One foot in front of the other, step by step. I am focused, the muscles in my legs tense. All around me, it is quiet. No birds, no beetles, the sun is shining. The dull green of dry blades of grass stretches across the gentle hills. To my left and right, ruins from a bygone era keep appearing. Overgrown, reclaimed by nature. Some bear plaques with characters I cannot read. I wonder how long ago it was. No one has been here for months. Just over this hill, perhaps I will find something on the other side.
Where I am going, I am not entirely sure. The only thing I know is that there is nothing here for me. Nor was there in the places before. A great wall with a canopy stands in the orange light of the fading day. I will make camp here for the night. Deftly, I pull a few pieces of wood from my backpack. The fire will keep me warm, its flames will hypnotise me and let me gaze into the future. Carefully, I loosen my leg brace. It is healing only slowly. The homemade exoskeleton allows me to walk a little farther each day despite my injury.
The sun is already low. At present, it dips completely below the horizon for only a short time. Over the years, an image has been burned into the wall behind me. Plants that once grew here, illuminated by the sun each evening, have left discoloured patterns. Now they are overlaid by dancing shadows in the flickering light of the fire.
I am probably not getting enough to eat. There is not much. Mushrooms that cleanse the soil. Occasionally wild potatoes and the like.
I watch the shadows on the wall intently, trying to decipher their language, to discover a deeper system within them. The wind breathes softly across the blades of grass. Slowly, my eyelids begin to close. My body grows light, my limbs numb; I lose contact with the ground. A sensation of weightlessness comes over me. Slowly I lift off and drift away from my fire, carried by the wind. I rise ever higher. Pleasant at first, but increasingly frightening. A slight panic grips me. What if I cannot get back to the ground? By now I am so high up that the fire has become a tiny orange dot in the darkness of the rolling hills. Looking up, I see the stars above me. Small points in the black void.
Instinctively, I begin to paddle with my arms, like a small child in water. To my surprise, I feel the air offering resistance. I shape my hands into little paddles. It is as though I can move myself forward, ever so slowly.
Silently, I float above the landscape in the faint twilight. My fear has left me again. The first rays of sunlight dazzle me.