Rosehill Irregulars: The Closed City

Chapter 1

 The sun beamed down on a quaint little town in Northern Andora. A town at the crossroads leading to several major cities in the region. For that reason, the town had been given the uninventive name "Crossroads" by early settlers coming down to the plains millenia past. Krissa sat on the balcony overlooking the square. Her short, almost childlike legs dangled over the edge between the spindles. Her eyes focused intently on the project in front of her. She clutched a small clockwork device in one hand and prodded at it with a narrow metal pick. So keen was her focus that she didn't even move to push away the lock of mousy brown hair that had fallen out of the simple bun on her head.

"Kriss!" a voice shouted, breaking the silence of scraping metal and whispering wind. "Krissa!"

Krissa looked up, blinking through the magnifying spectacles she wore. Everything past her hand was blurry and impossible to discern. Focusing on where the voice had come from, she only saw a dark blob. She pushed the glasses' second lens up, blinking as the world refocused. There, standing in at the base of the house, was a young woman with wild black curls and dressed in matching clothes.

"Oh, hi Paige!" she said cheerfully, waving down at the woman.

"What are you doing inside today?" she asked, looking over the facade of the house.

"I'm outside!" Krissa set the device aside.

"I don't consider sitting on your balcony 'being outside,' Kriss."

"Maybe not, but I do," Krissa chuckled. "I'm outside and I'm enjoying the fresh air. But given that you're here, I assume you have something planned for us?"

"You've assumed correctly." Paige started forward. "Is the door open?" she asked, looking up again.

"Yes? Why-"

"I'm coming in!" Paige announced. Krissa watched Paige pull the door open and disappear inside. She wasn't expecting company- at least not as this hour. Maybe a nice dinner with the rest of the Irregulars, but she hadn't even cleaned her study yet.

She pulled her feet back up onto the balcony and stood up. Even at her full height, she barely passed the top of the guardrail. Footsteps thundered up the stairs inside; she picked up the device and turned it over in her hands.

"Could you stay downstairs-" Paige sprinted up the remaining stairs, "-the study isn't clean," Krissa concluded weakly.

Paige stopped at the doorway leading back inside from the balcony. She leaned against the doorframe and pushed her hair back, revealing her slightly pointed ears. Not as sharp as pure-blooded treestriders, but certainly more than humans. Quite like Krissa's own, actually.

"So did you forget Finn is playing today?"

"He is?" Krissa stepped around Paige's leg and shuffled over to the calendar on her wall. "What day is it?"

"The eighth."

"The eig-" she looked back at the calendar. The most recent date she'd scratched off was the fourth. "Well, rats." She picked up a pen and X'd out the dates up to the eighth. "Is he playing right now?"

Paige shook her head. "There were still a few folks ahead of him on the roster when I left. Figured you'd want to get there earlier, though. Or was I wrong?"

"No, I do!" Krissa said, searching her desk for a bodkin. She checked under hefty tomes about spellcraft and planar expeditions for one. After checking she would slide the books back onto the first naked plank of shelf she saw. She quickly stowed papers bearing her hastily-scrawled notes from those books in her desk. "I do want to see Finn!" she repeated, tossing a bundle of notes about interplaner travel onto a larger stack.