Evander Burke, 25 year urban planner & architect, recent inheritor of lots of forest

Authors note: Hello all, this is my first attempt at a longform story so we’ll see how it goes. Criticism would be appreciated. On that note I should mention that this first chapter is mostly backstory and setup, so it’s not necessarily a good indicator. Now, onwards!

Looking out over the forest that oh so recently ended up in your possession you can't help but let out a sigh.“What the fuck was the old man thinking” you mutter. “leaving me as the primary in his will.”

It seems like a fair question, all things considered. After all, while Professor Maxwell had assisted on several of your later college projects, you had barely known the man outside of a work environment. Which seems to have been your former professor's baseline now that you think about it. He'd left you the deed to a substantial estate, closer to a mansion really, as well as the surrounding five square miles of forest, as well as enough money to cover property taxes and the like for the next decade.

You knew pioneering and consulting in the field of nonhuman accessibility had made him unreasonably wealthy, but you’d still hired your own lawyer to look it all over. Everything turned out authentic: no scams, no estranged family waiting to hit you with a legal battle, nothing. So, you had given your clients notice of a week-long vacation you were taking, told friends you’d be out for a while, and had made the drive up to inspect everything.

Which brings your mind right back to where it was before this little tangent, debating pros and cons. you didn’t really have much of a life to uproot, so the major difficulty would be getting a new client base in the local area.

“And the travel costs” you start musing aloud, “Suppose I could offer my services to the local county's, see if anybody needs minor remodels done.”

The feeling of a rain drop down the back of your shirt collar is all the indication you get that the time for contemplation in nature has passed before the sky opens up in a downpour. Turning to run back inside allows you to catch a glimpse of your reflection as you open the glass patio doors, a lanky frame, dark brown eyes, and relatively unkempt hair.

As the door shuts behind you with a little rattle from the wind, you decide to put the matter of your inheritance aside for the night and get ahead on one of the contracts you had signed for. Sure the money from this was yours regardless, but you’d started this last batch of contracts before the lawyers had informed you and your mind needed a different challenge.

It only takes you a couple minutes to get changed into something more comfortable before sliding into your chair and powering on the laptop that had accompanied your week long trip out to inspect the property. You open email out of habit and stare in confusion at the new email from the … AWIO, why would they be contacting you of all people? You open the message and a video begins to play.

“Hello mister Burke,” a remarkably chipper dog girl opens the video with “it has recently come to our attention here at the Alternate World Integration Organization that you have received a relatively large amount of forested land. In light of this and several other factors such as your former work with us we are reaching out to inquire if you would consider sponsoring a few of the more wilderness oriented monster girls in our care”. With that the video ends and as you scan the rest of the email you see its really just a more in depth explanation as to why the organization is reaching out to you.

“Well shit, someone up the chain must really be **** if they're bothering to investigate people to reach out to instead of just letting those who are willing apply.” You muse as you close the message and start working for the remainder of the day.

As you sit and think over breakfast the next day you decide to look into the AWIO’s offer when you return to the city. It would almost certainly put a greater strain on your finances, at least until whoever you sponsored got settled in and could help out. But it would also go a long way to relieve your concerns about going stir crazy out here. Plus, you knew some of the more fey oriented immigrants actively suffered in industrialized cities and there couldn’t be all that many people in as good of a position as your current one to help out.

You honestly suspected that to be the unspoken reason behind the email you’d received. You had worked with AWIO members on several projects and from the conversations you remembered AWIO did everything it reasonably could to improve the image of its charges; including a strict, and harshly enforced, no soliciting policy. Them breaking it meant something was up, and you couldn’t help but wonder what.