Peat

No one had ever thought to give Peat a fancy name. It isn’t even a town – not really. It is an accretion. Huts and houses and two inns and a few simple shops and perhaps a hundred souls stuck to the outskirts of the fen like a boot in the mud. The well maintained overland route running east to west passes within fifty yards of the trading post, but does not turn or fork. Bare mud and dirt and the occasional rut show where people come and go, but most of the wagons that stop pull up on the road itself. Most of the residents never venture even that far onto solid ground. The boardwalks and piers and shallow-bottomed barges poled through tight, twisting waterways are their domain. The air is thick and damp here and, some days, when it is still, the fog never lifts and there are only a few hours between the pre-dawn dimness and the twilight gloaming. The muted glows of indistinct lanterns glide to and fro across the water as people go about their work, and the wagons come bearing supplies and leave bearing peat, and the world turns.

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