here and now

Life in Antler Peak is a life of quiet acceptance, a quiet acknowledgement of the occasional strange and esoteric events that break up the banality of the everyday routine. The people that call it home grow jaded to such events, strangers to the ordinary. Seeing yet another tale in the local paper of a close friend going missing is just another mundane event in a line of many.

Though the county has seen rapid changes in recent memory, vigilante groups, expected to only last a week or a month at most, gained more and more importance, proving they were here to stay. They brought a welcome sense of peace to a population that had long forgotten the feeling of it. This group offers structure and order to the Gifted, those who manifested abilities or affinities that blurred the lines of normalcy.

Unbeknownst to most, their home stood as the crossroads of something greater, one that drew the curious and wayward in, like a long-forgotten childhood home that simply begs for one last visit.

Even as the number of strange arrivals to the frontier grew exponentially, dwarfing the population of the local residents, most accepted them with open arms, while others resented the “invaders,” creating their own pockets of tradition to keep their own sense of home, whatever that home was.

Among the new arrivals stood people that didn’t conform, individuals so similar to those Gifted, and yet so different, like lambs separated from their flock, forced to grow up in a world that wasn’t made for them.

before the bones

Long before maps and wanderers gave this place a name, before the axe ever knew the tree, the mountains rose slow and heavy. The rivers cut deep and taught the stone to listen. Night learned how to breathe and keep its knowing.

What would be called Antler Peak was never empty, only quiet. Only waiting.

Some came looking for a living, some came running from their past. Some stayed on because they felt the wanting. Some felt something old awaken like a hand beneath the skin. Some just found a place that held them and didn’t ask where they’d been.

Those who have lived here long enough tend to agree on a few things.

The woods remember every footstep, even when the trail is gone.

Night falls heavy in the shadow of the Peak, like the shadows are leaning on your lungs.

When the unseen calls your name, you’ll hear it travel further than it ought to go.

Not everything that watches seeks to feed, but nothing watches without reason.

Some places don’t take anything, they just don’t give you back the same.

These aren’t laws, they’re not warnings. They’re just the knowing the land allows. You can turn your back and leave it, or you can stand and look toward the Peak.

The land already knows itself, and someday, it’ll remember you.