The Teeth Desert is the other spit of sand on the spire, the one we don't like to talk about. The dunes where the scavengers spend their days picking over. The hunters know and neither boast, nor bluster. No one really talks about the Teeth unless they're frightening kids or explaining the end of a tragedy, and it's always a tragedy. The Teeth even kill conversations dead, leaving that lingering feeling of unease, that reminder of just how much we lived on a precipice. The Teeth Desert is a valley filled with brass and gold sand, stained red with blood. I wish I was joking. Sure, the sand at the bottom is red from the mountain's red shale, but the rest, well... not every boat coming in from the skies lands on Maya's beach. The lucky ones do. Most end up crashing into the splintered wreckage and sharp canyon walls of the desert. Shattered remains became one more jagged, rotting tooth in the bloody wasteland. Any boat that crashes in the Teeth is written off. The landing is lethal. There are sinkholes and pockets in the sand that fall straight through to the cloud floor a few stories below. The local wildlife ensure any bodies aren't around long enough to herald their arrival. Blackskates, feral jillgers, mantigers, vultures, and carrion feeders all call the Teeth home. Sure, there's loot, there're treasures, there're supplies for the taking, but scavenger teams only descend into the Teeth in teams of six or more. It's one of the only ways they all come back in one piece. And it's there that the Girl lands and wakes after her fall from the egg. She woke up and carved her way out up out of that dark place, getting herself covered with her fair share of blood and gore on the way. She picked up a few souvenirs, scars she'll have until the day she breathes her last, and a lifelong friend. Her axe became a part of her hand. The egg might have broke her mind, the fall rending her spirit, but the Teeth, the Teeth broke something else, something smaller, something more important. When the Girl climbed out of the Teeth, up the south-east wall, up to Eye Tower Village, her eyes weren't human anymore. That spark of innocence was taken, I figure. The Teeth killed the Girl alright, just didn't stop her moving. Figures. The last person to crash into the Teeth would be the first to beat that place on their own.
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A Simple Story
Fantasy~ A Skies of Fortuna Tale ~ "It's a simple enough story to start, and it starts like so many do. It starts with a storm." So begins the account of a lost girl exploring a dangerous, secret mountain in the sky. Shipwrecked and abandoned, she begins t...
