Of The Desert

The man reined in his horse as the silver house came into view. The wind blasted into his face, hot and full of stinging grains of sand. He felt them not, for they had hit him in the same way for the better part of fifteen years. He’d been out in the desert long before the wars, never stirring from his sandy hideaway when the soldiers came to this world, brief as their stay was. He’d been here for the greater part of his adult life, a ghostly figure drifting among the sand dunes. He was a vague legend to many of the people in the towns, the man of the desert. He was the catcher of all things lost. Should a horse or other livestock wander into the desert they would always reappear with this mans hand on their shoulder leading them back. He would take some small payment and leave again, to wherever he lived. He caught men and women to, those who fled for whatever purpose. Always they came back, sometimes living, sometimes not. But always they came back. And always the man collected what he was owed and disappeared back into the sands.

No-one knew where he had come from, but the whispers still drifted through the towns. He was a government fugitive, he was an alien in human form, he was a Reaver become sane once again. But they were just rumors, without a shred of fact or truth as so many rumors are.

The people who had dealings with him in the towns said he spoke little, never using more words than were needed. He was a big man, tall and broad shouldered with a face and hands that looked like they had spent their whole life outdoors and hard at work. Under his wide-brown hat, which he rarely removed, hid a scraggly mop of sun-bleached blonde hair. His eyes were the most electric blue and seemed to pierce those unfortunate enough to be caught in their gaze to their very soul. The rumors said that he could read your mind with those eyes, tell if you were lying, if you were skimping on payment. Perhaps in this instance they were right, for he always knew the value of a job and held out for more when