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You awake, eyes nearly glued together with the dry crust of sleep. Rubbing your eyelids helps to clear the rheumy ground, but makes you suddenly aware of the throbbing pain in your head.

The room shakes, and you realize it's not your own. As the movement calms to a gentle rocking, a tinny chiming can be heard in the room beyond. Your hands slide across the soft, worn fabric of an old quilt—a sharp contrast to the hay filled mattress below you. The ceiling is only a few feet above your head, covered by a yellowed sheet with mold-like floral pattern you can barely make out in the moonlight. The sheet falls to one side of the mattress, hiding the rest of the room like a thin veil. On the other side of the mattress, a window is carved from the thin, wooden wall, covered only by an uneven wire mesh.

The cool breeze of night flows through the window, bringing with it the fresh scent of rain. The sound of wagon wheels crawling across the damp ground almost masks the crickets singing in the distance. There are voices outside, low and whispered, speaking in an unfamiliar tongue. Unfamiliar, but somehow comforting.

You turn your head slightly, and the scent of the room becomes apparent: stale, like dirt and neglected old books—a library in a desert. But, there was something else. Something almost unnoticeable. Something just below the surface. The malodorous air of salt and fetid meat. For a moment you feel a sickness burning at the back of your throat, but your attention is quickly taken from the moment as the room lurches forward, and shakes softly to a stop.

• If you look out the window, go to 1
• If you look past the sheet, go to 2
• If you do something else, comment below and your story will continue as soon as possible.