Ever since he'd been 'infected' by the parasitic god-creature, travel had been a great deal easier. It seemed that the...thing within had simply wanted to be found, bound to his old bones and after that it didn't much care where he went or with whom.That suited Llewellyn Edward Hawthorn quite well, thank you. As a man of Reason and of Science, he had been put out talking to the tree-freak god of Forest, Glyph (who may or may not have been holding a grudge for the accidental immolation of several acres of newly growing forest). It was that very same reason that allowed him to grudgingly accept that his life was now not his own and to that end, Lou had decided he was going to conduct as much research prior to his "death" as physically possible (some days he could scarce make himself get out of bed, others he felt fair-to-bursting with energy - likely caused by that apocalyptic looking Twinkie-of-a-gem embedded in his flesh).
At any rate, today found him on another of his 'scavenging' trips; often he would leave the Pantheon Proper (as he'd come to understand the space where the Gods mostly dwelt in their physical manifestations was to be called) with a (scavenged) bicycle that he'd repaired and a shopping cart that he'd rigged to be pulled along behind. On previous trips he'd returned with various scraps of fabrics, the odd canned good and various half-demolished machinery or gadgets. Some he could fix and use, others he kept for parts...and still others ended up at the communal Marketplace to be bartered or sold for other goods/items.
Money meant nothing, but precious gems still held some value. The Marketplace mainly thrived on the barter system, something that suited Lou just fine.
Hawthorn had traversed a bit further than some of his previous rounds, going after a now-ramshackle looking out-door galleria-type mall. From the outward appearance, it had been scavenged before, but usually Lou had good luck with his searches - he wasn't usually looking for what other's considered "things of value". He went through two shops with no company but a few carrion-crawlers: rats and roaches, spiders and some other queer looking things that seemed to be insects - just nothing he'd ever seen before.
Things were going well until he hit what seemed to have been a novelty store. Usually he avoided places like this, but he thought he'd seen the alluring flash of neon pink that signaled to his brain: flamingo. Lou had left his bike and cart outside the wreckage of a store-front and begun the arduous task of navigating rotting merchandise and broken wires, tiles and beams when he got his ankle stuck on...nothing?!
No, it was something, but he couldn't see it. He grunted, groaned, growled and pulled until he was set free with an almost comical pop, only to go crashing into a series of shelves that then crumbled and fell forward and through what was left of the storefront's large glass window.
The noise was deafening and he lay there, dazed.
