It was the strangest hodgepodge of a house Jax had ever seen. The solid plank tower butting up against the back wall looked oddly out of place against the cobblestone and steeply pitched shingles. Placed where it was in the spray of a waterfall that seemed to feed nothing, it looked as if someone had snatched random bits from across time and space and pasted them together in homage to time itself.
The impression grew even stronger as the door opened and the occupant appeared. She was a wizened old woman, with incongruently red straggling strands of hair escaping a bonnet starched stiffer than the Magistrate. Her feet were clad in solid leather work boots, while a patchwork cloak barely hid a gown fit for the ballroom.
This dizzying figure rushed toward Jax, grinning widely. “Why, there you are!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him with a disconcerting familiarity that he was too thunderstruck to resist. “I was beginning to think you had lost your way and would never arrive after all!”
She released him only to grab his arms and hold him at arms length, surveying him with the critical eye of an aging aunt or fussing grandmother. “Well now, you could use some meat on your bones, but I can see there’s something going on behind that open mouth and those wide eyes. Yes, you’ll do.”
In an instant everything vanished, the house, waterfall, and woman together. Jax was left standing on the empty moor, staring into space like a daydreaming child, blinking in bewilderment. Feeling dazed, he turned around and headed back to the city as fast as his legs would take him, eager for the comfort of familiar surroundings. But as he topped a hill he stopped so suddenly he nearly lost his balance. The city was gone.
The Word Worker 