#v!scar

Not a place you reach by roads, or even by intention. The land around it does not bother to name itself—stone, moss, a river that remembers older paths. The House stands as though it has always been there, and yet the scent of fresh-cut timber still clings to its walls.

It's lived in.

Telling by the worn edge of the threshold, the way the door hesitates before closing, the quiet clutter that settles only when time has passed. And yet—new copper gleams in the seams. Fresh rivets catch the light. The House hums faintly, like it has just finished being made.

An Elven Witch built it.

She likes copper best.

Copper veins run through the House the way thoughts run through a mind. Plates and wires disappear into the walls, reemerge as hinges, lantern hooks, delicate mechanisms that click once every morning for no reason except that she wanted them to. Some parts have oxidized into soft green, others shine as if polished only yesterday. She never bothers to make them match.

The House follows rules, though not the kind written down.

Things stack neatly here. Objects know where they belong. A table sits at the exact height where crafting feels easiest, its surface marked by faint grids burned into the wood. Chests open with a familiar weight, holding only what they can reasonably contain—no more, no less. When night falls, the House grows brighter instead of darker, warded carefully, deliberately. Nothing hostile ever seems to wander too close.

The world feels…chunked, somehow. Step too far in one direction and the terrain changes its mind. Hills repeat a pattern. Trees grow in polite distances from one another. The Witch noticed this long ago and decided not to question it.

She lives far away.

Sometimes she thinks of people—faces half-remembered, voices she once shared silence with. Other witches. Elves who didn’t understand why she preferred metal to leaves. Someone who taught her things she still uses, though she no longer remembers their hands clearly. People who were like her but not. Tiny hands that cling. These thoughts arrive like items dropped gently into her inventory: acknowledged, kept, rarely examined.

But then again, she lives alone.

No footsteps echo but her own. No other bed has ever been set down here. The House has never needed to make room for another name.

Now, the Witch is packing.

She moves through the House methodically, lifting objects that seem small until you try to carry them. Tools are cleaned and stacked. Copper components are unbolted, labeled in her own quiet shorthand. Mechanisms pause, then fall silent as she disconnects them. The House does not resist. It has learned this rhythm.

She pauses once, hand resting against a wall that is warm from stored daylight. The House feels unfinished again. Or perhaps it always was.

When she leaves, the door will close cleanly behind her. The House will remain—new, old, lived in, empty. Waiting without wanting.

The first time Rainy saw the copper prism on the windowsill, she didn’t mean to pocket it.

Well.

They mostly didn’t mean to.