Time Lapse

Chapter 4 ~ Birth of a Wish ~

The sandistas, akin to desert wolves, were a cunning blend of mammals and reptiles, hinting at the resilient survival strategies of the desert's inhabitants. By day, they retreated underground, excavating intricate networks of tunnels to navigate the harsh terrain and establish dominance with their packs. Nocturnal by nature, they emerged under the cover of night, prowling the desert in calculated parades of power and prowess.

In this unforgiving landscape, where the relentless sun threatened to reduce everyone to a slow, perpetual roast, travel was safe only in the darkness of night-a rule that applied not only to humans but also to the diverse animal kingdom of Caryopsis.

To develop some sense of security against the sandistas, towns built their walls roughly fourteen to sixteen feet high. This wasn't to make a city formation for the town but to protect people from sandistas.

The sandistas had long legs and lean muscles to use their paws and pull apart the bones of their prey. The average sandista's height was eleven-and-a-half feet, standing on its hind legs. With their ability to rapidly dig underground like a drill, towns and buildings needed some sort of tile so they couldn't break away to invade a nest of humans.

According to observers, Sandistas had sharp horns extending from their shoulders, looking dead and grey, similar to deadwood. The same horn looked close to a spear being carried on their backs, allowing them to poke the horn through the sand and breathe while resting at a deep depth. Their horns stretched nine feet, allowing them to pierce their prey from a distance.

The ears of sandistas picked up the movement of feet on the sand, and their hair felt the movement of creatures along the surface when they lay against the sand. Another advantage of why the sandistas burrowed themselves in the desert was to feel their victims from kilometers away.

Since they lived in the dark most of their life, they had been blind for as long as anyone could remember, making the shine to their eyes from the moonlight seem distant, and that no matter how far you were, a sandista could sense you from one side of the world to the other.

If the entire planet was one large desert, indeed, an above-average sandista could perform the arduous task if it cared enough to.

Excerpt from the trusty merchant's toem of Caryopsis.

Pages 117-118

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Morning came, the winds settled, and dust tucked away to rest. The clouds from the night before hid away as if they had never existed. Any remains of civilization were now buried a hundred years deep overnight. The previously bustling merchant town is now lost to the shifting tides of the dunes. Only the occasional piece of wall remained, peeking out from the sand to slowly be lost with time.

As the rest of the clouds scattered, a spot of sand shook, followed by a trail of shuffling and movement. Eventually, a nail poked out from the sand, and another hand buried deep shot like a rocket to the moon. The hands seemed slender and frail; if someone were to tug on them like a fish on a line, they'd be caught and reeled in. While the hands surveyed their surroundings, feeling out the fresh air for any leverage, eventually, the stranger slammed their palms down on the sand, using their strength to pull themselves out of the sand. From the sandy tomb came dirtied hair, so sandy the black strands appeared to be fake. Pulling their torso up, the stranger fell over from the sand, shifting their torso out and flailing their legs out to breach their entombment. Falling to their knees, the stranger surveyed their surroundings. In front of them lay a vast open desert, with the sun laying horizontal to the sand line far off.

Suddenly, the stranger stared at the sight to have a sharp, intense pain stab at their head, and an image of a moon laying across the ocean in the distance played over in their mind while thinking it was the same. Shuffling back on their knees, the figure looked away from in front of them and left, then right, and then left again. On both sides of the figure was fire, leaving a trail of what looked like a horse's footprints in wet mud. Turning their head to look around came another intense pain and a flood of more memories.