IN A YELLOW SEA
The air is still, the heat heavy and dry. Dune never liked it in the sands. He preferred the closed-in streets of the city, the maze he long ago mastered. Out here there was too much of everything, and nowhere to hide from it. But this was not his landscape. And instead of waiting for the dream to unfold, he prods at its seams, leading the dreamer deeper into the golden mystery.
They walk a while, into a golden sea so vast they quickly lose sight of its edges. The sand feels very real beneath his hooves-- familiar-- and he knows the foreign king has walked the desert before. Imagined landscapes have a different feel than remembered ones. There is a sensation of, far below, a tension-- unfamiliar-- that comes and goes, comes and goes, as though there is something moving (pulsing?) back and forth deep below. Above them, the sky is a cloudless blue that’s hard to look at too long without feeling like it’s looking back.
As they crest a dune, two features materialise before them in an otherwise static landscape. On the right there is a massive, withered olive tree. Its trunk is slumped and colorless, a carcass sucked dry by the sun. A large vulture is hunched on a naked branch, eying the two stallions with an eagerness Dune finds unsettling. His attention closes on the knife conveniently strapped to his leg, although it does not give him much comfort. If the dream wanted him to die, he was going to die.
To the left there is an obelisk. Tall, white, and broad, several lengths across. As unassuming as it appears, something about it is deeply unsettling as well. It takes a moment for Dune to realize what exactly is so odd about the feature: it does not cast a shadow.
Dune stops, lets the dreamer draw abreast. There is the smallest of gestures, a marginal tilt of the head as his placid brown gaze meets Ipomoea’s. Behind the two stallions, and between them, and most of what else is before them, is endless sand. It still trembles from time to time beneath them, with rising intensity.
So, where to next?
@Ipomoea <3
