Bonepicker

III

A man of books and scripts like me is always piecing it all together. Scraps and bits, putting them here and there and trying to make a sense of no sense. Bound in bandages and looking to know so I can forget the rest. 

There's something to that I reckon...

He trudged onwards and leant into the hot winds and black rain. Even with his protective gear on he could taste it, metallic and sulphurous. The wind storms were an unrelenting assault on the senses. Visibility was so poor and the sound was so overwhelming that he had learned to find his way by the feel of the sun on his face and the ground against his feet. 

The terrain was broken and uneven and he had to tread steadily and surely. As he trekked on and on he held the great staff in his hand which he used to steel himself against the assault of the elements. It was a useful tool to judge what lay before him. Desert wanderers were prone to lose their footing - or their feet. Traps were common and he'd found many a corpse that had succumbed due to broken or severed legs.

In the midst of the outside chaos he considered his collection of papers. Aside from the need to survive, he was driven by his interest in the written word. His treasured books and scripts were often nothing more than humble scraps gathered together but they inspired him. Merely text on paper and skin and various other materials. Worthless to those seeking the means to trade or survive, but to him they were a connective resource that enabled him to gather his thoughts as well as create new ones. They were a gateway to the past as well as a gateway to other worlds.

When the environment is so very sparse and bleak and lacking, the mind can be made to compensate. Like a prisoner trapped in an empty cell for a lifetime, he would lose himself in the infinite mire of his own mind. As he trudged onwards he would occupy himself with his thoughts.

I need to take some time out to sort my library. I've almost pieced together an entire book with my latest finds. 

Relations and inter-relations, exchanges and deals and agreements. A cut-out or scrap can be remade into a whole new piece and soon enough I'll have just that.

To create is to take what is available and then make what is possible.

With remnants of a dead past he could bring some kind of newness and motion to an ancient world in a frozen state. He wanted a bind in which to keep his scraps, to make them into something.

As he walked the skin on his face began to sting with the intense heat and battery of the rain and sand. He started to arrange and rearrange his favourite texts, building new stories and worlds within the private safety of his own mind. It was all he could do to try and counteract the heavy presence that bore down in constant in that scorched earth abyss. A barren hell.