The sky was purples with hues of amber. The yellow setting sun enveloped the world in a soft golden glow, illuminating the sea of broken buildings that scattered as far as they could see.

A sheet of paper blew and landed at Clovers feet. She stepped over it and continued walking.

Bowden reached down at picked it up. “We live in a broken world,” was written in blue ink over the sheet that was torn out of an old book. There was more written over the words, but the ink was smeared by water.

“Waterlogged,” Bowden said aloud.

Clover stopped but didn’t turn around.

     “We live in a broken world, 
     of broken dreams, 
     Where hope crumbles at the seams,
     And nothing is ever truly,
     what it seems.”

“How did you know?” Bowden asked curious.

“That’s not the first one. They're all over the place," she said and spread her hands out around her. 

He scanned his head around and true enough scattered about them were pieces of papers torn from various different books, of various different sizes and colour. Each of them looked as though they had more ink writing over them.

“I’ve tried reading the text underneath, but I can’t make out anything. Everything seems to be waterlogged. To be honest I don't even know what the language the writing on top is or who did it. But I can read it... and so can you... I saw them descend one day, just sheets of paper from nowhere, blowing down with the wind. But that’s not why we are here, come on, you don’t want to linger around.”

"That's the longest thing you might have ever said to me!" he respond grinning. 

She turned to face him, perplexed.  

"I don't... urgh, just hush and come on. I'm not the only resident here."

"...You live here?"

"Hush."

Other things make their home nestled in the ruins of a broken world. Some are shy and stay hidden, but some are not very kind.

The two of them trek through the piles of rubble covered in ivy and walked through long abandoned buildings. Every so often Clover pushes Bowden down towards cover and they pause and wait when she hears something amiss. 

On the way she asked Bowden a few questions about the boy's disappearance. 

"So... you can't remember his name?"

"Nope." 

"Do you have a picture of him?"

"Nope." 

"Do you remember what he was wearing at least?" 

"Nope." 

"Who was the last one to see him?"

"I can answer that one. Mort was. I'll take you to her after you stock up. She's our weaver. She does our 'magic', but its not called 'magic' so whatever you do don't use that word. We speak Cemran, which I do know you know. It's one of our first languages.... Where are we going anyway?" 

"Andy's. Now shut up." 

"Oh. Okay." 

They travel for about an hour until they reach what looked to be an old supermarket. Its sign was probably once neon and shiny, but now it was a tangled mess of wires and glass on the floor. 

“I need to go in for a second. Won't be long. Go and hide before you see anything,” Clover said and then walks into the place, hopping and skipping over the large tangled mess on the floor. 

Cautious, she creeped into the building and headed straight for a worn out bulletin board close to the entrance. On it are stapled and pinned pieces of paper. All unreadable and waterlogged, except for two, almost brand new flyers pinned onto the board.

She grabbed both and took a look. One read in bright orange writing, 

                                                          ‘Valaco Dimensional Travel Agency.                                                              Destinations you’ve never been or your money back!’

She folded that one up and tucked it into a pocket, and then turned her attention to the other one. It was a sheet of yellow paper, crumpled up and smoothed out. On it was very faded black ink that read,

                                          ‘Andy’s Goods and Gifts’ 
                                                  Are we open?’

She crumbled the paper up and asked it. “Are you open?”

Then she unfurled it. All the words in the paper were replaced with a single glittering one. 
                                                           ‘Yes’.

She touched the 'yes' and an image of a old broken stone bridge with dark green ivy strung around it popped into her head. “Okay, I know where to go. Thank you.”

She crumpled the paper again, smoothed it out and pinned it back onto the board. The original words on the paper had already reappeared.  

Clover creeped out of the store but did not see Bowden outside. What she did see though is a large brown creature with large claws and a long face. Atop its head are eight antlers each with round eyeballs rotating around crazily, encased on their tips. Its fur was mattered with moss and dirt. In an instant it turned her head toward Clover and stared, all eyes turned and focused on her. It's head was twitching. 

She held her breath and did not move. 

The monster roared.