Thanks heaps for this offer! Would greatly appreciate someone having a look at my discovery story. Of particular concern for me at the moment is how to end it fittingly and emphatically so as make an impact on the marker. I'm not sure if the current hair motif is good enough. Any general feedback of other things that could be improved would be awesome too haha.Thanks again!
Dust and DreamsThe desolate land surrounds him, the curvature of the dry earth clear. He drags his reluctant feet a few more metres, before stopping and leaning on the rusty shovel. Drew can never truly rest. Not until he has found another water source. He glares across the barren moonscape, bereft of moisture. Bereft of life.
Empty wheezing is all his ears register over the insistent wind; it’s a painful melody.
“I really need to do something about this asthma.” The persistent thought echoes in his weary skull. He tightens his light jacket against his face, protection from the incoming gale. His tongue hangs lifelessly in his mouth like a dead fish from the dried riverbed, roasting in the relentless sun. He squints back at his quickly disappearing footprints in the ground, running his calloused fingers vigourously through his patchy grey hair.
The intense heat of the afternoon Charleville sun radiates off the spade, glaring into his tired eyes and bringing him slowly back to his present. A shovel and a hole un-dug. Water, precious water, lies in wait many metres below the rocky ground. He hopes.
“Might as well get on with it,” he mutters wearily.
Drew tightens his weathered grip on the spade and drives it into the dirt. The solidity of the ground jolts through his already aching arms and back, yet he presses on. Another thrust, then another. He perseveres; motivated by the need for water, for the vitality he hopes is there.
It has to be there…
As the hours crawl by, he turns repeatedly in the direction of home, kilometres away. He is puzzled to notice that he can’t see as far back as he could before. The horizon seems to loom in, palming a hidden menace. Spirals of dust dance in the gale, increasingly thick and frenzied.
Finally exhausted, Drew pauses and inhales on his puffer, squinting under a darkening sky. The sun is merely an indistinct smudge on the western horizon. He strains on his tiptoes to peer out of the hole he has made, his eyes almost beaten shut by the amassing wind.
As a black cockatoo screeches loudly in the sky, he begins to contemplate the journey home. Yet, he feels completely drained…
In every sense of the word.
He sighs deeply, pulling himself labouriously from the hole in the torrid earth. Drew surveys his work dismally. A parched two-metre crater in the dirt mocks him from below, as he staggers momentarily against the relentless wind. Absent-mindedly running his hand back and forth on his scalp, Drew decides that the water will have to wait until tomorrow.
“Not that the water’s going anywhere,” he smiles wryly, scratching away the itchy tuft of fallen hair on his wrist, “unless this wind picks up any more.” His smile fades as he feels his windpipe tighten again almost immediately.
He shakily removes his inhaler from his pocket, clumsily sucking on it as he realises how severely the dusty wind is affecting him. Feigning calmness, Drew settles on his safest option. He scuttles back into the hole to wait for the wind to dissipate. However, it soon becomes clear that it is worsening. A feeling of dread slithers up his tense spine like an angry taipan.
The asthmatic’s worst nightmare. A dust storm.
Just breathe Drew.
In the hole with his jacket on his face and puffer in hand, he might be safe. Might be.
The storm, the moaning and coughing, the rocky ground and the taste of sandy defeat assault his senses for hours. Drew focuses on calming his rasping breaths, whilst unconsciously tugging at his hair for comfort. As he does this, his aching legs scrape back and forth on the ground in front of him, wearing two deepening grooves into the earth. The darkness of evening settles in, until Drew can no longer see his trembling hands before him.
Just breathe.
This is how he spends a few perturbed hours in the pitch black, before finally shutting down into a disturbed doze.
* * *
Silence.
Drew slowly drifts back into his painful reality; cramped, dehydrated and disoriented. Carefully, he unfolds his complaining body and sits with his back leaning on the wall. He tilts his neck deliberately into the bright morning, to see that the horrors of last night seem to have passed.
Next, Drew methodically brings himself to a standing position, stretching uncomfortably. His eyes eventually come to rest on the shovel, lying on the ground beneath his feet.
“Well that explains why I’m so damn sore,” he coughs. “I gotta get out of here…” The small remark causes him to grab at his throat, massaging the sharp blades within.
At this point, Drew cautiously pokes his head out into the open. Despite the dust-blanketed landscape, the air is fresh. He slowly removes the jacket from his face and pockets his puffer, releasing the aching stiffness of his fingers around it.
Drew purposefully raises the shovel high into the air, feeling sweet oxygen slowly filling his deflated lungs. He releases a clear, deep breath and plunges the shovel into the soil with refreshed vigour. Ready to pull himself from the earth, Drew positions his hands around the rim of the hole.
Suddenly, a strange bubbling noise spurts from below. He feels his socks moisten, relief spilling in through the top of his filthy boots. In sodden disbelief, Drew casts his gaze downwards.
A shout of delight emanates from his parched lips, as precious water swells around his ankles. Drew sinks to his knees, cupping the water in desiccated palms and tossing handfuls jubilantly over his brow. The liquid continues to rise in the hole as he splashes joyfully, baptised anew by the gushing ground.
And for the first time in a while for Drew, his hair remained comfortably atop his elated head.