Stumbling slightly on an unexpected patch of loose gravel, she looked up and gazed at the house, pausing to take it in before finalising her approach, as unwanted and unwarranted as it may be. Smoke had unfurled from the chimney, yet lay heavy in the still, bitterly cold air and its scent just reached the area, a hundred metres or so away as she was, its tendrils filling her nostrils and transporting her back to days spent in her grandmother’s home as a child, helping her peel the potatoes for the evening meal and dropping them, with a satisfying plop, one by one into the oversized pan that Gran had favoured.
Debris in the form of small branches littered the semi frozen ground around the old farmhouse was the only obvious evidence of the storm that had ripped through this area only hours before. The stillness that now filled the void was eerie, and she shivered a little as she instinctively reached for a shawl that was no longer there. Swallowing the fear she felt like bile rising and burning in her throat, she took a deep breath, returned her gaze to the muddied scrubland that once had passed for a thriving garden, and forced herself to place one booted foot carefully in front of the other, one-two one-two, and continued to make progress, with growing trepidation, towards the building that held the answer.
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