The man gazed out over the featureless landscape, with nothing but the howling wind to call companion. The last bastion of life lay days behind him. A small mining town, but that made little difference to him now.

As he crossed the salt flats, the great expanse of emptiness enveloped him like a shroud. To most such wilderness would be disquieting, but for him, this is where he belonged. The city life, of bustle and crowds wasn't for him. He disliked people, to the point of repulsion. But that, like the cracks in the salt, made by his footprints, were nothing but a memory now.
Crack, crack, crack, as his feet broke through the brittle salt covering the soft sand underneath.

The Endless horizon beckoned to him, and with no points of reference to to use as direction, it felt as if he was waking into infinity, and despite having little in the way of food or water left in the shabby tanned pack that clung to his back, he wasn't concerned in the slightest.

Since he was a small child, he heard stories of something that was once called the ocean.

It was said to have existed thousands of years ago, no one knew what happened to it. Only that soon after his people became greedy and ignorant, and wished for “Power” that it faded into collective memory. They say it was both vast and deep, and greatest of all, that it was water. That thought stuck in his mind. Water, something that wars had been fought for. It only existed in small pockets, deep beneath the surface, and even than, it was so salty and contaminated that only special equipment could cleanse it of the impurities.

No one knew the whole story, of how the world became how it is today. Relics and artifacts from an ancient conflict could be found everywhere, but no record survived to the present era. From what historians and archeologists could determine, is that a very, very long time ago, the world was covered with greenery and life. Some terrible, unspeakable thing happened, that reduced everything to waste and wilderness.

These though streamed through his head, and before long he noticed that the sun had drooped in the sky, to the point where it's bottom was resting on the horizon. The real sense that his life has run thin, so thin, it could pass through the cracks in the white crust that he broke through with every step hovered over him ever since before his journey begun. He continued his trek until the sun sank into a shimmering white afterglow.

The Night came and suddenly, everything had changed. The transition was jarring. He stopped and slowly with deliberation, removed his pack and sat on the now cooling salt. Utter darkness and silence enveloped him. No one had ever been this far out, beyond industry and civilization. He lay back, as the salt cracked and a little more he sank into the cool sand. The curtain of the night sky, hung by the circular horizon melted his thirst and hunger away, he counted the seemingly endless number of tiny lights until his consciousness drifted. He dreamt of a woman he once loved, when he was young. Her name was Rain, like that which fell from the skies oh so very long ago. Spurned by regret and longing, the silence was broken by the man, gently weeping, the giving of his water to the salt.