your bones and teeth and skin

[Hezekiah Finch]

This is roughly set on the small western piece of The Waste that Inferni doesn't occupy and is really almost borderline into Arachnea's Revenge. Open for one to two others, where they're from doesn't matter to me. No need to match length either.
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Having followed the coast out of Inferni, Hezekiah ventured towards an area that he thought seemed the slightest bit familiar. Though it was far from the forest where Kaena had found him, he had distinctly recalled the long and winding stretch of sandy beach that he had seen through the dense growth. It was muggy, but not uncomfortably so, and off in the distance over the bay—or was it an ocean, he wondered—tall thunderheads churned on with no intentions of coming ashore. It was out there by the ocean where he could feel the chill of the water, which considerably put a cap on how warm it would dare to be. That salt water was almost too cold for any sensible creature to stand, although those who were used to had quite a tolerance for it.

Hezekiah was really not one of those tolerant ones. He kept his distance from where the waves washed shore, eyes scanning the area for anything that would link him to anything he may have had with him, or even to the memory that was currently eluding him. His wandering was also a sign that he was feeling considerably better, although he was still by no means healed. His left side still ached and burned with a fire, ribs bruised and healing skin tender to every taken breath and movement he made. But his energy was renewed, his thoughts organised and focused, nothing really but that injury was out of the picture.

Of course, he was forgetting that he didn’t know very much about the place he was in. It wasn’t all that different to where he had grown up, although Inferni lived much more closer together than the home he had belonged to. It was bigger than his home, for that matter, not in gathered territory but body count. It reeked of its own size, rather than being a scant indicator; a suggestion. But it wasn’t too hard for him to adjust, even though he wavered currently between being seen and unseen, friendly or shy. They didn’t seem too bad, at least not so far.

Stopping by a piece of driftwood, Hezekiah bent carefully to pick up a mussel that had been washed up during the tide, caught between the rocks, and tossed it back into the sea. And then he stayed there for a few moments, watching the waves roll in, just trying to will himself into thinking of something that would fit in the jigsaw puzzle he was trying to piece together about what had happened to him. And strangely enough, watching that ocean made him wonder if his father was looking for him, but the boy shook that thought away. He wouldn’t. He didn’t care, he thought to himself. He was just another burden to the ageing man.

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