas, that would be a privelege, not a given. She kept walking down the trail in the field. This year, this field was fallows. Soil with small patches of vines creeping in and ferns poking out from the earth. Nothing was growing here for the time being. She looked passingly at the livestock grazing there in the dark. They were like yaks with longer necks and thin, snaking tails behind them. She wasn't bothered by this. They were normal animals to her. Reliable, even.
Soon, trees began surrounding her. Seeing the trees, she was suddenly reminded. After the sound of that metal contraption smashing through that fellow villager's house, there was another sound. Like trees snapping. Maybe she should investigate in that direction. She was on trapping duty, afterall. It was important for her to keep up to date with the area. She nodded to herself silently as she continued her trek. She would do precisely that.
