The Restored

Restored

Pausing to wipe his brow with the cleanest part of his arm, Nemmi continues his discussion. "Must go further to get enough to feed them, you know that."

"Too tired, too hot to care, it's useless trying to find anything out here in this..."

"No! We keep going, keep looking, they need us!" Nemmi interrupts himself. He has been arguing with himself for years, scavenging in The Forgotten does that to you.

He pauses from the top of a short, scruffy dune and surveys the area. Everything is mostly beige, the sky meets the earth in a dirty, oily heap. Not much survives out here. He kicks at an odd tenacious weed, clinging to life in a crag.

"See, useless, nothing here, we're all gonna STARVE!"

Nemmi takes a careful sip from his canteen as he squints to see through the haze.

"No, wait I see something, might be a Remains."

"Woop de do! A Remains, as if we haven't been through every blasted Remains out here by now. Waste. Of. Time!"

"Enough now, we are going in." Sometimes even Nemmi gets fed up with the tantrums of his other voice.

He treks over to the next dune and scrambles down to the Remains. It's low, filled with dirt and sand. The roof appears to be intact, some kind of curved concrete building.

"Weow! Must have been uncovered in that sandstorm last night."

"Huh! SO? Great! An unearthed concrete shed, can't sell that. What you gonna find?"

"Maybe a door or window. There must be some way in, Ahh, here." The glass is long gone, likely broken up, ground to dust like everything else in this place, but Nemmi spots the window.

He unclips the folding shovel, his most valued possession, from his belt. It makes light work of digging through the dirt. That's why he held on to it, opening up these remains would be near impossible without it. Even during the weeks when he found nothing, his family eating the bitter, scraggy weeds they could scavenge, he held on to it, hiding it from his wife's desperation. He shook his head, dislodging the dark memory. He just had to find something today, that was the only answer.

Sticking his head in through the window, the cool dark interior greets him, peaceful and surprisingly clear, only a foot or two of dirt. These places are usually filled near to the top. He smiles at the promise of quick, easy scavenging.

Nemmi sets to work. This is the part he enjoys the most, digging out the story of the remains, of the family who once lived here from a nearly forgotten world, where life was easy and water was on tap. He reaches for a picture on the wall, clearing the grime, two children look back at him, grinning, well fed and carefree. He sees them run off, hand in hand in their colourful clothes, shrieking with laughter.

"Enough with your silly daydreams, it gets you NOTHING! Get back to it, I wanna get out of here."

Sighing, Nemmi cuts the picture from its frame and stows it, someone might buy it for nostalgia.

Experience taught him to focus his efforts on the edges, walls are where pipes and wires live, the precious scrap he is searching for to feed his family this week. But today Nemmi starts to clear a path through the centre, maybe it's the picture of the kids, so close in age to his two, or maybe it's on a whim. Who knows.

The edge of a rug emerges, beige with dirt like everything else, but he can just make out a pattern.

"What you gonna do with that! Can't exactly carry it back with you!" His voice is right, useless. He digs on.