Nature Reserve

The nature reserve is a boundary between controlled space and the wild, where human order frays. A peat-stained clearing offers one path clear enough to walk, though it's littered with snapped saplings and boot prints that lead nowhere useful. Farther in, the trees press close, their skeletal branches clawing at a metallic underbelly jutting from the blackened earth—an alien cylinder pocked with organic growth, its dull sheen revealing itself only when the wind shifts the reek of crushed vegetation. The air tastes of ozone and crushed fern, the kind of smell that lingers after a storm. Nearby, a heavy tarpaulin flaps half-loose over a shallow trench, evidence of hasty excavation abruptly halted. Above, the sky is a uniform slab of grey, too heavy to hold any memory of blue. It feels like a place that knows it shouldn't be here.