February of the Fifty-sixth year of the Kurian Order:
The recent violent winter, the worst in living memory for even the tough locals, has ebbed at last. Nothing that might be called spring warms the sky; rather, it is a quiet between-season pause, like the lassitude between the break in a life-threatening fever and recovery.
One winter can do only so much damage. At an old intersection between two neglected county highways, with only one route showing even some signs of maintenance—the northbound stretch has been reduced to little more than a horse track—the Wayside squats behind a lattice of young fir. It might be a monument to entropy.
It is an enclave that could best be described as lumpy. No two structures match. The central building used to be a gas station and convenience store, still identifiable by a few chipped logos as a BP for connoisseurs of pre-22 corporate branding. It stands out from the others in that all the verticals and horizontals are square. The other structures lean as though tired: relocated sheds, prefabricated housing, a fire-gutted strip whose gap-toothed storefronts serve as an improvised garage and junkyard. A double layer of barbed-wire fencing, no two posts standing quite the same, surrounds all, pulled this way and that by the growing pines. The more observant may notice dog feces among the dropped needles between the layers of wire.
