OoC: Mitya can be found in my sig. Recover your CJs soon, Wolfen, :<

IC: When Mitya stood before one of windows of the lonely building, and gazed through the dirt of its lower-most panes, he could see the world curving down into the horizon: a sea of winter grass falling off the edge of earth; stretches of blighted copse verged upon a cosmic sea.

And if he stood still of body, still of mind, he could feel the world churning beneath his bare feet, beneath the broken floorboards, like a sea.

Or perhaps that was just the dizziness that accompanied a lack of sleep.

The house had been swimming about him ever since he arrived; he found he could not turn, could not bend without his vision misaligning, his eyelids drooping. Not even fascination—drawing his fingers through the chalky white dust on the floor; tracing old rust as it had once dripped down the glass; pushing against the floorboards and finding them rotten and yielding—could dissuade his body from sagging as though it would fall in upon itself.

He had over exterted himself, trying to soak in the old, ruined beauty of the house when he should have lain himself down and slept. But the house, in all its ruin and desolation, spoke to something buried within him. Its dust was an old, familiar friend; the damp, fetid walls sweet as companions, sweet as fine memories. It is not the building itself that spoke to him - the fact it is abandoned, unkempt, and a creature of solitude upon a sea of grass stirred his adoration.

And he knew the moment that he shut his eyes and slept, the Slumber would take his adoration from him.

And so he chose to meander about, awake.

He had not been here long, half an hour at the most. He had entered planning only to hide himself and sleep - the house was the only building in sight, and he preferred that if the Slumber should take him, he be indoors, safe and hidden from the elements. He had not slept, of course, and his decision to stay awake was beginning to take its toll.

For he only now heard the thwap-thwap-thwapping of something approaching from outside.

He slid over to a window, and levered himself onto his tiptoes, that he might glance over the ledge into the yard. There, just beyond the gate, an enormous something was landing. It reminded him of a dragonfly, with metal wings protruding from its head and spinning rather than beating up and down. He stared at it, intrigued.

But even more intriguing were the people within.