{se} karma for the rules I break

Jude

In my head I am hunting for myself
but I come up empty again

Jude had been swept up by the waves that had lurched inland like a tsunami when the meteor fell. Far enough inland to not be immediately killed, he'd clung to debris and the skeletons of buildings in the seemingly endless time it had taken for the water to devour everything in its path. Scrawny as he is, the only benefit he has is having grown up on these sands, where swimming is a necessity of life and not just a common past-time.

He clings for hours, waiting for dawn. Waiting for help. Manages to pull himself up by his arms alone into an awkward perch of cross-beams of a house that is still standing - sans a roof, but still. His leg lies limp toward the swollen water, broken from impact with debris that had been hiding in its depths during the waves. A compound fracture; blood soaks his shorts and trickles down his calf, but he'd managed a tourniquet with his father's training. Jude knows he has to count himself lucky despite it all. If anything had struck his head, he would have either been killed immediately or knocked unconscious, and drowning would have taken him soon thereafter.

He can't see any other survivors nearby. It's hard enough to see the bodies in the water around him, so instead he curls up in a ball, hiding his face in his good leg pulled up to his chest and arms blocking out the rest of the world. He cries - often, but intermittently. Prays more than he has in a long time. And he waits. Waits, and waits, and tries to manage the pain. He knows Torchline aid will begin immediately, and hopefully Stormbreak thereafter. The water has begun to retreat and it's shallow enough it would only be to his knees if he jumped down, but he's stuck. He just has to wait...

the night is a cavern
I am underneath it, inside it, anything but free of it