The river and mountains provide a palisade, dissuading intruders in the unlikely event that this place was to be detected by explorers. At the foot of the mountains, rolling hills and thick forests abound, their black trees swaying like a kelp forest in the ocean. The valleys collect fog when mist rises off of the lake, the focal point and jewel of the landscape. Roughly a third of the town’s area is occupied by Madina Lake itself. The rest of the world is blind to this hidden treasure’s existence.

Aesthetics aside, Madina Lake is trapped both physically by the dense forest surrounding it and psychologically by the fear that grips it. Going back as far back as anyone can remember, rumors persisted that just beyond the edge of town, under the protection of the forest canopy, dwell the “river people.” They are an esoteric group, if they exist at all; their precise nature unknown. They are assumed to be renegades, ill-tempered and threatening. Who otherwise would choose to inhabit an uncivilized world beyond society’s fringes?

This group has borne the blame for anything unruly that happened in town. For instance, a few times a year, as unpredictable as the weather, the town’s important buildings and properties are vandalized under cover of darkness. Nothing is destroyed, but the silhouette of a woman is painted on doors, windows and walls all over town.

The question of whom or what they are is moot, though, as any discussion about the river people is taboo. Generally speaking, the people of Madina Lake prefer to live in denial of their existence rather than face the unknown. This fear has been enough to prevent most in the community from venturing beyond the mountains surrounding them.

The town's history is spotty. It was, and is, a society so obsessed with pop culture that few recorded anything to remind them of yesterday. The past didn’t matter. Culture didn’t matter. There is no telling how long the townspeople have been around, and there is no desire to know. In Madina Lake, infatuation masquerades as love, obsession disguises itself as connection.

When this fatuous blindness put the glamour, popularity, and drama of Adalia in the spotlight, the townspeople’s never noticed the fire blazing up behind them.