Johnathans story (standard:fantasy, 3119 words)
Author: Mark Tival	Added: Sep 20 2007	Views/Reads: 3150/2130	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
a magician is looking to fullfill his prophesy, this is only the first few pages but I want to what you think of it

The man walked through the desert neither enjoying the heat nor noticing
it either. Ahead of him, the sun climbed ever higher in the sky as if 
attempting to reach the dead centre above him, some thing it would 
achieve the man thought in the next few hours. He continued to walk his 
backpack flapping empty of all food against his leather travelling coat 
he was loath to give up to the scorching desert. Ahead of him, little 
more than a blot now on the landscape a small town continued to emerge 
out of the sand. The glass panes of the houses glittered like diamonds 
against the backdrop of the deep blue sky that rested above him. Above 
him also buzzards flew, circling him their cry cutting through the 
quiet of the day. The man looked up at them and smiled oddly to himself 
as if the whole thing were a joke. Casting his gaze back forwards he 
continued his long journey towards the desolate out post of a this 
desolate land that passed for a settlement these days. Behind him his 
steps told the tale of his passing, like ant tracks in the distance 
reaching the edge of the horizon and disappearing off the edge back to 
lands and worlds unknown to the people of the small towns he'd come 
across since he reached the brilliantly white desert. He continued to 
walk ignoring the hunger that gnawed and clawed at his belly knowing he 
had no food with which to cage the beast again. Finally an hour after 
the town had grown near enough for the man to make out the individual 
shops and houses though at this distance he could still not tell which 
were which. Most of them were small lean too's showing the shanty 
history of the town. Half of the houses to the west were buried under 
years of blown sand from the desert. Their corrugated Iron roofs 
glimmered with a dull fire in the evening sun as he came nearer to the 
town he had seen many days ago, at the start barely a black do on the 
edge of the horizon, on the edge of his vision. When he'd seen it the 
man had sat down crossed legged on the side of the compact sand road on 
the boiling hot ground driving the pain out of his mind as the heat 
seeped through his trousers to his buttocks. He'd rested there for a 
minute casting out his mind. Images whorled and formed in his head till 
he brought his mind to a point and sending it down to the town still 
barely a scratch on the horizon. In his mind he man travelled the 
streets searching for a certain house. Finally after wandering for 
nearly ten minutes he found the house. The one he'd been searching for 
so many years. Through the harsh and forbidding desert that had met him 
as he'd come from the bitter coldness of the mountains that had nearly 
claimed his life on so any occasions. The house he was looking for 
stood on the opposite edge of town, a small run down hovel that to the 
mans eyes stood out immediately as having  being built to blend in with 
the other rotting houses that surrounded it. It had known magic. It was 
in slightly better condition than the others he had passed to reach the 
other  end of town. He called his spirit back to his body sitting 
still, rigid on the ground devoid of human life. He lifted himself up 
into a squatting position and fumbled around in his back pack the suns 
glare shielded from him by his round cowboy style hat. He found what he 
was looking for and pulled out a large sheepskin canteen a deep worn 
black that betrayed its age. The man took no joy in the thought of his 
find as he drank deeply from the water-skin feeling the water spilling 
down his mouth to hit his stomach which still only cried for food. 
Replacing the water-skin he hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders 
again feeling no weight as he lifted it, there being no weight to lift 
and resumed his long hard march, nearly at its end now after years of 
hardship. A long walk towards the small town that lay ahead of him 
looking almost death in the heat. The walk to the town took a little 
over five hours during which time the man stopped only once more to 
take another drink of his now empty canteen. The sun was deep over the 
horizon hanging over the distant hills like a red blot on the sky when 
he man took his first step into the town. Sounds came to his ears of 
people talking, of music being played in the background to rowdy voices 
drunk to the point of sickness.  Smells of cooking, mainly meat the man 
thought, attacked his nostrils making his stomach roar with hunger in 
his body. The man continued to walk through the dusty town, to his 
right lamps were being lit in the evenings dusk in preparation for the 
darkness of the night that would soon fall draping the town in a 
velvety darkness. As he walked he sensed eyes following him down the 
street. People watching him as he walked towards his destination along 
the improvised main high street. The sounds of people sitting out in 
the cooling evening were silenced as he walked, word obviously 
spreading of a strangers arrival in town. Soon the only sounds in the 
town other than the fearful whispers of the small children siluetted in 
the bright of the doorway hidden behind wondering mothers. To his left 
out of the corner of his eye the man saw a doorway whose light shone 
brighter than the others around it. It was from this building that most 


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