Through the Dander of Despair He crested the rise and his primitive heart-tube sank as hope evaporated. As far as he could see there was nothing but mangy devastation. He pierced the terrain beneath him in search of the red gold that kept him going, but found nothing but dust and disappointment. He was an oriental rat flea by the name of Battuta. And this was the land of false promise.
Battuta squinted his eyespot at the sun to try to get his bearings. He had come to Fluffball with the intent of seeing the great Cuzco of the East, the famous Lost Navel where the blood shot like a geyser every hour. Legend had it that in between blasts the blood would pool so deep that you could swim in it, gorging yourself to satiation. Battuta licked his stylet with regret, for clearly he was a long way from that land of bounty.
Wandering through the desolation he saw nothing but scraggly hair tufting away in the wind. This exposed the cracked and flaking skin that seemed to contain no hint of moisture no matter how far down he drilled. Battuta hunkered down, letting his armoured plates bear the brunt of a particularly harsh gust. He had best find shelter soon, lest he get caught in another dander storm and be buried up to his pygidium.
Battuta made his way to a decrepit copse of fur that seemed to barely cling to the terrain by its exposed follicles. Along the way he passed some hollow exoskeletons that were bleached almost white from exposure. They grinned knowingly at him, as if in anticipation of his company. Shuddering from the chill in the wind Battuta pressed on.
At the copse Battuta was surprised to discover a grizzled old-timer sitting against a wispy hair and nursing a canteen of something red that smelled quite fermented. Battuta hailed the old flea and asked if there was any shelter to be had nearby.
“T'aint no such comfort on this sack of bones, Sonny!” the old-timer barked, chuckling madly to the wind. “Not since the wells ran dry, and the fur began to fly! T'aint fit for a louse, or even this old souse, not since the beginning of the end of days.” The old-timer pointed his foreclaw vaguely in Battuta's direction while taking another sip from his canteen. “Waddaya doing on a barren desert like this, Sonny? Yer still young and strong of leg. Why don't you blast off this corpse and chance what may in the yonder wilds? Bad as it could possibly be, it can't be worse than here.”
Battuta contemplated the old-timer's words. It was vaguely irrational, but he had an unquenchable thirst that only the faithful geyser of paradise could sate. He told the old-timer as much.
“Red fever,” the old-timer spat grimly, letting out a long, mournful whistle. “Mark my words, Sonny. You'll wander these dunes of dust and dander for all eternity before you find the Lost Navel. Heed the advice of my experience: let it go and move on.”
Battuta suppressed the doubt gnawing at his insides. He would not forsake his one true purpose for the uncertain purgatory of the yonder wilds. He laughed at the old-timer, telling him he was too close now to give up hope.
The old-timer studied Battuta for a long time before shaking his head in despair. “T'aint we all, Sonny. T'aint we all.”
Battuta smirked at the melodrama of the old-timer's manner, but suddenly the chilly wind pierced him to his soul. He turned his laterally compressed body into gale wind to stop it from acting like a sail and dislodging him from the copse. He squatted low to keep the frigid blast from sapping him of the last of his heat, his eyespots stinging from the driven dander flakes.
When the worst of the wintery wind had subsided, Battuta turned back to his companion, but the old-timer was gone. Battuta looked downwind to see if he had been driven from his resting place, but all he saw was the scattered remnants of bleached exoskeletal bits snared in the wispy hairs of the copse. The only evidence that the old-timer had ever been there was the flask that now lay empty at the base of the hair against which he had been sitting.
Battuta stooped to retrieve the flask so that he might lick out the last few drops of sweet red with his labial palpus. Again he bent, and again, his parched throat aching for just a single drop. He couldn't quite believe it when his ghostly foreleg kept passing through the flask and out the other side.
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This story was supposed to be quite a bit sillier than it turned out. Here's my original inspiration:
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Any chance of a couple day extension?
And heaven help you if you are suspected of throwing something into traffic and that crocodile has a sense of vigilante justice and access to a rusty rake. 
