Sada walked. Stumbled may have been a better term, but terminology was rather irrelevant when one was on the verge of death. Anyway. Sada walked.
“Fuckin hot,” he wheezed (it had been hot, it would continue to be hot, but what else did you have to say when it had been hot for so long and would, for all you knew, continue to be hot indefinitely?). He was beginning to think that the divine or demonic forces of the universe would not let him die. Beginning was wrong; but he had spent so much time walking, and the sand was so endless, that there really was no way to judge time. He had long passed the state of dehydration in which one begins to hallucinate, or he thought so, anyway, but how did you know you were hallucinating? Life seemed like a big hallucination. Life might be one big hallucination. Who could say otherwise? He couldn’t. Had anything he thought happened even happen? Had it always been sand and walking and pain? Were those memories real? What did it mean to remember, if the mind was a prison in the hallucination of life? Maybe this was the blood loss Was he still bleeding? He didn’t know. Sada felt like all the water had been drunk up by the sun (sip sip sip) and if somebody cut him from end to end his insides would just look like baked clay. Pottery! Imagine. The ancients sure did! Man was made of clay, that’s right. Silly ancients. Where was the clay, anyway? Maybe it was just cursed man’s guts. Present situation! Yes sir, right away sir. “I’m walking around the desert with a magic knife in my leg.”
“So it goes.”
It would have been more interesting to say that “the air shifted” or “the atmosphere shuddered” or “magic buzzed in his veins” or even that the landscape looked different, but, in all honesty, Sada had no idea that he was on a completely different realm of existence until the vultures changed. Falsely, Sada would claim that nothing so interesting ever happened to him, although if his experience were merely illusions of the mind-prison-hallucination we all may or may not be living, that statement might be true.
He ignored their circling, as he had been for however long. In all this time, nobody had tried to eat him alive. For shame.
He heard one cry, and it was then that he started to think that this might be somewhere else. Sada looked up at the sky. They all looked the same so far up, but he knew the sound was different. “Now I’m hallucinating, must be. Different vultures. More likely to be songbirds than-“ he erupted into a coughing fit, surprise choking him like a certain kind of lover- “HELLO!” He croak-screamed. He sounded like the new vultures. Or was it the old ones? Songbirds, maybe. Vultures could be songbirds in somebody's book. "In mine, yeah." The stranger in the distance might have been too far to hear him shout, but the desert was awfully quiet (always had been, always would be.)
She doesn't have much experience with extreme climates. Her foalhood was spent in a tropical climate and her now home was tepid in temperature. She had guessed that she would rather it be hot then cold, but the dryness of the air had hit her hard in the face. She trudged on, determined to explore this new land she had happened upon. After all, she had desert blood running though her veins. One little jaunt in the sand won't kill her...right? The sand in her mouth had other ideas. Well, it's not going to beat her.
It was almost a liquid, this sandy footing. It rose and fell with the wind, and suddenly she was more appreciative of the scenery. She had stared at the sea for so long that she was convinced that waves needed to be blue. As she climbed a dune to stare above it, she realized that waves came in beige also. This sandy sea also had it's wildlife. In place of fish, tiny insects and reptiles burrowed under it's depths. Instead of gulls and water birds, large vultures circled the desert, screeching at any sign of food. One had let out a high pitched cry, and she returned it with a girlish whinny. She rose to her hind legs, feeling her Saudi blood in the hot air and swinging her hooves. A gust of wind brought up sand around her hocks and blew her thick mane around her. She felt powerful. Now all she needed was a way to feel this way at home.
Did the desert echo?
Her hooves planted in the sand, her eyes squinting. No, there wasn't any surface for her voice to be returned to her. With her ears pricked, she called out again, waiting for...what? Surely there wasn't anyone here. This place was huge and the chance of her meeting someone was so small, and yet, there it was again. A noise that almost sounded like someone calling to her. Whirling around, she tossed her hairs from her face, trying to tell the direction of the yell. In the distance, a figure emerged, distorted by the waves of heat in the air. On impulse, she sprinted forward, not thinking of who this stranger might be. He could be a killer, or maybe he could be a crazy wizard? She still wasn't sure how this magic thing worked...
Pulling up, she left a good distance between herself and the stranger, adrenaline flowing to her spines and making them stand on end.
"Hello?"
Who in their right mind was just wandering the desert? Well, me for one. But I have a reason. Well, ok maybe this dude does too. I mean, who am I to judge? I was just rearing like a damn foal pretending to be some fairy tale character and giggling at birds. Maybe I'm the crazy one. Who cares. At least I can be entertained for a bit. It was getting kind of boring wandering around by myself. And if he turned out to be an insane murderer who wants to eat my eyeballs and wear my skin, I'll just run away. Plus I doubt he wants to get stabbed by my quills. Those suckers hurt.
@Sada hope you don't mind me jumping in. I just love how Sada talks and may have done a tiny bit of stalking...
The mirage ran at him, green and white and horse-shaped but unconvincingly so. It may have been that Sada forgot what a horse was supposed to look like (embarrassing), and she was running at him, which was a little disconcerting, and he thought that maybe this new desert he had stumbled onto had funny things like green creatures that looked like horses but were not. Unless she was a horse. Hm.
”Hello?”
Sada stared at her. If she was a horse, she was sort of beautiful, in an alien kind of way, you know, very weird and funny smelling and green. He couldn’t get past the green part. She also had spines. If it wasn’t a horse, then perhaps he should be worried. If it was a mirage - well. He’d survived plenty of those.
”Look- I - I know you might not be able to give me a trustworthy answer. Like, I won’t know if you’re lying, and you won’t know if you’re lying, or you won’t tell me the truth anyway but- fuck - listen. Are you real?” That was a lot of words to get out before he erupted into a terrific coughing fit. ”Do… you have… water?” Mirage water would suffice, he thought.
Her head tilted, ears pricked as the man rambled about her existence. A smile, not one of amusement, but rather one of concern pulled at her lips. Was this man delusional? Sure, she looked like a spiked sea creature that had crawled out of the sea, but she obviously had four legs and equine features. His words were interrupted by a fit of coughs, and she took a step forward, unsure if she should help. If she was smart she would turn around and leave, away from the unfamiliar stallion and back to where it was safe. She had just integrated into the Dusk Kingdom, and had made friends with the winged leader called Marisol...Kinda. Her new acquaintance had seemed distant but welcoming when they met atop the cliffs.
She looked around a his request for water, his cough subsiding and she put on a friendly grin and shook her head. "I don't, sorry. But if you want, we can go look for some. I heard there was an oasis somewhere around, right?" Her stance straightened as she lifted her delicate legs. "Do you know which way it is? I don't have the best internal compass."
I don't know about him, but I kinda like the desert. I can see why my ancestors liked it. This guy though, what's his deal?
She stepped forward, and even in the midst of a coughing fit, Sada flinched and stumbled back. Strangers were not to be trusted! No, no. Very suspicious, she was, especially with all that green going on. Very weird. Green. Like an alien, or - well, he didn’t know of many green things. Green was - the color of plants. She wasn’t plant colored. How did he know? ”I haven’t seen a plant your color in my life,” Sada said.
An oasis? His internal compass? Yeah, right. The vultures were different and he was supposed to know where he was! Alright, sure. She was untrustworthy anyway. Lying to be safe! It’s not like she would know if they were going in the wrong direction, apparently all deserts everywhere looked the same! Maybe he could go back to where he came from. Not like he was welcome there. ”I could try,” he said, and then snapped his mouth shut. ”This way,” he spoke confidently and turned about, trying to go home.
