End of Seasons, sneak peak

Lowman had little use for words. In fact he could not talk, not since his tongue was cut out nearly two decades ago. Instead, Lowman preferred action. He preferred to be one who accomplished things. He had a tendency to opportunistically arrive in situations that required actions instead of words. He liked it that way. 

Clutching a thick leather bound journal, he sat down at the base of a tree. The brown leather cover was worn with years of travel, but still sturdy, protecting the weathered pages within. An ornately designed compass adorned the leather, with the 'N' turned a few degrees to the left. It was that compass that inspired Lowman to become a cartographer, setting him about a journey to chart the post-Collapse Black Swamp. The first few pages turned in his dark leather gloved hands. The finger-less gloves allowed his digits to dance freely over the pages of maps. Then he turned a page that caught his eye.

Lowman had little use for words, but he had much use for pictures. He drew what he saw throughout his travels. His ink sketches showcased interesting trees, shaped like scraggly hands chasing after vermin, or shafts of wheat catching late day sun. He drew of settlements that he had encountered across the region: a series of shipping containers suspended from high tension wires, a windmill surrounded by a conglomeration of steel, tractor trailers and rail cars creating a palisade of steel around a white and red transmission tower -fallen in such a way that it sat like an odd triangle over the settlement, a replica box-fort that sat at the flooded junction of two raging rivers that spanned a tremendous distance, and a concrete fortification that stood on a hill overlooking the junction of three small rivers.

It was that drawing that caught his eye.

He felt a smile creep across his lips, but to only his lips did it stay. On the page opposite of the concrete fortification at three rivers -the Fort, he recalled its name- was a drawing of the same location in flames. The smile reflected his pride in the imagery he captured with the ink; the flames, the fury, the crumbling mortar and brick. The water of the rivers caught the light from the fire and reflected it to the sky. His fingers hovered above the ink as though he could feel the heat from the flames. Echoes of screams filled his ears as he recalled the day the Fort was burned. It was not only the Fort, however, the entire city of Three Rivers was burned to the ground. People commonly recalled that the Country was responsible for the burning of the Fort and Three Rivers, after some dispute regarding trade. 

But, in fact, it was Lowman who was responsible...