It's a cold winter day in a snowy valley. The sun is low, enough that much of the valley is in shadow. She is near the bottom, on a gentle slope. There's a badly degraded asphalt road nearby leading some kind of abandoned village down there. There's an old gas station a bit closer, and houses and convenience stores dotted along the valley road.

The signs are in Norwegian.

Deep breath.

This is - kind of alarming. She's been teleported?

None of the houses look inhabited...

She pauses to orient herself, confirms she's still in her witch raiment, and goes through her pockets for her crystal pouch. She takes out a piece of clear quartz, presses it to her forehead with a quick thought for acuity and perception, then slips it back into her pouch. For finding the way... Rhodonite, for planning the long game, or chrysoprase, for truth... She doesn't think she's being deceived, not yet, so she ties a string around the rhodonite, letting it dangle from her fingers. She waits for it to still and stop spinning on its own, and then, perfectly still, closes her eyes and guides herself into the thought of wanting to know the shortest path to people.

(Rhodonite is a tricky stone, sometimes. She might have a vision. It might simply act like a lodestone - which would be better for finding a path, but she doesn't usually carry it because it's so specialized - and turn or pull her in the direction she needs to go.)

There's-

-Something like a vision, a bit. People, in the town and in the scattered buildings and in one of the cars, and a sensation like curdling milk, and a distinct sense that the correct path is away.

South, along the road. Then west, into the woods. A long and difficult hike. A small village with a wooden palisade, almost like something out of an earlier century, men and women patrolling the woods who don't feel wrong, with guns-

Something very strange is going on here.

She takes out the chrysoprase for truth and clear sight, ties it to a twine necklace so it'll rest against her throat - unideal for vision, but less awkward with what she has - and starts south, keeping the rhodonite suspended ahead of her in case her path changes.

The road is occasionally dotted with a house or store or picnic area. It heads up towards the low point between two small peaks.

She should give that beaten-up old car a wide berth.

She does so, moving carefully.

The car starts following her. On unhealthy-looking... Giant... Insect legs? Mostly coming out of the hole for the radiator. It's moving slower than walking pace, scraping along the road surface with a loud groan of protesting metal and the deep fleshy sounds of something big and alive and struggling.

That is extremely alarming. Some kind of malicious spirit?

She snatches a pouch of herbs and salt from inside her jacket, sprinkling it over herself while muttering a spell, then pulls at the back of her jacket to form a witch hood, pulling it over her face and eyes.

She has senses other than sight, even if they're unideal - this should hide her pretty thoroughly, even if it's annoying to maintain...

It scrapes along up to near where she disappeared, and then turns left and right a bit in confusion.

("Hhhh.... Hhhungry....")

Eventually it goes to the side of the road and pretends to be an unremarkable car wreck again.

...She's going to keep the witch hood up until she meets someone more person shaped. (And then she's probably going to investigate them, first.)

There are ominous feelings about a couple more cars and some of the occasional buildings she passes.

She probably needs some survival gear. And food. The path she's being shown looks like a two-day hike, or longer. Conveniently, there are old stores and houses that look relatively intact and might have some.

She redirects her crystal to take her toward gear she thinks she'll need - more magical compounds than direct survival gear, she can get away with a lot given the right spells. Food's important, and often doubles as a magical ingredient anyways... Water's somewhat more important, though, if she can find any unspoiled bottles. And hopefully an empty container in case she finds a healthy spring - actual unprocessed water's usually better for spell work, unless you need sterilized water for some reason.

This gas station, intact except for the whole glass double doors at the front being shattered and the solitary pump being torn halfway apart, has bottles of water amid the degraded sports drinks and colas. Most of the fast food is long ruined but some of the stuff in plastic packaging as opposed to rust-vulnerable cans is still good if she has any way to distinguish it from spoiled items. There are toothbrushes and napkins and cigarettes and windshield washer fluid and very old beer bottles and exploded batteries and a mummified corpse wearing heavy coats and a gas mask next to an empty bottle of pills, in the back office.

This is all - disturbing.

She takes the water bottles, and sorts through the miscellaneous stuff to see if there's anything like 'rain ponchos' or 'tarps' or 'umbrellas' or 'chewing tobacco' (better for spell work than cigarettes - twists are ideal, but she'll take loose leaf, the fewer sweeteners and flavors the better), and she runs a quick poison/ not poison scry over the packaged food and grabs a few snacks, and tries to see if she can find somewhere that sold spices - even a horribly stale spice rack will help replenish her supplies if she runs low, and a grocery store will have more food options hopefully.

There are umbrellas! There are some packets of snus, which is snuff tobacco with salt and soda ash. The grocery store would be in the town behind her, not south along the road and soon enough into the wilderness where the path towards people is taking her.

The salt and soda ash aren't prohibitive - their influence on spells is better than flavorings, at least. It'll modify some of her spells, but not too badly, and she can probably use the snus packets for a wider variety of things than plain tobacco. (She takes the lot.)

Two umbrellas, one actually usefully big, one small to possibly enchant as a shield. (Archaic, but, well. She's in a strange situation.)

She doesn't want to backtrack to the town, so... She decides to push on.

There are also paper packets of salt and black pepper, if she wants any of those. And a few tins of honey intact. Honey lasts forever.

It's getting pretty dark as the twilight deepens. Only the very tips of the mountains off to her left show any light now. A good spot to camp out would be - that way, an abandoned cabin up a small rise and near a cliff that doesn't give off an aura of danger.

She takes the salt, pepper, and honey, too. She checks the cabin a bit more thoroughly before entering - but quickly, she's not sure she wants to get caught out in the dark.

She secures any possible entrances and exits to the cabin after canvasing it for threats, before trying to find something in the cabin to use to draw warding runes and thresholds - salt's usually best for this, but her packets don't amount to much, and she'd rather not use them up. Charcoal's not bad for runes, though she can use anything you can draw in including dirt if she must. Dry rice does in a pinch for thresholds.

The cabin's pantry is mostly empty but there is a half-full tin of salt, some stale basil and ginger and paprika. There's ash in the fireplace and a good stack of firewood right outside. It looks like the place was hastily abandoned once upon a time; Papers and clothes are strewn around.

The ash will do well enough - she creates thick barrier lines before all the exterior doors and windows, first, chanting that this is a protective threshold, and none may cross it without permission of the one who has claimed it as their shelter. She apologizes for the intrusion, but she is a wanderer, who seeks their hospitality - and their forbearance for her paranoia.

The spirits local to this hut, if there are any, don't materialize any objections. The place is very quiet in both senses.

This place is so very odd.

Next - comfort, she needs to sleep, and she can better evaluate any supplies she can take from here in the morning...

What're her options for bedding?

A twin-size mattress with sheets, a single blanket, and pillows, though the sheets and blanket have a suspicious looking blood-ish stain on them that carries a very faint memory of pain and anguish. A couch with two less comfy pillows. A plush armchair. Some towels and forgotten old clothes that might serve as a pseudo-blanket in the chilly hut if the bloodstained one won't do.

She says a prayer for peace over the bloodstained bedding, folding it up carefully in case she has an opportunity to bury them tomorrow morning. She sets herself up on the couch with some of the more comfortable pillows, using the towels and clothes for a blanket.

Aside from the chill, nothing disturbs her sleep.

In the morning a pair of - songbird spirits? - are curiously investigating her barrier from the outside.