As quickly as it had started, the storm was disturbingly over. The sun burned down, melting the hailstones and sending curls of steam up from the wet earth. The mud began to harden from the heat as his body felt the pressure from all his sides as the mud reshaped into rigid dirt. He awoke, pushing himself from the ground , ripping through the earth as though some of the mud was still fairly wet and soft. After some time, he was able to pry himself from under the thin layer of mud that had protected him through the maelstrom. In a fit of shock, he ran through the swamp till he was out of air, keeling over into an uncontrollable fall.
He sat up as best as he could, resting his back on a nearby rock. He shot forward with a sudden yelp as his back had been ripped open by the ridges of the shards of stone that had fallen from the sky just moments before and it was unbearable to be up against anything. He helplessly spun around repeatedly trying to steal a glance of the travesty of the red discomfort but kept falling over in the mud. He eventually gave up and began to stumble towards the volcanoes again. There was lots of light out now, soft rainbows filled the sky, but were soon gone as the clouds moved in again, but these were not rain clouds.
He progressively got better at walking, finding his balance and straightening out his back.
After a couple of days of stumbling and progressively stumbling less, he was able to walk again, still with an awkward stride and shuffle that made him look utterly pathetic, but he could walk and walk without falling. He didn’t sleep. Sleep didn’t make any sense to him. He realized that he was tired and that sleeping relieved him of that feeling but he would not sleep; he would not make as much as the thought that sleep could be done, that there was no sense to wasting time that appeared to be the only thing running out. Or maybe he was just mindless.
The mindless boy slept like a baby for almost a day before awakening to a squirrel scurrying above his head. The child made nothing of it and simply got up and continued to walk forward.
The walk was long and one of thoughtless obedience. The heavy, squat rocks loomed greyly through the rain, more than half of them the ruins of some ancient kingdom. That was hardly of any matter to him.
