The landscape was utterly alien yet made all the more heartbreaking by the familiar debris under our boots. What was once a city is now a wasteland, and the twisted metal of the skyscrapers break the skyline like charred trees. I instantly want to return to the countryside, to where there is still life however difficult & monotonous. At least there my eyes can roam freely over the hills and ploughed fields. There I can hear the birds and smell freshness. But this is an expedition of raw materials, it is far easier to scavenge than mine and far better for our mother, the earth. Mostly I cope just fine,but there in the scorched rubble lies a chunk of half-melted plastic that bears just enough resemblance to a baby’s car seat that i don’t dare kick it over.Whatever is under it will have to stay uncollected, my sanity is more precious than that.It is just as well as the graphite clouds block the sun today, it is easier by far to take this grey graveyard in this sombre gloom.
The landscape glowed orange under the burnt sky. It was a series of lakes with hilly crowns,like the hoof prints of some celestial horse. Each was fathoms deep and icy. Fridah shuddered to think of what lay within them,in these days of bio-engineered beasts you could never tell. Yesterday’s fantasy was today’s reality. But she did need water and so she edged forward and slowly sank her canteen beneath the rippling surface.