The Land

As Jacob continued to run forwards with the rest of the shackled group, he found himself once again in a daydream since he was unable to communicate with his fellow prisoners in fright of action from the army guard. He felt himself quite strange as his thoughts played at their own steam, which he felt he had no control over. Images and memories flashed through his thoughts unwanted but unable to be stopped, before long Jacob feared he was becoming quite mad with the strain.

For some time, how long Jacob was not sure, he marched along with no sense of anything real, just breezing through a surreal odyssey, the occurrences in front of his eyes simply did not register until his day dreaming was broken by the sudden loud swooping noise of a Magno-chine flying over his band heads. As sand flurried up and engulfed the group, Jacob began to take concentration of other events unfolding. The few green palm trees and scrubs that surrounded the leaving exit of the gateway were slowly disappearing and all that could be seen in any direction that Jacob was striding was barren regions, a desert of considerable size. The incredible topical forests he had seen when he first awoke were like everything else good, a mere memory. Now only a few brittle brushed could be seen and in the increasing heat they were slowly vanishing behind the group with every step forwards they took. Though the landscape was of plain golden sands, the view was not an uninteresting one. Once again, many alien sites aw arded Jacobs eyes and since he could do nothing but stride, keeping quiet, he had plenty of time to take in the outlook. Along with the tropical forests and greeneries, the massive titanic mountains Jacob had initial seen were also to the south of where he was now heading and no other mountains for the time being could be seen ahead of himself. However, to the east and west of Jacob he noticed many small ancient looking towns, pocketed all around, they had clearly been abandoned for thousands of years at a guess it seemed. Perhaps if the army had never arrived and the herd of people left normally as they should of, Alfred may have explained to them what had become of the old settlements. Nonetheless, Jacob was not in a situation to start acting like a tourist and asking Alfred for information on the sites and could only make up his own mind on what had become of the badly weathered sandy stone villages of the past. Perhaps with growing technology and better discovered lands, the original inhabitants ventured to better grounds and cities, leaving behind these basic little houses to rot away, who knew, Jacob did not and nor did he the time to further gander that what first guesses thought, other affairs took chief attention. With the heat beating down more heavily but astonishingly not sapping the strength of the forced walkers, Jacobs bowed his head to help protect his eyes from the gushes of sand and bright light bombarding them. He looked to Alfred who had become his mentor for behaviour to see how he was dealing with the onslaught of stinging sand. Amazingly, Alfred, no longer with his large tinted sunglasses, walked tall with his head high and his eyes opened wide to observe the activities of the army in the distant. Jacob was surprised to see his new friend so unbothered by the masses of sand hitting his eyes. Though Jacob presently did not fully understand the meaning of this, in later times he would learn a many new things. After briefly wondering how Alfred was able to keep his eyes so widely opened (he pu t it down to Alfred’s ‘manliness’) he too soon shared Alfred’s interest in the activities of the army ahead.