The Drifter

His hair fell about his face in a manner that could be described as fashionably unkempt; but he didn’t seem the kind to be bothered about fashion, or about putting in the effort to make his hair look any specific way. On his face he donned something that was somewhere between stubble and a beard – to say the lower half of his face was overgrown would just about cover it. This patch of growth matched his hair, both a dark sandy coloured mix, and from the way it stood on end one would have thought it was trying to escape from his head. It looked rough, and as he came closer I had a sudden urge to run my fingers against it. It looked like a beach after a storm, but did it feel that way too? From underneath the sandy barren of his forehead shone two piercing eyes that sent a shiver of sadness through you.
His clothes looked as if they had seen better days. He wore a navy fleece which looked as if it had come from the shores of the Aran Islands many years before. His right knee was exposed through a hole in his jeans, which were faded from time, not like the manufactured faded jeans in all the stores. The skin that was visible looked rough and weathered. There were scrapes and grazes covering the knee, some looked old and almost healed, some seemed fresh. The tattered ends of his jeans fell across a pair of tan coloured hiking boots that looked as if they were well accustomed to feeling mountainous terrain under their soles.