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Product Description: The Carapace

Some Trips You Don't Come Back From. Make sure you're prepared for every eventuality with The Carapace. A high-performance all-environment Outdoors coat that will stand up in any situation yet is adaptable enough to wear to parks and leisure trails. The Carapace is so functional it has features you didn't know you needed, with Technical Design inspired by Tent and Rigging Construction and styling based on Woodland creatures like the Tick and the Louse. Engineered to shield the wearer from the most forbidding conditions while offering comfort and breathability, The Carapace is a mobile shell. You can Get Lost for days.

The Carapace arrives in two versions, a full-length Outdoor trench and 3/4 Length Outdoor Fishtail with Scalloped Anterior Fin. Colouring takes cues from Arachnids and Insects: reddy-brown Dorsal Shell/Abdomen and faint white-pink Soft Underbelly (a reinforced quilted placket protects your Thorax). Rectilinear pockets flank this section, but that's not all. Each Version is equipped with a full array of Item-specific pockets and pouches, including a sheafed First-Aid Kit, individual Tab pockets and elasticated pouches around the Stomach. The pockets are durable elastalane backed with a thin layer of rubberised canvas and feature a translucent Splash-Proof Cover made from Recycled Polyethylene - perfect for safely storing a map, or a phone, or map, or phone, or map, or phone, or map, or phone, or map, or phone, or map, or phone.

All MH Products are designed in accordance with a packable Nesting storage system that means every bit of your MH Stuff - fits inside every other bit of your MH Stuff. The Carapace is no exception. The quilted Placket is fully detachable and concertinas into a Quiver sack with lightweight strap. The Coat rolls up inside the placket, and you're ready to sling the sack over your shoulder. The Carapace nests inside the Hippy Baggage Field Bag, Backpack, or Rucksack. Keep up The Carapace - you can Get Lost for days.

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The stick is a foot found in the forest and the foot is stuffed with cotton wool. Bookworm woke up — and calculated he must have been asleep for a few hours. It was dark when he last opened his eyes, and now the tent's orange fabric glowed with daylight. He slowly undid the fleece strapping around the mummy hood and sat up. He pulled the sleeping bag's central flap down to his ankles and lifted his legs out. He was already dressed, except for his trail shoes, which were at the head of the sleeping bag. He climbed out of the sleeping bag as quietly as his could, put on his shoes, and stood still inside the tent for a moment — listening outside.

            He unzipped the tent door and stepped into the clearing. He looked around. Everything was as he'd left it in the early hours of this morning, when he gave up. After hours of fretting he had finally decided the best course of action was to try and sleep inside the tent, rather than stay up all night, or just keep moving, or any other of the half-plans he'd come up with. The tent came with a multi-purpose tarpaulin sheet, and he'd stretched this over the remains of his dead fire, to keep the site dry in case it rained during the night, which it did. After another quick look around the clearing he whipped the sheet off, catapulting the rainwater that had pooled inside onto the ground with a smacking sound.

            The dead fire still smelt of burnt flesh, and the slightly acrid, slightly plastic, slightly sulphurous fog wafted out from under the tarp and directly into Bookworm's nose. Even though he'd removed the foot, raked away the ash and cinders, built a new fire from scratch, with new wood, for hours — the dead fire still smelt. The new dead fire still smelt. He had to get moving. But he didn't really know where to go, or whether it was wise to keep on wandering about aimlessly, in the day or the night.

            Over the last two days, since getting lost, or at the very least since being aware that he was lost, Bookworm had happened across many things. One odious thing after another, arranged just so. The arrangements themselves were just as disturbing as the things arranged, as was the mere fact that the things had been arranged. Soon after discovering the first clearing — and so straying from the lower footpaths — he climbed over into the second, third, and fourth clearing. At first, he was concerned only with finding a way out of the forest. So he quickly looked around and moved on. But when Bookworm reached the third, or fourth, or fifth clearing he began to slow down and take notice of the sticks, the dead fires, the holes, the objects, the cotton wool. In each clearing he found one or more what he now called displays. The first he properly took in — the first foot that was not a stick — sent him running into the next clearing, and what he found there sent him running into the clearing after that. He hadn't counted them, but now, more than a day later, he reckoned he must have seen dozens, and he could inventorise: sticks, spent fires, holes, objects, cotton wool. And the vomit. The sticks — well, some of the sticks that he thought were sticks, were not sticks. And other sticks — actual sticks — were collected, arranged, employed. The fires had been used to burn things, and not things, in very specific ways. The small holes, dug with such precision, had been used to inter, and disinter, and inter, and disinter. The objects, sculpted from twigs and grass and litter, were shaped to resemble things — except the objects that were not representations at all, but the things themselves. The cotton wool, which could be found in and around every display, always stuffed inside something. And the vomit.

            On the first day lost, Bookworm staggered from clearing to clearing to clearing to clearing, trying to work out the meaning of all this nauseating industry. Each clearing, each display, each realisation compounded the last. The stick was a foot. There was a deliberate burning. There was a recent burning. And he was lost. And the vomit. He kept finding black, greenish-reddish puddles of sick on the tree-lined paths above the clearings. He didn't connect the sick with the displays. The sick seemed more random. Definitely sick, definitely organic. Left, not put. At first Bookworm thought, hoped even, that it came from a dog. But what kind of dog, he worried. How big? How... unwell? And if not a dog, then what kind of creature?

            At some point during his first day lost, in the fourteenth or fifteenth or sixteenth clearing, Bookworm realised he no longer knew in which direction he was headed. Each clearing was similar to every other, but not identical. He thought that he had been entering and exiting in a straight line, down one side of the ridge-wall and out the other, but after reeling at one or another of the displays, he realised he was not. He tried to retrace his steps and head back towards the first clearing. He only found more clearings, more displays, similar but not the same. He was prepared, as prepared as he could have been without knowing he was going to get lost. He had food, water, clothing for all possible extremes, a tent. He had a map. It was useless, but he had one. Nevertheless, he was now completely lost. So, late yesterday afternoon, he had decided to stay here, in this clearing. As good as any other, once he disposed of the foot. He made a new fire and erected his tent. And eventually, he had slept. Nothing had happened to him in the night. He would stay here again tonight, if necessary.

            Today he would take some practical steps. Re-orient himself. Try and mark some sort of route between the clearings. Map the immediate area. Get out of the forest. First job: get some more firewood. He would rebuild the fire, ready for tonight, and use the tarp to cover it over again in case it rained during the day. He headed for the east side of the clearing, behind the tent. That was the side that had seen the most sun. Any potential fuel lying around there would be drier. He squatted down near the edge of the basin-floor to pick some up. Bone-dry. Perfect. As Bookworm rose, briefly smiling to himself, he suddenly saw it.

            A huge dog. The dog stood utterly still at the top of the ridge wall. Bookworm squinted up at it. How big was it? The morning sun shone directly into the clearing, silhouetting it against the trees. He could not see its face, but there was a window of sky in the overhanging canopies, framing the dog's massive head. It was a hulking thing, with a smooth, almost smoothed outline, like the simplified form of a pantomime horse.

            How big was it? The sun made it difficult to see. The dog didn't make any sound. It didn't move. Bookworm began to step very slowly backwards towards the tent. On his seventh or eighth step, Bookworm jumped at a noise on the ground a few metres in front of him. He looked down in the direction of the noise, and when his eyes adjusted from the glare he could see that a puddle of black, reddish-greenish sick had just landed on the clearing floor, beneath the dog, which otherwise remained motionless, silhouetted against the trees.

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