You're from a world where scorpions are made of chitin, and perhaps some variety of blood-adjacent goo. Here, they're made of meat and bones. Blood, sinew, all the tastiest bits and bobbles. All they're missing is skin.
That's why most folks figure they used to be people. A lot of creepy, crawly things used to be people. Things that skitter up the leg of your pants to escape the “sun.” But I don't think I ever was much of a person.
The sun-bleached bones of a scorpion cling to my face, and they itch like a bitch. Legs clamped over a snaggletoothed maw, claws gripping the gaunt bones above my cheeks, tail firmly wedged between my neck and the greater spine below it, pumping a continuous stream of god knows what into the meat between the vertebrae.
I scratch at the spot where its bony legs clench my chin and teeth, then at the ashen scales covering my face. It's no use; the wind is picking up again, so more sand will inevitably find its way in. All I can do is close my “extra eyelids,” those thin membranes which supplant the need for protective eyewear, sliding over my field of view and dulling the edges of all which surrounds me.
“All which surrounds me” being the boundless emptiness of a barren wasteland. Nothing but alabaster salt flats, far as the eye can see, dry and dreary as bones picked clean.
As the whipping and whirling of a dry wind berates my faded, rough-hewn garbs, I can still hear what the old crow said to me. It bounces back and forth, bounding from the ivory salt to the sunless, cerulean sky and back again. It carves itself into the side of my skull, insisting that I see it each and every time I dare to turn my mind's eye inward.
“Better git while the gettin's good. Them hounds'll be on ya by second sunrise, but I think you can make the boat.
But when that ship starts sailin’, or the bad things behind us catch yer ass, you'd best remember:
There ain't no devil in this desert, ‘cept the one on yer shoulder.”
She was old and broken, feathers as torn and faded as her mangled shawl. We both knew she wouldn't make it to the ship, but that doesn't make it any easier.
I can hear them now. Rabid dogs barking, their rabid owners hooting and hollering. But I can also see the ship, massive and dark, its silhouette standing starkly against the baby blue meridian, seeming almost to defy the miles between us. I can make it, just gotta get while the gettin's good.