just_muse_me 15.1.2 {RP with bulletcarnage}

[kandescence]

"If you're going through hell, keep going." - Winston ChurchillKanda awoke to stillness, the near-silent whisper of falling snow. It coated his bare shoulders and his hair, which fell loose and limp and already wet over his cheeks and back

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[kandescence]

The city felt, to Kanda, like just about the strangest place he had ever been. The colors, the textures-he'd traveled all over Europe, all over Asia, had been to the Middle East and Africa. He'd seen more of the world than most people he met ever would in their lives, but he had never seen a place at all like this. The Ark had been eerie, but crafted by Noah he expected it to feel eerie-not strictly a part of the world.

This felt human and earthly, but dauntingly ancient. Long-abandoned and weathered, yet with a disconcerting longevity, like it could go on standing for another millennium, and like it had stood silent and solitary for one already with its strange clay-like buildings that looked so misleadingly soft.

The sun was so hot on his bare shoulders that he could feel the skin burning if he stood in it too long. There was shade though-shade from the buildings, some of which were five or six stories tall, and from the overhanging cliff edge above, and he stuck to the patches of shadow when he could, winding his way through the abandoned streets, the black of his boots and the remains of his clothes slowly staining pink and ruddy with a fine coat of the sandy dust that the breeze picked up from the earth when it blew. It wasn't a cooling breeze; too hot, it only made it hard to draw breath when it came.

He wasn't in the Ark now; of that he felt certain. There were too many animals-no plants took root among the abandoned streets, true, but there were insects, more of those tiny lizards, a few scorpions at least the size of his fist. He saw a huge bird of prey-a kite or a hawk-swooping through the sky overhead, heard a strange buzzing that he realized (luckily before he got too close) was that of a rattlesnake curled in the shelter of a rock.

But there was no sign of people. Not for a long time. Until suddenly with a little prickling down the back of his neck, he became aware of the sensation that he was being watched.

There was someone else here-or at least something else larger than birds and snakes. He wasn't certain if it was hostile, he just knew it was there, and so he started looking for it.

When he found the tracks-boot prints in the dust, faint but unmistakable and coming from the opposite direction, a part of the city he'd not yet been into-he became sure they were human. But whoever they were, they were silent. And watching him. And by that he could assume they were probably not an ally.

He followed the prints as best he could, but he was no tracker. They did lead him up into a higher terraced section of the city though, and then he followed his gut more than any visual trail. When finally he spotted him, seated on a low shadowy wall in a gap between buildings that overlooked the lower portions of the city, the very first thing he saw was a shock of white hair, and in the moment before he saw that it definitely wasn't, he said the first thing that came into his mind, "Moyashi?"