the town at the end of the world {Dion/Louie}

The dawn fog rolls in, marching towards the weary district coast like a wounded army - their cries in the seabirds above, and in a dull moaning in the crashing waves below. It drags it's way up the coastline and lazily spreads itself between the weathered boathouses and abandoned seaforts, a great white dragon smothering the people below.

Bringing up the rear of this regimented and unabating beast is a tired metal slug, churning it's way towards the mainland at an agonising crawl. It moves through the mist in a way that is almost elegant for a ship so ugly and dated. It is a rusting monument to an era of nautical capitalism that died out with your father's father's fathers. It can only be described as brutally practical in it's primary function, and offensive in every other aspect of it's aesthetic.

The captain of this detestable vessel is a wraith, stood inside a windowless cabin with his bony fingers welded to a wrought-iron wheel. This stoic phantasm is lifeless, save for the slight movement of his wrists making minor adjustments to the path of his ten-ton man-o-war. His eyes are dark, glazed over like a dead fish.

Are you a dead fish? You might as well be, with your mouth slightly agape and your heart cold in your chest. You should take yourself to market and sell yourself for pocket change. That is all you are worth to this district.

What a sorry sight. Barely a man, more a dogged soldier of war. What has become of you? You used to be a handsome young lad full of ambition and energy, and here you are at the end of the world with no one. No one and nothing, staring into the abyss, marching off every day to fight in a war that has long been lost.

You stare dully at the old docks, coughing up a lung of salt and tobacco as you line up your trajectory alongside the wooden boards. Here, look down to the pier now, festered with rot and seafungus, and bring your old warhorse to a juddering halt.

You're home again, Dion. Welcome back to the land of the living - don't stay too long, else you might just think you're alive.