Olivia's mind is elsewhere, so the first thing she notices about the transit is her boot landing on soft grass instead of pavement. She doesn't see what she trips on -- thin air is always a possibility -- trips, flails, stands back up, and takes in the surroundings.

The unexpected surroundings.

How? What? Um. UM. There's no sign of the city anywhere, is there? No? Okay. No cell reception either? This is rather more adventure than Olivia was expecting or intending! She still has hold of her bag, thankfully, with her sketchbook and various other sundries, but not much else.

The oft repeated advice for being Lost In The Wilderness is to stay put. She fishes out her (conveniently red) bandana, applies it to the top of her head, and begins to sketch the landscape. The sun is near the horizon, which could mean sunrise or sunset, unfortunately enough. She's hoping for sunrise; nights get cold.

There's no sign of cities, and no cell towers. The sun slowly rises as she sketches, showing that it is, indeed, morning.

A small cow, about as tall as her waist, meanders out of the grass and moos at her contemplatively. If it has any particular opinions on her sketch, it doesn't express them.

A cow? A miniature cow? Oookay. 

"Hello," she says aloud, feeling slightly foolish, but better foolish than trampled because the cow was startled by her. "Are you a cow? I didn't know cows got that small. Even baby cows. I sure hope Mama Cow isn't right behind you. Or worse, right behind me." She can't see a Mama Cow but she's not sure that means much. In fact, she's going to back carefully away from this calf(?), which is much too close for probable wildlife.

Lacking a trail, some of this grass is going to get stomped on (sorry grass!).

The cow is not particularly bothered by her departure. It lowers its head to chew on some of the grass. From a higher vantage point on the hill, she can see two other similarly sized cows in the direction of the sea.

This angle makes the smoke to the north more apparent, along with what might be the top of a wooden roof.

A giant bee — the size of a cow's head — buzzes out of the forest about 100 meters away and starts circling a flower.

That does it. She's officially not in Kansas anymore. (She wasn't in Kansas to begin with, but - she's got to be somewhere like Oz. Giant. Bee.)

The smoke is either a good sign or a very bad one, and Olivia's pretty sure she can't actually tell the difference without getting close. That could be the slope of a roof, or it could be her imagination playing tricks on her, or it could be something bizarrely Oz. Either which way, fire is dangerous.

It's been a couple hours, by this point, and she's going to need water to drink today. She's close enough to the ocean to smell it, and that's the way she'd want to head. To the shore, and then southward, away from the fire. Eyes peeled for any sign of a creek or inlet, or other low place water might gather to flow out into the ocean. 

The hills dwindle down to a gravel beach where the land meets the sea. Kelp waves in the water off of the coast, and the water is remarkably clear; she can see right down to the patches of sand and dirt on the sea floor. Heading south means that the land she is walking along becomes more arid — first just less flowery and with occasional dead bushes, and then suddenly transitioning into actual sandy desert, complete with cacti, in the space of a kilometer. A small outcropping of sandstone juts out some ways inland, and there is a stepped pyramid standing in the shade of it.

The first river she comes to actually flows through that desert, although "flows" may be the wrong word, because this water is perfectly level with the water in the ocean, and doesn't really appear to be moving. There's a definite difference between the river water and the sea-water, though. They're different colors, and the river water doesn't smell of salt at all. An inky black squid jets aimlessly around in the river, chasing after dark red and grey fish the size of her arm.

Freshwater! Olivia is delighted. Lacking a way to purify it, she'll just drink it down until she isn't thirsty anymore. Cross the "horrible waterborne illness" bridge if, no, when, she gets there. 

The river is perfectly level with the ocean, but unmixed? Has she been walking along the water for long enough to observe if the tide is going in or out? If the tide is rising, or near the high tide line, then that could make a certain amount of sense. And would mean she got pretty lucky coming across this river when she did.

There is, now that she mentions it, no sign of tides going either way. The current sand and earlier gravel are both dry, there is no seaweed strewn across the beach, and no little filter feeders in evidence. The water level has not changed, and if she has any particular knowledge of geography, she will see that the coast has not been shaped by tides in the expected ways — dragging sand away from exposed points, or pushing it up into coves.

Weird. No moon, maybe? Unless she can see a moon in the sky now. But she thinks she remembers something about how the moon lining up with the sun makes tides stronger, so even without a moon there should be some tides.

This calls for a List.

Oz Physics:
- Giant Insect (Bee)
- No tidal range
- No mixing between river and ocean.

She thinks that's everything so far?

In which case the next thing she needs for survival is --

-- to sit down and start crying, apparently. She misses, fuck, everything and everyone: her cats, who she's sure will be taken care of but not by her. Her own home. Her crochet, frozen in progress forever. Her moms, who she's not going to be able to tell about this place, who will have to conclude that she just, went for a walk and vanished. Her online friends, likewise, except more so because there won't even be a physical absence to lack any plausible explanation. Just a digital absence with too many explanations and all of them wrong.

