The summer sun was hot – hotter than he remembered it. Actually, it was only spring, wasn't it? Not quite time for summer yet. Even then, the weather was starting to bother him remotely. At least it was better than Winter.
Alma chuckled just a little at the thought. The mere inkling of another season was enough to cool him off a bit. Not that he disliked the sun at all – it was just tiring after it had been beaming down on the earth for several days straight. The ground was beginning to grow dry beneath his bare feet, and its prickles irritated their soles slightly.
He stood under a spindly tree and glanced briefly up at the sky. A few white, wispy clouds hung around the horizon, but looked wary to get any closer to their fiery adversary. Evidently they believed the season had already changed.
Alma's eyes then flicked back to the brown-and-green underbrush. It all seemed so tiny and stunted, despite the overabundance of light. Just thinking about it would have made him thirsty had he needed to drink – even so, the notion made him swallow reflexively. It was relaxing just to rest here in what little shade there was, and give his vision a chance to take a break. Gazing into subtle darkness relaxed his pupils, which otherwise had almost constantly been narrowed to barely-visible slits.
Well, it was about time to get going. Nowadays he just wandered, without much of a thought to anything else. He rarely encountered people thanks to his tendency to cross uncharted lands, and when he did the meeting was rather uneventful. To be honest, he tried to stay out of anybody's way; he was afraid of what they would think or say if they saw him.
He stepped back out in to the dust, instantly recalling the sensation of warm grit under his feet. There was a path here. It was wide, but appeared largely unused; there were no tracks in it, not even those belonging to an animal. It curved around a small hill, presumably into more blue sky. Like anywhere else, it was an unfamiliar place, so it would be worth it to go check it out.
Even as he walked, Alma let himself relax, not finding the use in tensing up at all. His lean arms hung almost limply at his sides. He kept his sky-colored eyes straight ahead on the little hill and wondered intensely what would be beyond it. Even in such empty country as this, there was always room for a little pleasant surprise.
He cringed just a little bit as the tip of his tail brushed against something hard, which just turned out to be a sharp, jutting rock he hadn't noticed a moment earlier (he had stepped over it rather than onto it, fortunately). Alma sighed just a little bit and turned back to his charted route. Both ends of his tail were more sensitive than he would like, and he doubted he would get used to it for a while. Heck, he had already lost track of how much time it had been, and he was still startled whenever the arrow-shaped tip scraped up against an object he hadn't found with his limbs. At the same time, it gave him excellent balance and an extended field of perception. As much as he wanted to, he couldn't imagine being a clumsy, tailless human again.
He quickly reined his mind back in, suppressing another breath that had risen in his lungs. Without somewhere to return home to, both his thoughts and his feet were prone to endless wandering. He didn't usually worry about it much until he had to sit down somewhere and take shelter because his tears were too powerful.
Alma quickened his pace just a little bit. Grayish, earthy colors with sharp edges were starting to come into view around the curve. What could they be? A tiny shadow flitted overhead as he wondered, but he didn't pay it any mind – as deserted as this place was, he couldn't imagine that he was the only animate thing here.
The objects coming into shape were buildings. Not new buildings, definitely, but they were buildings. Signs that people had been here at some point. With a closer look, they were deserted. Not all of the doors were attached properly, and there were no lights. Still, they were lined up in neat rows on either side of the long, straight path. The trail was wide and continued farther up a shallow slope until it bent over some curve he couldn't quite see from this distance. The place looked awfully happy for somewhere with no people. Alma barely had to try to visualize others bustling about here in jubilant conversation. That was sometime in the past, though. Nobody was here now.
Struck by curiosity, he continued up the path, carefully resting his eyes on each of the buildings. Occasionally he would pivot in a full circle while walking just to get a good look at one. They were all squat and wide, not too tall, but not too big either. Even though their colors were dulled and occasionally dark, they didn't look depressed. In fact, they looked like they were waiting for their old families to come back, as though said families had simply gone on a day trip and would return any minute now.
Alma planted his feet and looked up when the shadow from before flickered overhead again. He turned his eyes to the sky and searched it out – a task that took little more than half a second. He was about to identify it when it disappeared over the pointed roof of one of the houses, although a loud clack signaled that it had landed. What could make such a piercing noise was a mystery.
He pursed his lip a little and continued to watch in that direction, but nothing moved. An instant after he had turned back to his investigation of the deserted town was an acknowledgment: "Hahahaha!"
He whirled back around without hesitation, with a quiet whoosh entering his ears as his tail swung through the dry air. He couldn't see where the noise had come from, but glanced around anyway. Nothing moved.
"Hahahaha!"
Alma glanced up just a bit, and almost as though teasing him, the shadow lifted itself from its perch on top of the building and glided straight over his head. It was black and white and had a dark bluish patch the color of the deep ocean on its middle.
The unfamiliar bird landed on the next building over and looked up into the sky. Within a few seconds of silence it had opened its beak again: "Hahahaha!"
Alma stared at it for a while, somewhat puzzled. He had never seen or heard a bird that laughed like that. It sounded just like a human, actually. With everything he had experienced, maybe he couldn't even know for sure that it was a bird.
"Hahahaha!"
Its night-black eyes smiled up at the sun and flicked around for something interesting, before the bird wafted onto the ground below. It moved comically – as though it was waddling but trying to hide it by looking dignified. It looked awfully busy, like it was searching for something it had hidden. Alma couldn't imagine what anyone could hide in a place like this, though.
He was about to turn away in disinterest when another flash of shadow flickered in his peripheral vision, and another bird materialized next to the first one. In another sixty seconds there were four birds in the vicinity, all scouring for something different. Their childish giggles echoed back and forth in some kind of wordless language communicating the very sound of happiness.
Alma couldn't help but smile watching them. He leaned against the wall of the nearest building, across the street from the flock, and studied them for a while. For a bunch of birds, they were awfully goofy and human-like. It was a strangely whimsical moment, just standing there on the other side of the path from the birds. At the very least, he wasn't quite alone anymore.
He laughed a little bit himself, a clear and beautiful sound, as suppressed as it was. The voice of those birds wasn't all that different.
Alma lost track of time, and at some point the birds became disinterested and scattered again, but that had been enough of a spectacle for him. The sun was beginning its downward descent to the other horizon, so it was time to go.
He put his weight back on his feet. Standing against the wall like that had made him unusually stiff. He stretched his arms above his head for a moment and, satisfied and refreshed, continued up the street. There were no more birds here for today, but that was all right. There were always more to be found somewhere in this empty country.