The Toils (Book One)

I. The Red Dawn

Kiwi scuffled at the edge of the brush, their long yellow beaks plucking at the soil in search for a grub, or two, for breakfast.
Without warning the crack of a whip nearby sent their beaks soaring into the air, the last of the nights' moon highlighting their beady eyes.
Hooves grew louder in the distance - coming closer and closer until the Kiwi saw it, riding towards the brush, a great brown horse with a rider, and they went back to furrowing through the dirt.
Gripping for life on horseback was an older woman, her wispy white hair billowing behind her in a ponytail, jowls wobbling with each mighty stride the horse took. Her frail hands wrapped around the horses neck - hoping and praying she didn't come off.
The bush cover darkened the already inky blue sky, hiding what trace of light the moon cast over them, and the smell of damp forest floor filled her nostrils.
She dared not to look behind her, instead, she focused intently on the path opening itself up in the detritus laden ground. Gently, she guided the horse onto the narrow laneway, trees lining either side of her - thinning slightly to her right, until the sounds of the ocean took over and she knew she was going in the right direction.
The sediment on the ground eased and they found their way onto the old highway, cracked and broken.
The horse slowed, making more deliberate steps over large chasms in the road.
The sky opened up above them, littered with clouds and gulls eager for their morning fish.
Waves crashed over the seawall and spilled foamy water onto the pathway, sending a chill up the old ladies' body, cooling her to her bones.
Beneath her tattered robes, her skin bumped and the hairs on her arms reached for the sky.
Sitting on the edge of the bush to her left was an old sign, growing ever closer as the horse zigzagged between fallen trees and roots that'd long since broken through the concrete.
The old woman had long since given up trying to read what it had once said, the letters had all but been obliterated by the decades of weatherwear and ocean spray, the green backing had faded to a mustard yellow, making the remaining letters even harder to make out.
'P--o-e' was all that was left on the sign, and the old lady and the horse passed it without so much as a second glance.

The road led them to a wall of rubble, stretching from one side of the road to the other. Concrete and rebar poked out at all angles. The rubble wasn't disorganized, though, over years it'd been stacked and shaped into a poorly standing wall about 5ft high and 12 feet deep. Too high for an old woman to climb, and too thick for a horse to clear without breaking the rider's bones.
Instinctively, the horse veered back into the dense scrubland to the left of the road, and the old woman stroked the neck of the stallion affectionately.
Once again the damp scrub was dimmed and the sky hidden.
Though an ad-hoc path had been forged by riders wishing to avoid the rubble wall, branches still overhung at eye level. The woman lay flat on her chest and allowed them to tickle the back of her neck as they passed over.
It didn't take too long to clear the bridge and the path met back up with the road again.
The road became pocky, with landslip deposits lining the edges of the bush. Following the road a little longer, they were met with a wooden bridge crossing a river below.
The horse stepped onto it tentatively and the old woman held her breath. There had been a number of times where bridge began swaying with the tide of the river, the roughshod structure had been put together long before the elderly woman was even born.
Casting her eye over the edge into the river rushing under her feet, the woman caught a glimpse of concrete and rebar. She cringed at the thought of falling through the bridge and becoming impaled on the debris beneath her.
Climbing off the bridge the horse felt comfortable to start galloping once more.

Between the two of them, the horse and the old woman, it would've been hard to know who was more relieved to be in the village and off the rickety bridge.
Slowly they made their way through a small network of cracked roads until they found the central laneway, a wide road ever pocked and cracked.
Picking up his pace a little, the horse galloped down the laneway and small houses came into view.
Constructed of mudbricks and rotting trees, they began dotting the path, growing in frequency until finally, they arrived at their destination - the Second House of Gossfordshire - a large square building soaring 6 floors into the air.
A large grassy knoll lay in front of the house, overgrown and messy, and the perimeter of the house was lined with rose bushes, their thorns a deterrent to anyone who dared try to invade the yard.
The house was unlike the ones surrounding it, it was not mud and rotting wood, but cracked concrete and shattered glass making up the majority of the building, a building the old woman knew to be at least two hundred years old, though it could be more.