The Hut

Moving up the beach, the ground to her left fell away abruptly, revealing a long-overgrown trail. It was little more than a game trail, but she found herself following it, grateful just for the easier ground beneath her feet. The scrubby pines, as she'd suspected, continued inland, offering no real protection from the wind, sparsely spaced as they were, with scrubby bushes and rocky ground between. The rain, having threatened all morning, now began, a slow, soaking drizzle that served to chill her further and slick the rocks and occasional pavers of the trail so that she almost fell more than once.

A bend in the trail left her facing a clearly abandoned hut. It was a one room affair, with an outhouse a good space to the side and a thatch roof. It would have looked cozy if not for the roof falling in at one corner and the door being off its hinges, instead looking ominous and vaguely threatening.

Despite the appearance of the place, she pushed forward, driven by cold, misery and the promise of salvaging something to protect or clothe her.

Inside, the hut was in worse shape than the exterior, furniture overturned and tossed about the room so that she had to climb over things to move anywhere within, and deep claw marks marring several of the surfaces, large enough that Tsan questioned what sort of beast might have made them.