"Aaah!" Sanya gripped her knee in the middle of the field.

Dusty versions of 'bug' cars and old cigarette buts and cartons and old suits no one would ever use surrounded her. The only cushion to her fall back. Her head also hit hard rock, calcified over the cooling of soot from an old nuclear bomb. She could almost swear, as she was crying on the ground, that she recieved a big fat swelling on her head.

The soot had deadened over the years, and the sky was clearer than at least her vision, even though that would almost sound like an oxymoron.

The atmosphere was bleak though, as the recent explosion, now, from what she could not imagine had sent her flying with almost unbearable pain. Shock made it so she could not reach for aid....just hold her knee...well, what was left of her kneecap, in pain...

Finally, after splotches subsided in her vision, she was able to sit up. The gore was unfrightening to her but disgusting...it meant she would now have to find a way to clean a wound, and that this was just that much blood that she lost...with her bad diet of sugar bombs and Fancy Lad Cakes, she didn't think that was good.

She yelled as she propped her leg...kneecap, man she had to remember that, down beside her. It hurt, too sensitive, to touch ground, but it had to nonetheless....she took out some wrapping gauze from her pack. Screamed countless times as she wrapped it...she eyes the murky lake nearby. No water today...not on this bad boy...

The water had maybe tons of residue from the bomb that had set off and made this world a wasteland. Well, America, starting from the D.C.'s, all the way to California. The nuclear damage was not so bad in other areas such as California but was indeed bad everywhere. As long as it was labeled 'U.S.A.'

Sanya tied that gauze tight and pinched herself mentally for ever saying she would never need that gauze...she tried to stand...

Ultimately the adrenaline was kicking in that told her she should now run. With all due respect because molerats were not the most pleasant creatures to encounter, and neither mirelurks which would more (probably way more) probably be her next encounter, seeing the water, full of them mind her, was there near her....but she knew these mirelurks, and she knew this wasteland near the water...the 'lurks usually stay in the water unless disturbed. Well, she had never, ever stepped over an exploding object near them. And most importantly, she had never ever experienced such advance technology since this lake was her home.

Her water was taken from the water bottles nearby, most often stagnant and causing her belly aches, or from the immense vegetation that still like champs grew here, near the water....they had a purifying affect on the water's most potent effects and tended to nourish her just as well as a jug of cleaner water would...not that she would ever see one in her age.

As well, she would never be able to eat like she used to...and protecting herself woud be a pain.

Just imagine a legless person - well almost legless person - protecting herself against a half-land-half sea creature....imagine that same person amongst the dawn of the basking time of mirelurks...and imagine that same person ever trying to move to navigate them...

She ate seafood, during their migration onto land for that short-but-long-enough for her to hunt fish-period of time. Fish had a purifying affect also, maybe because they burned off most of their radiation during the day, and because plants' radiation was more or less concentrated in their leaves, and therefore was similarly safe to eat. But now even that source of calcium and protein would be lost...

She chuckled to herself, before starkly opening her mouth from the pain. And dug in her bag for the most poisonous plant she could find. She took it in her mouth and gnawed, grimacing at the bitter root.

And attempted to stand one more time...she was on her knee, and put the knapsack of old, but kempt, thread into her right hand, and she moved along, knee and bag, to more juvenile lands.

She was but a baby now. She could not hang by herself, learning the ways of animals and plants, but must go where all humans interacted, helped, and nourished.

It would be hard, and if she met a mischevious bandit, she swore she would end their life before they made her angry, or dead.