I could describe towns like these for days. It fills me with joy (and melancholy) to pull from memories and shape a place that is so particular. Part of me wants to ride my bike through the real actual towns again and take too many photos like "this, this is what I'm describing", but for the parts I know have changed since.
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You&& (working title) is a queer novella about when home is other people, including the monsters lurking in the woods. Check out the about page here. You&& is a sequel to Sometimes The Mountain Buries You.
Basin moves to where none of the nearest cities are the nearest cities to the town where the preceding veterinarian and Sheppard had lived. There's a desert between here and there. Here—where the mountains are steeper and crowded together—the earth wasn't so dry nearly so much, the close hillside was blue rockface that didn't crumble in hands or underfoot, and the air tasted like cold water even in the middle of summer.
They had toured around there, but all the veterinary clinics that might hire them were in cities they didn't want to live in and didn't want to commute to. They had thought about the decision to stay near there regardless, in another town similar to where the preceding veterinarian and Sheppard had become a home, trying to scrape together a home for others in a place that reminded Basin of them.
Ultimately, it made more sense to them to put in some distance and land in the neighbouring region.