Rain of metal
Fog of haze
Fire scorches
Thirty days
Screaming cold
Half the year
The wind that calms
Before the fear
of metal rains
and fogs of haze
three are left
in the last of days…
The Scavenger
Grandfather spoke of water that fell from the sky. Droplets that splashed on the ground. Water needed for life to grow. A cooling of seasons, a proper shift from cold to warm or warm to cold. Natural is what grandfather called it. A fairy tale you called it.
His stories kept you safe during the hundred days of the bullets. All falling from the sky piercing the flesh of man, their shelters, their homes. Forcing an extinction and like cockroaches did you hide. Old brick buildings would last many months, and soon the season of fog. A mist of debri that intertwined with the smell of metal. Breathing it could be fatal, a covering would help, but still a bitter taste would make its way to your tongue. The fog only lasted for 65 days. Just enough time to gather supplies, find shelter of brick, find hope.
The fire season, shortest of all, lasts a mere thirty days. One month. One month of hearing fire roar. You dare not look at it. Its dance is terrifying. Flickering its light and overwhelming with its heat. Only a fool would try to harness its raw and mad power. You strip away the clothes, truest to your nature. A naked, terrified animal cowering in the corner of a brick building. Sweating, feeling like the fire is slowly cooking you alive. Hoping the brick lasts through the season. Lasts long enough to make it to the next.
Clothes are back on. A chill throughout your body. The season of howls. Screams that would deafen you had you not been prepared. You jam the cloth in your ears. You call it the season of silence, ironically. Humor helps keep your sanity, or what is left of it. The longest season. 130 days. Cold and a scream that deafens. A small amount of blood drips from your ears and into the cloth. Shelter with walls thick enough to block out the sound but not entirely. That is a fool’s thinking. Only block the sound enough to stop the bleeding. You sleep at night thinking of grandfather’s stories. A story of how creatures with wings sat atop trees singing songs as the sun slowly kissed the surface of the world. How stories give you comfort during the hell of the seasons. His stories are what makes you move each day, each month, each season as you scavenge. Stories are all you have left.
Forty days now of wind. Wind that silenced the screams and pushed away the scorched wastelands of fire and fog and metal. You love the wind. The wind aids the struggle of scavenging for supplies. Time flows forward and how you wish there were a way to stop it. Make it longer than forty days. Only forty days of something resembling peace is not enough. It never is enough. Ticking each day away as you find another building intact with its brick. Moving all the pieces in place to provide extra layers. You get in and hide but you leave a small gap. A gap to look out and see the wind walk away. To see the bullets falling…
The Fighter
She is far too brilliant to succumb to the mercy of the devastating seasons. Bolstered by her arrogance yet helped by the intervention of luck, she fights. The bullets fall and, although fatal, she has found an armor. Crafted from the materials nearest a base she sheltered herself in. An underground barrier against the bullets. Against the fog, against the fire she worked tirelessly. She would not let fear hold her back from walking the world she knew as home.
Her stories stem from a mother figure who watched over her. Taught her many things. She told her stories of how people used to tame the elements. How people were smart to fight against the storms. How with prediction they could create prevention. Her stories instilled a different form of hope. A hope within herself. Alone but not lost. Guided by stories.
Her armor is coated in material that could suppress the power of falling metal. Crafted from the corpses of men who once guarded her underground castle. Carefully from trial and error did she test the power of the armor on the flames. Each time that it singed was another step closer, for she adapted and evolved. She knew, by defeating the fog could it buy her more time.
A mask with a tube that flowed into a tank. Brilliant in her desperate design, she wore it proudly and she walked through the fog. Walking in search of whatever creates the horrid screams of the hundred and thirty days of cold. She knows, or she thinks she knows, that whatever creates the screams is what uses the fog. It creates the fire as it sleeps, and it even coats the sky in metal as it breathes. The wind is but from its movement to hiding where it waits again to scream…
Delusion or theory, it does not matter. She is hell bent on finding the solution. She looks for others. She is not foolish enough to take on the task alone. Brave to walk out during the hail of bullets. Bold to walk through the fog. Crazy to leave her impenetrable castle for the flames drew near. She must hide. Fire is still the one element she cannot master, but quitting has never been her mindset either. She waited for the flames and longed for the screams. For when it howls, her hunt begins…
The Lunatic
Language and reason are absent to him. Torn away from him by the cruelty of madness. Keeping him alive yet killing him all the same. No stories of humor, no stories of hope, no stories of courage, only chaos.
He dances in the streets while looking for food as bullets rained down. He hides for only moments, laughing and laughing as he sprints to another area. Had a bullet gone through, it would end his misery. Some grazed his legs, giggling as the blood ran down to his feet. Picking at the holes, removing metal as he continues laughing and running.
Food was anything his teeth could break down. Flesh was just flesh. Eating was something even his madness could not resist. The taste of iron forcefully made its way to his mouth as his lungs bled from the fog. Inhaling so much that the haze began forming illusions. Desperately he calls out to familiar faces. Screaming their names. Movement in the distance catches his attention. Could it be someone? Were they wearing something? Each step closer the object drifts further until it disappears into the distance. Again, something else appears and again he chases blindly like a dog would chase a squirrel. Yet the madness is all he finds. The fog continues to tear his lungs until the fire.
Crumbled bricks and remnants of buildings are all there is to offer shelter. Yet he waits. Smiling at the flames. Calling out to them thinking the fire will grant salivation. The madness holds his arms up forcing a crude smile as the fire rages. Burning his skin, burning his hair, burning the nerves to an excruciating degree until his laughter turned to screams. Falling into a building and rolling until the flames left his flesh. Lying in agony. Skin singing as he wept.
What dried his tears was the screaming cold. His hearing lost to it long ago. No sound pierces his ears anymore. The cold is calming. To him, an eye of a never-ending hell storm. Long days of cold. Teeth would clatter from the chills crawling up the burn marks of his back. Struggling to find warmth. The breeze was a short-lived season of peace. Peace for a man who lives in madness...
Rain of metal
Fog of haze
Fire scorches
Thirty days...
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