illphated
### **Dust and Neon**
The space cowboy took a slow drag from his vapor pen, exhaling a thin wisp of mist into the cold Martian air. The wind howled low and steady, carrying with it the distant hum of the neon city behind him. His green hat cast a shadow over his tired eyes, shielding them from the pulsating glow of a civilization that never slept. He had spent too long in its grasp—too many deals gone sideways, too many nights slipping through alleys, dodging the consequences of another bad choice.
Now, he was done.
His spacesuit, a sleek fusion of old-world grit and high-tech resilience, clung to his lean frame as he leaned against the boulder. He’d always thought of Mars as a place of new beginnings, but the city had become just another cage, a place where the strong fed on the desperate. He had played the game, outwitted the liars and the thieves, but in the end, it had drained him. There was no room in his soul for another neon lie.
So he had walked. Past the last outpost of flashing holo-signs, past the final checkpoint of corporate enforcers who barely spared him a glance. Out here, where the neon haze faded into the deep red dust, he might find something real.
He gazed out toward the horizon, where the land stretched into jagged cliffs and endless dunes. Somewhere beyond that ridge, there had to be a place unclaimed by the city’s reach. A place where a man could breathe, where silence wasn’t a threat but a promise. His fingers traced the edges of a worn data chip in his pocket—a map, given to him by an old scavenger. They had spoken in hushed tones over cheap synth-whiskey about a settlement far from the noise, a hidden sanctuary where men like him could disappear.
His boots crunched against the sand as he pushed off the boulder. One last look at the city—its lights blinking like a mirage of false hopes—before he turned away for good. The chaos was behind him now.
Ahead, only the unknown. And maybe, just maybe, a home.