The Toxic Tea Shop

By the afternoon the landscape had transformed from dead pillars of trees to dead pillars of metal. The pipes and vents twisting around each other criss-crossing the landscape, leading to and from various tanks and valves. Ellyn turned to Seth who merely shrugged, “It’s called the industrial plains” he explained, “I have no idea what they were for”. There were still some fires burning from some of the tallest chimneys burning off something left inside the pipes, producing points of fire floating in the smog that seemed to never leave the plains. Some of the sections of pipes had been removed by looters or destroyed by some ancient explosion. They passed a few turn-off roads as well as small camps, which inhabitants either wave them by or just ignored them. After what seemed like forever to Ellyn, Seth pulled the cart over to one of said small camps for some food. Seth seemed to prefer food other people make fresh rather than digging in to his own supplies though Ellyn, who had seen a

Fire. Fire can be both an enemy and a friend. Fire is only really used for cooking nowadays. Cooking and cleaning one could say, but not cleaning in the usual sense but more like cleaning an area of land from Life. Whether accidental or with a purpose, cleaning can be very problematic… When Ellyn woke the next morning, they were already moving, she looked up to see Seth at the wheel driving the cart along an old road flanked with dead trees. The smell of smoke and soot filed the air. She looked around to see that there was nothing else alive in the area, what used to be a surrounding forest had been burnt down. Ellyn got up and sat in her chair next to Seth at the front of the cart. Seth noticed her arrive but didn’t look up as he was manoeuvring around a burnt out log in the middle of the road. “Good morning sunshine” said Seth, “Yeah…good morning to you too” replied Ellyn, “Do you know what happened?” She asked. “My guess is a fire” Seth said, followed by Ellyn rolling he