Esk Tales {TWWM-ARPG Writings Collection}

Sink {Majanthi #1- Biome}

Sink

Prompt 1- Biome
{Majanthi}

.:+:.

The persistent prickle of sand between toes, and the stinging spray of particles kicked up by the wind against flesh and hide had become so commonplace it barely even registered for the Wanderer anymore. Clogged toes and grain tossed up in the waves of wind both gentle and fierce were an everyday occurrence for as long as this land had been existent- and certainly as long as Majanthi herself had been around to tend and roam every corner belonging to her Boundary. It was so common and constant a thing she didn't even register it anymore, nor falter or even blink in the face of those scratching winds and rolling sands. She didn't feel it, not really.

But she certainly felt this place. Every step through it and it's sand came with the sensation of sinking.

Ordinarily 'sinking' would not have been out of place, given the looseness of sand just naturally. You always did sink a little in each step, but never like this.

No, here it felt like you were seconds away from falling endlessly into some vast and crushing void just under your feet. Here the sand didn't just shift and slide under your weight, it actively tried to pull you down and trap you. Each particle on the surface hid a million invisible, reaching fingers lying in wait below ready to catch you in a cruel grip and drag you back down into the depths with them. Down far below into a sea of writhing, slippery things hidden beneath centuries of scorched earth that had rarely ever seen even the smallest drop of moisture.... down far below where old, ancient, and cursed things had been buried- but did not wish to stay that way.

Majanthi had been here a lifetime ago before it had been claimed by miles of endless dunes stretching into nowhere. Back before time and weather had tried it's best to erase and cover up what horrors this section of the land had endured, and back before she'd made the decision to allow it opportunity to wash away what she'd been unable to.

On its surface this place had changed so much that it was unrecognizable to what it had once been- but Majanthi did not need to see the spires and cliffs of old to know this was the same place. It could have changed in a thousand different ways, in a thousand different years (and it quite literally had), but she would always still know precisely where she was. To the eye it was different, but to the senses it had always been the same.... and always a reminder of something she could not fix.

She had tried so hard, in the beginning. She spent weeks here doing all she could to try and lift away some of the doomed and damned things tied to this place. She'd spent so much time pacing back and forth, humming things into this wretched earth and coaxing spirits and phantoms upward in a hope she could lift them to the air and let the wind and smoke mold them into something better, calmer. So much time spent in this one place working tirelessly to tend something scarred and broken, even at the expense of ignoring the rest of her land and Boundary for a time- which no good gardener should ever do, but she did. She did until there came a point where every tiny piece she managed to heal only ended up becoming overwhelmed and dragged back down with each new yard that spoiled further in resistance to her interference. Until she'd spent so long walking through this space she'd become exhausted by the ever downward pull and force trying to drown and sink her.

In the beginning she failed, so instead she decided to let time try to weather the turmoil in this place, and left.

At first, Majanthi returned long before the landscape had begun to change in a way it would not be recognizable. A few decades at most, a blink of an eye in her perception of time- but on returning she found it still resistant to her. Still pushing back at her work, and actively hostile against her very presence. So she left, to let time pass further.

When next she returned the cliffs had already begun to erode and stood at half their original height, the canyons crumbled. Time had passed longer than any living thing could endure... but still the shattered rock and sand pulled downward at her feet, persistent, exhausting, and haunted.

Majanthi left again, and did not come back for a very, very long time. Long enough the cliffs turned to dust and the land became further covered in rolling dunes growing taller and taller with each passing season. But still when she came back she could feel those wretched things reaching up through the sand, clawing their way from deep below toward her. They were more tired now, thinner even- but still there, still tortured. Still pulling down trying to sink her as she waded through the sands of sea, making any amount of time resisting that weight downward more tiring than could be described.

No other place had ever been like this, nor had there been any other site so unending a reminder of something she could not do. There had been many spots tainted in her lifespan, many that didn't resonate as they should- but this was one of the few that physically exhausted Majanthi to travel. The one that pained the Wanderer like none other knowing she had to leave it be.

She couldn't linger here and let the rest of her realm go untended, she had to go. She had no choice but to let this place sink away further into the depths of the earth and be buried in millennia of sand until eventually- hopefully- those things scratching under the surface were too far down to be felt anymore.

Let it all sink far, far down... until even I can no longer feel it, or remember.