treasure

When the dust finally settled, when there was no more ash and soot and endless winter, when it no longer seemed optimistic that we might survive to see another summer, a few enterprising individuals started scavenging the ruins in search of the things we left behind. Tools, weapons, cookware, trinkets--we'd lost so much. The hope, at the time, was that we could recover some of it.

Within a few years, most of the towns and villages--at least, the ones that were easiest to reach--had been more or less picked clean of valuable finds. Many of us stopped scavenging, then, content that what we had found was enough for whatever our purposes was. Some of us, however, continued exploring the deeper, more remote places. I can't speak for anyone else, but if you'd asked me at the time I'd have said it was curiosity that drove me. Maybe I still would.

There were ruined shrines and temples scattered throughout the wilds, cities and towns where the cataclysm had rendered access nearly impossible. Some of them were days, if not weeks, from the nearest settlement--too remote, most of us decided, for anything but a dedicated expedition, and who had time for that? I was probably not the only one mad enough to attempt it on my own, but there weren't many of us. These sites would be pristine, untouched.

So I learned to live off the land as well as I could, and I set out. Whatever treasures these lost places hid, I would find them. There was so much to discover, so much to experience, before someone looked at all of this beautiful decay and saw only profit, before there was nothing left out here to treasure.