The Fear You Know

7. Exclusion and Desolation

 Eli woke next to a gentle breeze and the distant tang of salt upon the air. The sky overhead was flat and gray like slate rock, and the only sound he could hear was the lonely moaning of the wind passing over his face.

When he became aware of his body, he found himself sore and uncomfortable but wrapped tightly in a thick scratchy blanket. Under his body he felt the dull ache of uneven ground and the occasional pebble pressing into his skin. The sky overhead stretched into infinite grayness blue and hazy against a sky that was never clear.

He sat up slowly, his body aching dully, his teeth feeling loose and his head foggy with confusion.

Rocks shifted off to the side, and he looked over to see Peter kneeling next to him on the gravel.

"How are you feeling?"

Eli rubbed his head, "A little better.... How....did we get here?"

"I met some people out in the Lost. They had a wagon, and I traded some of my knowledge on medicine for a ride. They dropped us off here, and then I carried you some of the way. "

"And our pursuers?" He watched Peter's face carefully, examining the lines of his face as they stretched and contracted.

When Peter spoke the corners of his mouth pulled tight, and the worry in his wide blue eyes was as readable as fine print ink on Lilly white paper, "The caravan saved us. If it hadn't been for them they probably would have caught us."

"Strange that they would pursue us so readily." He continued to watch Peter out of the corner of his eye, carefully gaging his reactions, though his lacking familiarity with Peter was somewhat of a hindrance, and his mind was far too muddled to try and piece together anything more substantial.

Instead he turned the conversation back to an earlier point, which had not escaped his notice, "You carried me?" A gust of wind blew at them from desolation, tugging at the collar of his shirt, carrying with it scents he could only associate with isolation and loneliness, the calling cards of his childhood.

"Just a little, enough to get us off the track." Peter said, pausing to glance back over his shoulder, attention straying as if it had been blown away on that gust of wind, like a piece of loose paper "Those people are... strange, who are they?"

Eli sat up a little straighter rubbing at his eyes. His brain felt loose, like there wasn't enough fluid inside his skull, "There are plenty of people that wander the Lost, they like it that way, but being lost for one's entire life has.... Strange side effects, it does things to your sense of time and space. Imagine waking up every day and seeing the same thing you've seen for years on end. You walk and walk but still every day it's as if you wake up in the same place. Nothing changes, not even the stars. You cannot know where you have been or where you are going because even when you walk it seems as if you are going nowhere."

Peter shrunk back a little, "Ok...ok..."

Eli rubbed the back of his neck reading Peter's face and realizing that the thought was rather a morbid one, "Sorry, I... it's the reading that does it. If it makes you feel better, I had assumed we might meet them on our way here."

Peter tilted his head surprised, "You did?"

"Yes, The wandering ones often follow a westerly path towards Genua in order to trade the baskets they have weaved from the grass of the plains. This is about that time of year."

Peter turned his head to look back at the long, waving grass of the lost.

"So you knew we would find someone willing to give us a ride."

Eli smiled a thin smile, his lips pressed together in the mockery of amusement, "Run into them no, give us a lift? Hardly. I am impressed you managed to speak with them at all."