A clatter echoed across the room.
Darius cursed as he put too much weight on his bad leg, hobbling with his cane over to the workbench. He found a fallen chisel on the ground underneath, rolling back and forth on the floor. He must've missed it. Straining to reach it, he caught hold of it and secured it in one of his bins underneath the thick bench.
He looked around to see if he'd left any other loose objects around.
In various spots across the workbench and on a few other tables that sat alongside the walls of his dirty hovel, piles of heavier tools sat in their usual positions, overlapping or stacked on top of one another. Most were heavy enough that they shouldn't fall. He'd stowed most of the scrap metal away safely. Those metal scraps—artifacts from the days when the supply ships went to and from Ravar—had been pulled from the desert in various scavenging runs throughout the years. Others, he had secretly found in the caves when he was a younger man, before the accident had taken the use of his leg.
The metal served him well while fixing his neighbors' weapons, tools, or cookware, earning him meals to supplement his rations.
Everything seemed stable.
The only thing left on the wall was the long, metal spear that hadn't seen use in more years than he remembered. A sad, nostalgic feeling coursed through Darius as he remembered the days when he could hunt.
He'd leave it.
If the house caved, he would have greater problems than his old spear.
Huddling down so that he was level with the workbench, Darius found an empty spot and eased into a sitting position. Clutching his cane, his thoughts traveled where they always did, in the midst of such a storm. A tear fell down Darius's wrinkled, sun-spotted cheek as he envisioned Akron's body, long rotted and decayed in some hidden cave.
On most days, his guilt weighed in his stomach, threatening to pull him under. But during sandstorms like these, it was even worse, because Akron had disappeared during one.
Darius hadn't given up hope.
It was his fault Akron had died, and he would make up for it.
One day he'd find the boy's remains and bury them.