The air around me is hot and still. I can feel it sitting around my skin, skimming my chest every time I breathe out, and choking me every time I breathe in. It's heavy, like old cobwebs and musk. I am exhausted. I am hot and exhausted. My eyes ache with the weight of their lids, threatening to close at any moment in the final gesture of a long and well deserved sleep.

New music drums out it's beat around me, silencing the sickening nothingness outside. The still dusk light shows the earth at it 's worst: Without pulse and without breath, dead as the desert and parched as the sand. The world reflects my mind, parched and thirsting, always. Thirsting for more knowledge, more insight, more information for me to process...But that is my problem. That is my addiction.

And what an addiction it is...I find myself taking more and more steps to indulge it, even going so far as to deceive the devout and holy to learn more of their ways....

And what do I turn out to be but a master of this cursed art? It flows as naturally from my mouth as tears from the crying, drawing my target in deep, opening her up and exposing to me those small secrets that she keeps to herself- those small points behind her religion that hold interest for me.

The mere thought of performing this vile sorcery on one of my friends sickens me- I know full well that I am capable of it, and even more so that I have done it in the distant past to those that are no longer a part of my life, but now it is not a mere passing thought...Now it is a weapon. Now it is an act of subterfuge.

Another thing that amazes me is my lack of guilt. My plans for the future, the information I am gathering...My cause is to confront her god, not worship it. I manipulate the devout because I must, because the thirst for information calls me and I answer like a parched man answers to the drink, in massive greedy gulps, lost words trickling down my chin as I choke the water down to quench that fire deep inside...

Still, my thirst does not go unaided...Now I have help- and from an unexpected source. From one who is still fresh, fresh to analyse, fresh to learn...And for all I analyse I still find there is so much more to learn...So many questions, so many answers to be found...

A faint breeze blows for a moment, breaking my concentration and rushing me back to reality for a moment of pleasure as the freshened air cools my dry broken skin. Soon I will be gone from here...And I know that with that knowledge comes the overwhelming fear that my analysis will not be even near completion before I go.