578 Croft of Chaos

I cannot call what I found a farm, and hesitate to dignify it with the word croft.  It was a shack, two outbuildings, and a pen area with the poles in such disarray that they wouldn't protect anything from a wandering plains cat.

There were no such beasts in evidence.

There were the remains of a wooden troth from the river to plots where the crops lay dead and forgotten.  Sections were missing, and others fallen.  I honestly thought it might be better to begin from nothing than to repair what remained.

And there ended my attempts to infiltrate by day.  A green spideroid among green grass might manage to hide its presence.  In that yellow and brown circle of death…

Wait.  It WAS a circle.

A circle centered upon the… house.

Such things normally meant Taint, or at least malefic magic.

I discovered spiders can't readily suck on their lips.