She cries herself thirsty, and drinks from the river again.

Okay. Deep breath. 

The fact that the river is in the desert is not ideal, since she needs to stay close to her only source of freshwater, but she also needs to make progress on finding herself food and shelter. The fish are food if she can catch them, but that's a big if.

She squints at the sky. She doesn't think it's past noon yet? She has time to explore upriver.

It's nearing noon, but yes, she has time.

Upriver there is: more sand. Also a drove of jackrabbits dodging around between the cacti.

The stepped pyramid turns out to look over the river as she gets closer, so she has a good view of the structure. There are a pair of short towers on either side of an entrance into the body of the structure. Two swooping ankhs are picked out on the outer faces of the towers in red sandstone. The whole thing is ten meters high.

By the time she's level with the structure, she can just see the far edge of the desert, where it gives away to a flat expanse of dry grass.

Huh, and no signs of people? Other than the structure itself, that is.

She slowly and gingerly walks up to the main entrance, ready to bolt at the first sign of movement.

The inside is spacious, and cool after the heat of the desert sun. The roof is supported by thick pillars, and a geometric design of red sandstone and terracotta covers the floor. There are no people inside, though. The place feels old and abandoned; small amounts of sand have drifted into the corners, although the actual floor itself is clear. A skylight at the top of the pyramid lets in a shaft of the noontime sun to fall directly on the center of the design.

Actually, in the light, it looks sort of like the central blue tile could be levered up from the floor, if she is the sort of person who would do that sort of thing.

Score! This looks like a great place to spend the night. With the thick sandstone above her, it should stay reasonably warm inside all night, and she'll be protected from any wind.

She makes a mental note of the blue tile, but doesn't touch it - she's a guest of this place at least for now, and besides, she has more than enough work on her plate.

Time to try to catch a fish.

The fish don't particularly want to be caught, but they're too big to dart away elegantly. If she's willing to get wet she can do a certain amount of precocious piscosus pugilism.

The sun is hovering around mid-afternoon, sparkling off the water and the sand, by the time she has a dead fish in hand. It is identifiable as sockeye salmon, to someone with a working knowledge of fish.

Olivia doesn't know enough about fish to identify the species when they don't come labeled at the fish counter of a grocery store. 

She needs to either cook this fish or eat it right now, raw. Unfortunately, she has no matches, no other way to start a fire, and, this being the desert, no fuel for it either. Sushi it is. 

After she's eaten, she intends on using the rest of the daylight to explore upriver into the dry grass. Being careful to turn around with a generous margin so she can make it back and settle in before dark.

It's not a tremendously long walk. The dry plains are dotted with the occasional grey-barked umbrella-shaped tree. To the north is a denser forest — perhaps a different side of the same one she saw when she arrived here. To the south, there is more scrubby brush and, quite a distance away, a cluster of light-pink-and-grey buildings. It's hard to make out details from here, though.

Tomorrow she'll hike over to the buildings.

Tonight, she keeps an eye out for a good spot to ford the river. But most of her attention is on making it back to the pyramid campsite and, finally, to sleep. It's been a very long day.

Eventually, the sun dips below the Western sea, sending long shadows reaching across the desert. Opposite it, the moon rises, producing a gentler light, just bright enough to see by.

Not bright enough to prevent monsters from spawning.

As the last of the sunset fades from the sky, and the stars fully come out, Olivia's rest is interrupted by a low groan from outside, and a the sound of bones clattering.

Oh that is not a good sound. Goddamn.

She gets up, grumpily, and walks over to the doorway to see what's up. (Ow. Her feet ache from all the walking the day before.)

Outside, a number of figures now dot the desert. The closest are a greenish festering corpse wearing scraps of blue fabric, and a skeletal archer, both of whom turn to her as she appears in the door. The corpse raises its arms and begins lurching in her direction while the archer nocks an arrow.

Shit! Apparently she should have been a lot more worried about the mysterious noises. She ducks out of view.

Time to set a record for fastest broken camp. The rain shell she was using as a ground cloth goes on and gets zipped up; everything else gets tossed into the bag every which way. She pulls out her umbrella, which is not terribly pointy but is approximately a metal stick, and in her other hand she'll hold her bag in front of her as a makeshift shield. 

Maybe, if she's very very lucky, skeletons can't come inside pyramids, even abandoned pyramids that aren't terribly much like temples. She presses herself to the wall next to the door, and listens as hard as she can.

Alas, it is technically named a desert pyramid, and not a desert temple, although she has no way to know that.

An arrow sails through the door and clatters on the floor. On the other hand, the sound of bones isn't coming any closer, leaving the dragging, shuffling steps of the zombie to advance alone. It makes a low moaning noise, and its hands proceed it into the pyramid.

Oh, she doesn't like that. Stab, replies the umbrella in the general direction of the hands. Shove, says the messenger bag as a follow-up, and then there is a general sprint towards the river.