Blurb

 Beyond the scant farmlands of home there is wilderness. Sprawls of uncontained forests, aching expanses of desert, and grasslands that look like empty seas in the summer winds. Ancient rocks set into the earth mark out forgotten roads, leading to forgotten places, connecting one farmland to the next like frayed threads.

No one travels those roads anymore. Not if they don't have to. There are too many unknowns along the way. Scavengers lurk in the trees, and predators in the grasses. It's said that sometimes the roads disappear entirely, swallowed by the untamed growth and neglect of ages past. In the distance there are mountains; monoliths of a border long abandoned. To say that whatever lays beyond them could be better would be unwise; because no one even really knows whats past the view from their fields. These people work their crops, and live off what they can. They lead simple lives, deriving contentment from what they can, because to stray too far would surely spell their end. What keeps these farmers safe are the shrines. At the edges of each field, small mounds topped with carved figures keep watch. Their forms and faces worn to unrecognizable specters, each one facing out into the wilds like sentinels. The people here leave them wild flowers, and bow their heads as they pass, but no one knows where they came from. It has been too long since they were made, and now their purpose and function have all but been lost to memory. Even the elders here tell fractured stories at night; their own minds turning to faded and broken things. They speak of towns, towns with large stone buildings, where dozens and dozens of people met and lived together. Places without shrines that the Earth consumed when the stars fell from the sky.

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