Rain poured from the grey sky like always. It was consistent in its presence, the only change having been when it started, a few scattered drops that grew into the current grey static. The water could fall for days at a time it sometimes seemed, stopping only for a few hours to catch its breath before returning to dousing everything in its sight. Even during these "breaths" mist hung to the wet ground, keeping watch in its sibling's absence.
As was the expectation, the only pieces of civilization that existed here were small, unimportant townships, governed loosely as there wasn't much to be governed. The people that lived in these townships were the kind of people who ran small businesses miles from their homes and had little sense of neighborhoods as the distance between their house the next was too far to casually walk, but too close to justify driving. They were as they should have been: placid.
Very few had lived elsewhere before they lived in these townships. Magpie Sallow was one of these few. She didn't intend on staying long in the township she had chosen. In fact, if all went well, she would be gone before the end of the year. It was August currently, and all was going well.
"Your room is just upstairs," explained Mrs. Brink as she lead Magpie up a narrow flight of carpeted steps to the second floor of the house. "It's furnished as I already told you. I'm expecting that you'll need some new bed sheets, though. Mine are getting old, sorry for that."
"Oh- it's fine," Magpie replied hurriedly. "I can get some if it comes to that." The room in front of her was small, like everything here, but suitable. "Thank you again, Mrs. Brink."
"Don't worry about it, dear. I'm having dinner at seven. Should I expect you to join me or do you have plans?"
"I can join you. Do you need any help?" she asked, turning back to her new landlady.
"No, I think I can manage, thank you," Mrs. Brink assured her. "You can get settled in, I'll call you down when dinner's ready."
Dinner had been uneventful. As had been the rest of the evening. Magpie was currently laying face-up on her bed, staring at the pale ceiling. Outside of a few hairline cracks, the surface was completely smooth and untouched. This was one of the many confessions to the true age of the house. The peculiar, although admittedly obvious, thing about the North American continent is that the further west you travel, the younger the architecture becomes. In New York, some of the buildings are nearly a century and a half in age. In Arizona, the oldest habitable structures are barely sixty.
