The house overlooked a vast muddy expanse, once a great lake, slowly decimated by drought. Gnarled trees protruded; deformed and twisted from the dark, thick liquid. The last dying remnants of a dense mangrove, a life source to thousands of creatures now only home to a few scavengers soon to be only dust. Even the pilot crabs had abandoned the area, forced to leave their home unable to find protection there any longer.
On the edge of the lake, above the water table, a small fire burned inside the hollow of a dead tree. An elf tended to it, half starved and pale, he needed less to survive than most managing to salvage rotting carcasses of marsh creatures for sustenance. The rest of his people had long since abandoned the region, the dying remnant of his former kingdom. He had stayed to watch it wilt and wither over time. To feel the life evaporating from it, abandoned and forgotten. Waiting.
Alone
The last of his kind, guardian of a dying world. Every day the elf would watch his kingdom's remaining water be absorbed by the sun. Burning across the endless grey sky it drank the liquid with out remorse. Never pained when it saw the land strain; trying to beat its tired heart, trying to push what little blood remained through its veins. At first he had wanted to avenge his loss, to hunt down and torment those that had brutalised and raped his domain but he did not need too. It had not taken long for his enemies to destroy themselves. Leaving him empty.
Pointless.
The hot flame of anger had turned into fear. Fear of aloneness, of starvation, of so many things that lay in the elves path but even that subsided after a few thousand years, cooling to sadness. If he could cry he would have; every time a dead and rotten branch fell from a tree he could remember as a sapling; every time a lone creature he could remember as a proud pack animal fell into the mud and stuck there slowly suffocating, starving. But the passage of time could even cure the cold pulses of tearless misery the elf felt at the sight of all this and he did eventually leave all his emotions behind. Nothingness was a nice release. The apathy. The hopelessness. His kingdom, his world, his life where all drying up and he would too but at least he didn't have to care. Sometimes the elf would smile at this, a bittersweet smile occasionally lined with a hatred for who he'd become.
Large cracks began to snake through the earth around the elf's home, exposed veins begging for blood. He could see them growing larger each time the sun rose above them, threatening to swallow his home. The elf knew it was time to move on, scavengers did not even bother to pass by his camp now. There was too little there.
The elf headed sunwards, travelling by night so as not to get too parched. It was difficult to find shelter to rest beneath in the day, the landscape was gradually been eaten by cracks in the dust. Some a hundred meters across. In the evenings the elf would often have to detour for hours just to cross one of the crevices. Never running into a sign of life; not plant nor an animal.
After weeks of trekking the elf was convinced the whole world was empty bar the cursed bloodless veins. All life had been swallowed, he was alone on a barren sphere of dirt. Even mud seemed glorious to him, so when he saw a darkened expanse ahead of him to the left the elf almost collapsed with shock.
Forwards he ran. Faster, faster onwards to this utopia. Then it was there.
Stretching out below him, sunken below him by maybe his own height, but it was real. It was mud, made from water and dirt; smooth and crack-less. He felt at home as he dived down, submerging his legs and feet in the mud. Trapping himself willingly like all the predators he had seen outside his camp in the past. How long it had been since he felt the clinging, sucking, suffocating affection of mud. The elf moved further in towards a smooth, brown, branch not yet sucked under by the shrinking lake. Extending his agile fingers towards it, closing them around it, pulling it upwards near to his flesh until he could see it for what it was.
Smooth.
Polished.
Horribly water damaged but unmistakable an instrument; hollowed perfectly for sound to ring forth from it if its strings where still intact. The elf ran his fingers along the fine neck and down into the hollowed interior, half full of mud, something smooth brushing his writs. That's when he saw it; hidden and protected inside the beautiful remains of the instrument. Small, green, glossy leaves. A fig tree. New life, springing forth in this wasteland.
The elf felt something warm grow inside him as he fell back into the mud. He started singing; an old song, almost forgotten flowing over his parched lips as the mud sucked him under. Into the darkness. He listened to the blood still flowing through his veins.