>>167667As Posie steps onto the deck, she steps into view of a world completely alien to that which she has known before. The first, and by far the most persistent, and perhaps annoying detail is the heat. It' s perhaps just above sixty degrees Fahrenheit, one of the warmest days she's ever experienced. But it isn't the absolute temperature that is concerning, but the fact that such heat is present in late January, when by all right, it should be well below freezing. Similarly, it's perhaps a little after 8:00 AM and the sun is out, and has been for around an hour now. Quite a difference from a sun that comes up at 11 and sets at 2 PM. The humidity and salt water smell, though unpleasant, are not so unfamiliar to Posie.
The thousands of miles of endless ocean are broken first by sight of land, mostly lowland, though cliffs are not unknown, covered in forest. Most of the trees, thankfully, are barren limbed broadleaf deciduous trees dominated presumably by varieties of oaks with occasional hickory and chestnut trees, and the leafless skeletal trees, though still alive and in winter turpour, are near enough dead that they do not offend Posie's senses. But sprinkled among these are evergreen pines, and at the lowest levels, in mangrove swamps where the forest meets the water, are green cypress trees and willows. It's these green swamps that dominate the shore as Poisie moves towards the mouth of Horseshoe Bay, broken up periodically by by either individual houses or shacks, or even towns with numerous vaulted roof wooden houses of white or timber color, with steeples of white, wooden churches, and the even higher smokestacks of red and brown brick mills that billow out grey smoke. The small brick chimneys of the individual houses do not join their larger counterparts - it's too warm for heating to be necessary.
Past a cliff and alongside mangrove swamp, Posie sees a gap in the coming land that signifies the entry of the bay, and much further away, a green and grey cliff with a small, short, lonely lighthouse that must be at the end of the peninsula. Rounding the edge of the land, Posie sees a yellow stone set of structures that must surely be the left half of a star fortress, likely only ever half completed, that sits just back from the water, and immediately next to a lagoon created by a grassy sandbar. The gunpowder era fortress is far more modern than the castles and outposts Posie has seen back home, but still manages to appear to be anachronistic next to the other sights along her voyage. Before she enters the bay, Posie sees a large, grey freighter with a plume of smoke from its lone stack, a bridge in the center, and cranes to the fore and the rear of the superstructure. It is moving into the bay. Rounding the southern edge of the bay, which is formed by the aforementioned sandbar and lagoon, Posie sees a red and white tugboat pushing one, two, three, four, five barges, mostly empty save for the last which appears to carry steel pipes, moving out of the bay.
The bay itself is large, with one side of the bay only barely within field of view of the other, though Posie, now moving towards the center of the bay, albeit a bit to the south, has a respectable view of both sides, particularly of the south side, which in the portions closest to the ocean, is again dominated by mangrove swamps, broken up by a few houses and roads. It's alongside this portion of the bay that Posie sees the first monstrous construction of metropolis perched at the end of this bay - a massive industrial facility with tall, rectangular beige brick buildings, four of them in total, each with a massive smoke stack several hundred feat tall that pours out smoke into the sky that is carried east out over the water in trails so long it appears to be a natural cloud formation. There is another long rectangular building, and more than one massive electrical station - grey bricks of coils and wires that lead onto massive ninety foot tall steel electrical towers that move mostly westward, but also south into the forest. Behind this are railways and lines of railcars with what is presumably coal and petroleum oil, and in front of it all is another lagoon, although this one is seperated from the bay by rock, and its color is noticably more brown than blue. Next to the lagoon, to the east, are two large concrete cooling towers, each producing large amounts of steam that rise almost like a fog, and join with the black cloud produced by the smokestacks. This set of buildings is the singularly most impressive set in Posie's field of view - it is nevertheless, singular and lonely, being the furthest from the city.
Moving westward along the southern shore of the bay are more mangroves, and then more buildings, until the buildings begin to dominate. Posie sees that the shoreline moves further south as the southern shore has a convex shape. She sees several large piers, grey and brick buildings behind them, and next to them, three ships of reasonable size in full grey color. All three have turreted canons on them, and the largest has no less than two turrets in front of the bridge with two guns each, as well as a steel array over the bridge. The other two ships are less than half the size, but likewise have a canon on the foredeck. The largest ship looks to be visibly damaged, with black streaks across the bridge and a turret leaning to the right as if the deck were compromised.
Moving even further to the west, Posie sees large grey roofed buildings, mostly of brick, that could only be warehouses, interrupted by a few of what must be mills. And then along the western shore of the bay, towards its southern edge, she sees the mouth of a river, fairly large, which has seawalls to either side, and a cozy grassy riverbank. The left edge of the river protrudes into the bay with a rather small peninsula.