The fireplace crackled with a merry joy that was not matched by the solemn face staring into it. As the sound of screaming foxes echoed across the farms outside, Eryn took another large swig of the generous gin and tonic she had made herself and sighed.
"Working from home." She drunkenly mumbled, shooting her cottage angry glances. "Working from fucking home."
Eryn had originally been quite proud of her life plan. She got a series of jobs with the same key feature, that she would be travelling the country, living out of hotels, online hookup's bedrooms and the occasional stretch of sleeping in her car. Combine that with a gym membership for the showers and grooming, and she found she could live rent free for years while she saved up for the deposit on her house. It wasn't always pleasant and it had cost her plenty of friends and connections, but it had an end game.
Then a year ago two dreams came true at once, by setting her sights low and agreeing to buy cheap and stay there as little as possible, Eryn had bought a small cottage in the remote village of Cwndol, she would occasionally stay there when in the area and had even hosted the odd party, but she considered the road (and hotels she could put on expenses) her true home. She had also gotten her dream job, management consultant. She was seen as passionate in her desire to visit the companies she was consulting for and a good hands on manager, meanwhile her home was accumulating value as she paid off the mortgage and didn't use it enough to add to the wear and tear. It was perfect for Eryn's purposes as an investment.
Then COVID hit and she got the fateful email, the usual pleasantries of "unprecedented times" and "our number one priority." But for all the bluster Eryn could see the truth of the matter, she was now under house arrest for the foreseeable future. The house was empty, devoid of all comforts. Eryn had screamed and pleaded enough that the internet was going to be hooked up soon and had drained almost all her mobile data ordering every creature comfort she could think of while sitting in her car in a nearby town that actually got mobile signal.
Devoid of anything to do but wait she decided to run herself a bath, but even that was more complicated as she would like. Eryn was stood naked by the gurgling hot tap for some time before she realised that the hot water relied on the stove fire being lit, so she shoved her clothes back on and waited by the fire.
"Fucking working from fucking home." She grumbled.
...
Eryn had always been a steadfast believer that there was nothing that couldn't be fixed by a good night's sleep, it is why she felt such envy for anyone able to get a good night's sleep in this godforsaken village. She felt that her house was an island in a vast dark expanse that seemed only to emit flickers of light from farmer's houses, with some extra light when the moon fought hard enough to get through the clouds. The darkness was filled with a series of horrific sounds as the animal kingdom's natural ballet of murder and fucking played out non-stop all night long. She lay in bed, eyes wide open until the noise of farmers beginning their work day roused her out of bed so early that she could only presume the cows were hosting Good Morning Wales and needed to set up the radio equipment.
After an uninspiring breakfast of a single serving box of cereal, Eryn decided to walk into the village and see what amenities she actually had at her fingertips. The store was useful, a small attachment to the petrol station that served the finest foods in brands she had never heard of, alongside whatever overstock the nearby farms wanted to palm off on them. She was uncertainly optimistic the eggs and meat would be nice.
Wandering among the chocolate box houses she spotted a few other shops over the hill and investigated further. There was a nice bakery that made her lament getting 'happy shopper plain loaf' from the petrol station. There was a greengrocer with drastic differences in freshness between the local produce and the 'imports.' There was a pub and a church, each held with equal reverence by the locals. And finally there was a little art shop that seemed to mainly stock paintings by the church arts and crafts group, made from painting supplies the shop sold to them the previous day.
Eryn reached the edge of the village and just kept walking, to the passing observer she could be some wild rambler taking in the unspoiled splendor or rural Wales, but in reality she was desperately hoping that over the next hill a coffee shop or an internet cafe had gotten as lost as she was. She returned to her house at lunchtime and ate a nice bacon and egg sandwich with bread that disintegrated immediately.
An afternoon arguing with the internet company meant that Eryn's day was over quickly and she once again found herself standing naked next to a bath before swearing and going to light the fire. Eryn didn't even bother to dress, she just stood in the dark house, her naked body illuminated by the fireplace as she thought through what she was going to do with her life while she was confined to this village.
She needed a good coffee (the espresso machine was on the way), something to do with the long nights (internet due soon and TV in the post), she needed to get laid (...).
Eryn dwelt on how she hadn't gotten much sex recently, but even that was better than being stranded in the countryside without even a vibrator for company. When she got her internet installed she could hit up the dating apps, see if some tough but sensitive stable hand from a lifetime movie was hiding round the corner. She could take the risk with the pub, maybe she could somehow wrangle someone who didn't bring the smell of the farmyard along with him.
The fire started to dwindle, interrupting Eryn's chain of thought with another bout of swearing. She was new to lighting fires but had cockily assumed she could get the job done without firelighters given how successful she had been the previous night. The scant kindling doing nothing to catch the logs as the newspaper burned to smouldering ash. Without thinking she ran to the back door preparing for a trip to the wood store at the end of her garden. As she picked up her first welly, she realised what was wrong with the situation, she was still naked in anticipation of her bath. The darkness whirled outside, inviting in its opacity while the sputtering fire added urgency to her situation.
"Fuck it."
It was a cloudy night so Eryn was stepping into almost complete darkness, the light from her dwindling fire fighting through the house and out of the back window providing only a slight glow while irrational fears welled up inside her and her eyes adjusted to the black. She also felt a strange sense of silliness wearing nothing but a pair of green wellington boots. The wind just seemed to nip at her nipples as she took her first step away from the house.
As her vulcanised rubber sole hit the ground with a muddy squelch all of Eryn's fears and doubts suddenly vanished. She no longer felt silly or afraid, just extraordinarily at peace as she swam naked through the night. The darkness became her friend as she felt her body sway and twirl in the breeze. She wasn't sure what had finally gotten to her but the feelings of frustration and outright hatred she had stewed in for days seemed to wash away on a tide of nighttime. She grabbed more kindling from the woodstore and drifted back inside to a fire that had long gone out waiting for its creator to finish languishing naked in the Welsh countryside.
...
