The Find

He looked curiously across the flat landscape with dreams of finding something marvelous, and his thought surmounted to a question: “What happened?” Sans Nomerick’s face displayed genuine bafflement as his walk built to an almost glide across the sediment. What happened indeed, he ventured. In fact, he went as far as to guess to who once housed themselves in these ruins. His first observation was that they were not very smart at all. The houses appeared to be poor in design, and it was apparent that they would never survive the storms he experienced at home. After this first observation, Nomerick concluded that the dead civilization met its end either through natural disaster or inner conflict, with the latter hunch being the most probable. However, Nomerick concluded that he was not one to be concluding, and that he would elaborate on his hunches when he returned home. But there was something extremely tense in the dead city. The air was so thin and frail that Nomerick choked vigorously as if he were breathing a toxin. As he walked, the ground’s hue darkened. Nomerick avoided the urge to conclude. He trotted along, not gliding, but stumbling along the char, when at last his feet found a salient and were upon themselves in a mess of limbs. He fell into darkness quietly. He had himself off the ground in an instant. Char deeply stained the left side of his face, and as much as he tried he couldn’t open the eye on the corresponding side, for when he did, Nomerick felt a fire light up vigorously upon it, causing it to burn and itch. So he kept it shut tightly, and clawed at it only once and a while. He turned and saw the bony outline of a strange face. It was so different and grotesque that Nomerick leapt back from the monstrous skull but quickly found his footing and looked again. It starred at him with a deadly gaze that would seem to kill him if he dared look away. So, for a time span of about ten minutes, Nomerick was left helplessly looking at this deformation of life. Finally at the height of the tension and as he choked on another breath, Nomerick leapt towards the object and stuffed it in a bag. Finally he breathed deeply, which led him to cough deeply, which stimulated deep thought. It wasn’t the air that made him nauseous.

Something was living among the dead. Nomerick noticed right away. The air grew dense, as if someone else was breathing it. A wave of heat blew over his face, and he shuddered violently. “Just my nerves,” he squeaked in his dialect, “simply this and nothing more.” Something shifted on the last syllable; barely noticeable, as if the landscape had merely breathed. But yes, something had changed. Nomerick’s cough stopped, dead. Shadows were shifting; creeping closer. Something’s eyes were on him: its gaze was flickering on and off like a candle. The tension went up and down. “Simply my nerves and nothing more!” The movements fluctuated around him dangerously. Sans Nomerick’s walk was now a run. After a short distance, he lost footing and stumbled a little. His only good eye frantically danced around the ruins, and he clutched the other feverishly. The darkness skittered around him, and with one final call just as life reached its apex he shrieked “What!?” The skittering died right there. The wind stopped. Life was frozen.
A little, grotesque form came out from behind a chiseled wall. Nomerick‘s anger was replaced with sheer terror. He whipped the bag around in front of him, and let it swing: back and forth, almost taunting the thing that stood in his gaze. He fished for the object, and heaved it out as if it were being displayed. The skull and the little thing had the same features. One eye was not enough to conclude, so, carefully but dazedly, Nomerick opened the black eyelid a little. Yes, they were the same. This dead civilization was quite alive. But why was he concluding? Did he not promise to leave that to his mentors back home? In a crazy solution of confusion, anger, and terror, he lifted his hand away from his nearly bleeding eye, gave the skull a little spin and let go wildly. He fiercely shut his eyes (or, his eye) and waited. There was a little muffled sound, blocked out of mind by fear and heavy coughing, but finally brought back. The eyes opened. It lay on the golden sand quietly, as if it were only dreaming. Soon, the sand around it became slightly sticky and slushy. Disgusted and now more stressed then terrified, Nomerick stumbled over to the mess he’d made. Is it dead? Questions raced through Nomerick’s head violently, colliding with each other and coming out as hybrid mashes of convoluted theories. The air was biting, his cough was worsening, his head was spinning, and shadows were still shifting. “No, no, no!” Nomerick gazed helplessly at the sprawled out little thing and wanted to know all about its body structure and systems so that in a vague attempt he might save it. But these grounds went uncharted, and not even his mentors would know what these things were. This was concluded easily. Nomerick cursed loudly at himself for concluding again. He still looked at the body, as if it were a dumb animal that had simply died on its own ignorance. He was much more calm now, and lightly breathed words from his squeaky dialect: “I didn’t—” Cold as ice, he grew. A humming, zipping object had cut a cleavage in his icy legs. A large cracking succeeded the painful tearing. Some function or another in Sans Nomerick’s body had clearly been misplaced and had horribly broken. A salient, spear-like dagger had sliced clean through his leg. For some reason or another he didn’t scream, but looked sharply up to where the humming had originated. Many, many, of the creatures had gathered around on the buildings. In their hands they cradled children and pointed sticks. They moved in unison, and so as a whole they drew closer. With every step, the landscape breathed deeply, and with every lifted spear, death breathed deeply, too.
Nomerick panted off in one direction, then another, and another. Unsure of where to go, he simply couldn’t head straight. And so, wobbling, limping, crying; he couldn’t get the feeling out of his head that he was simply going nowhere. He guessed right. In a moment the things were upon him. Spear after spear they threw: yelling wildly on collision. But Sans Nomerick had some strange feeling of glee upon him, and he cried, “What a marvelous find! I must—” A spear met his body and stuck stiffly out like a blade of grass, but he continued his sentence: “-must tell! I must tell of this find! Oh what a find! My name shall be known to all!” Even as he was consumed in the bombardment of crudely crafted weapons, he was still crying faintly, until he was silenced with one to the throat, “My name! Marvelous…”

-Sans Nomerick was never credited with the discovery of the Human Race.