Strokeland the sun is always just a little hotter here , the nights colder . I find myself imagining that it was all a vast sea bed once , the air carries it's salt into every pore , cakes me with it for we , the air and I , are all that moves here. Oh there is movement from the peripherie , it can be heard , a subtle skittery sound when a focussed eye turns their way .
The living are the agressors hereabouts , the plants the skittering , rodent-like insects are horned and cruelly barbed . I have no idea if I am as well , I am changed tha much is clear but in appearance ? I only know that I am feeling , not for the first time , like prey .
On my first full day here I found a thin , bark I guess it was upon which an unsteady hand had scratched the small dried up scroll hund from a clawed branch .
" They feed on me at night . It makes the Bloodwinds burn my flesh and sting my eyes , tell Em I tried but it don't ever end ." It was rolled up and in my bag still , I had no idea who this Em might be but I did feel a debt to my fellow traveller that I could not put word to . I needed to find something more soon , I needed to eat and water . There had been a puddle , or some sort of seep from below a ways back but in there had been what looked like a cross between a rat and a lobster , bloated and floating so I'd passed by .
My side , the left one was getting heavier now , the limbs losing strength and any use at all , I was managing a dragging , shuffle at best . I wanted to scram at the desolation all around me but what ? I'd no memory of the how or why of my being deposited in this Hell ," Jeezus , for all I know I might be Em " I laugh.
Just how I feel, even on my best days. How did you find me?
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