She isn't sure if she would have made it through the desert, if the storm hadn't hit. She still has some water left, in her rations. They haven't figured out what the energy rays here are, but scattering through the whirling sand they're as deadly to her as to anyone.
She coughs. She falls.
And here she is. She opens her eyes.
She finds himself breathing stale but decidedly non-sandy air. The room is apparently some kind of small dormitory. It looks a weird mix of recently cleaned and "was dirty for a very long time" while being liveable.
After the days of incessant brightness, suns and the other lights beating down, it's nice, in ways, to be somewhere less bright. She looks around the room. For traces of people, for any signs of how many people. For technology level, or magic forms.
There is a bedside lamp with shade that reveals a burned out lightbulb inside. The light on the ceiling might also be electricity powered, but harder to tell from a distance. By the way the glass is mildly yellowed out, then scrub, the two pieces of technology looks several decades out of date. There are no obvious signs of people around, except the lack of dust.
That's something to notice, that someone scrubbed the maybe-old bulb, but didn't change it. She's careful - she doesn't want to disturb others' belongings in any case, and if she's in a restoration she wouldn't want to damage it.
How many beds, of what kind? Any books, or pictures?
A single bed with a metal frame. A wardrobe with the door half-opened revealing the back boards but no clothes. A dresser, bedside table, and a dressing table with a wooden chair. All but the table appears to be made of the same dark brown wood in the same style - simple, with solid rectangular shapes or utilitarian curves, with chamfered corners.
No books or pictures visible, despite plenty of space for such things. She might be able to identify nails on the walls surrounded by the faded mark of pictures that hung from a long time.
She takes it in.
Is there a window? A door? (She'll try to look out a window first if there is one, standing carefully so it would be harder to see her from outside, were someone else looking.)
There is a window, yes, showing a ground floor view of an empty street. The nearby buildings don't look like they are used as residences, and much of everything looks overgrown. Like a less visited part of town. It might be late morning or early afternoon.
This side of the glass has been cleaned. The other is not, and has iron bars.
Can she see vehicles in the street, or signs, or anything written on the road...
If there are plants on the bar or very near the window, she tries to push one a little. Just to move a little, as it might naturally. (It's good to know if she can, here. And nothing had grown, in that desert.)
No vehicles, but there are street signs visible from her point of view. Too far for a normal person to read.
She can easily spot some ivy growing diligently around a metal bar. It moves normally under the effect of her magic.
The door is open, leads to a far, far dirtier hallway. There is all sorts of junk: bits of furniture, torn pieces of paper, collections of trinkets like glass beads, and much more.
Nearly everything is covered in a thick layer of dust.
...Except for the trails showing that the hallway has been recently used.
It's suggesting that someone has come to live in a left-abandoned place, maybe, more than restoration. But she doesn't know yet. She follows the trails (more likely to lead to an entrance, than if she walks some other way, even if more likely to meet someone also.) Will try to hide from view, if she hears or sees someone.
The dust shows various trails around the floor, which shows itself to be just as cluttered as the hallway she was on. There is an entrace space (with a large door to the house's exterior), but that door is locked. If she navigates around, she will find a door to the backyard.
The building is largely silent, but if she pays attention... there, sounds from upstairs.
Locked. (From outside). That - means different things, often.
She'll look for more doors, or windows that might open and be unbarred. Can she leave through the backyard?
The backyard doesn't appear to have an exit. But maybe one is buried deep under all that dead foliage of what was once a beautiful garden.
All windows are barred, and there are no more doors leading outside.
She finds... a lot of damp and half-rotten leaves and twigs of assorted sizes and states of decay. But no visible door or passage to leave the plot of land.
She didn't expect to, really.
She isn't going to try to batter the door down herself or climb the yard wall. She's not alone here, isn't going to risk bringing something down on whoever else is locked inside. (If there is someone, and if they are.)
And, if she can't leave - better to find who it is than have them stumble over her. Better to meet them earlier.
She goes toward the sound, careful.
She climbs the stairs and doesn't need to go all the way before spotting a young man cleaning up another set of stairs across the first floor hallway.
A cat is dutifully watching the proceeding with typical cat aloofness.
She stops some ways away - they'll see her if they look, but if they're alarmed by her it'll be very obvious that they'll have a few seconds before she could physically get over there (which won't help if they think she can do it some other way. But). (And she'd have the same few moments, unless they can move some other way, if they react in the other direction. Not that that's likely to matter.)
She knocks on one of the walls, as though on a door.
The young man was in the process of removing a piece of furniture out of the stairs and nearly jumps when he hears the knock. Then drops the piece of furniture upon seeing her. "What?"
She holds her hands raised but not too raised, away from her body, neither palms nor knuckles pointed towards them. "Excuse me, I'm sorry. I don't mean to disturb you."
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