Sandwalker

The sand swirls around his feet. The wind piles small mounds before him, covering his boots up to his ankle on the windward side and sloping away in the lee. If any skin had been exposed it would have been stripped away long ago. As it is, with gloves and boots, cloak and hood, goggles and mask, he pays no heed to the wind or the sand it carries. The only evidence that he notices the fury of the desert at all is the slight lean of his body into the face of the storm. His cloak snaps behind him, the fabric of his leggings ripples in the wind, but he himself is almost still.
Every twenty minutes, in a motion so fluid and practiced one has to wonder if he is even aware of the act, he replaces the filter in his mask, using his left hand to bring the clean filter from the device on his chest to its place in his mask and his right hand to remove the dirty filter from the mask and place it in the device. Then he is still once more. Neither shifting his weight nor turning his head. Staring into the heart of the storm. Waiting.