Eight: The Sands

10.1K 938 38
By SabrinaBlackburry

As the sun set, Schula, Nassir, Puko, and I walked to where we were meeting Kai at the south gate of Sulls.

Kai had taken us back through the markets to pick up another item or two that we didn't know we would need, then he instructed us to sleep the day away and meet him at the gate. 

I put on my cloak, hopefully for the last time. The four of us left the rented rooms, leaving the key on the bed.

Puko sat on Nassir's shoulder, as he had taken to doing lately when we walked. Puko and I got a lot of stares and whispers, but they didn't bother me. Not when I was on my way out of Sulls, ready to leave the humans behind for a while.

When we finally reached the gate, I saw Kai leaning on a shaded part of the wall before he saw us. Puko cawed, shifting all the eyes in the area to us, including Kai's.

"Oh hush," I hissed at the raven as Kai approached with a curious look on his face.

"That bird is black as the night sky between the stars," Kai said. 

Schula let out a small laugh. "I take it there are no ravens in the desert."

"They don't come this far south," I said to her, then turned to Kai. "They are a common sight up in the mountains. They are smart birds, but this one is a bit peculiar, even for a raven."

'Caw!'

Kai eyed Puko, who eyed him back from Nassir's shoulder. "If you say so."

I hid a small smile and Schula brought Nassir forward.

"Kai, this is Nassir. Along with Puko, this is our traveling party," Schula said.

Kai recovered enough to address Nassir. "Nice to meet you. I'm assuming you are... like them?"

Nassir smiled.

"I am like this one." He nodded to Schula. "But Wren here is one of a kind."

I blushed and shifted my eyes to my feet. 

"Well," Kai said. "This is sure to be one of my more interesting trips, so lets get it started while the sun is freshly set."

We were glad to follow Kai to the large gate. A guard exchanged a few hushed words with Kai, and we were let through a small opening that gave us our first steps into the sands.

None of us were prepared for the beautiful landscape.

Kai went first, taking us to the side of the gate and away from other traffic that might come into the dessert. We just followed him dumbfounded by the endless expanse before us.

I had seen the desert before from a distance. Bryn had shown me the view from a tall building once, and of course a certain amount of the sands are visible from most of the city. 

But this, standing here, this was different. We were in the desert. An endless sight of sand dunes and a few meager sprouts of tough plants. The expanse of it was so empty, and it reached out all around us. If I didn't know that the city of Sulls was right behind me, I would have thought there was nothing around for days.

Puko took off for the open skies, staying within our eyesight but clearly enjoying himself. 

"Its so..." Schula started, but she never finished her thought.

Nassir knelt down and placed his hands in the sand, running his fingers through the grains of it. "This doesn't feel like normal earth at all."

Kai, stood back and observed our reaction to the sands with a smirk. He was still a little nervous around us, but his shoulders were relaxed this evening as he waited and I could tell that time would erase the rest of his worries. I turned to him and his gaze met mine. He shrugged. 

"The new ones always need to stop and have a reaction," he said. "I'm ready when you all are, but it looked like you needed a moment."

Nassir stood and shook the sand off his hands. "Apologies, I am ready. I was simply surprised."

"I'm ready too," Schula said with a small smile. "I didn't expect it to look so much like the Sangolins. Only instead of snow, it's sand."

I blinked, looking over the landscape again and I shuddered. The last time I was in the Sangolin planes, I summoned an ancient horror to eat an army. It still crept into my dreams and kept me awake.

Noticing my reaction, Schula came over and held my hand, dropping her glamour at the same time. 

"Come on, lets get you out of that cloak," she changed the subject.

I sighed and nodded, taking off the cloak and unceremoniously shoving it in my pack. Nassir also dropped his glamour, drawing even with us as we faced Kai. 

I took a deep breath of air, relishing in the light breeze that could finally touch my skin. 

"Alright," I said. "I think we're ready."

Kai's eyes flicked between the three of us. His tongue darted out and licked his lips as he turned to the open desert. "Right, let's go."

"Wait," Schula said. "Kai, wasn't your eye patch on the other side?"

I looked at our guide and realized she was right. The red star that led us to him in the first place was on the wrong eye. "Oh, it was."

Kai smiled and turned his head back to us so we could see better.

"That was daylight, this is nighttime," Kai explained. "I keep this eye in perpetual darkness, so when the sun sets I have one eye always adapted to the dark. All the sand tribe scouts do it."

"You can't just see in the dark?" Schula turned to me. "Human eyes don't just switch to dark sight?"

"It takes a while," I explained. "It's not instant for them like it is you. What Kai is doing would prevent a sudden attack at nightfall from taking him by surprise. And even I can't see in absolute darkness."

I shuddered, remembering the black cavern where I met Nassir.

Kai nodded and turned back to the sands, leading us forward. "Right."

"Fascinating," Nassir said. "An interesting adaptation to sight. I will have to consider it."

Schula and I gave Nassir a funny look. He had been saying things like that lately, but he also never elaborated on them. I wondered what his recovering magic was doing for his sight, but I would just have to wait until he was ready to tell us.

We walked quietly after that. The three of us were distracted by the desert landscape, and Kai just focused on watching the path ahead of us. It was nice to watch such an open sky of stars. Puko dipped in and out of them, he was really only visible where he blocked out the light rather than being able to see his black feathers against the night sky.

But as beautiful as it was, I couldn't help feeling something a little off in the air. An otherness to the desert that wasn't present in Sulls. Schula and Nassir didn't seem to notice it, or they didn't show it if they did. I'd have to ask tonight when Kai was asleep. I didn't want to bring up fae business with him. He didn't seem alarmed and there wasn't really a reason to put him on edge quite yet.

But was it really fae business if I was the only one feeling off? What if it had something to do with the witches? My eyes scanned the desert for anything that might be out of Kai's range of vision. Nothing. I closed my eyes and reached out with my magic. Empty. 

"Hey, are you alright?" Schula had come up next to me.

"Yeah, just a little jittery," I frowned. "I'm probably just antsy to get there."

"Well let me know if you want to talk about it," Schula gave me a wicked grin. "Or maybe when the sun rises we should train the jitters out of you."

I gave her a reluctant nod. "Actually, that would be great. I'm out of practice since we didn't do it in Sulls."

She nudged me playfully and stepped back to walk with Nassir again, leaving me to my thoughts. Nassir and Schula chatted softly about places in the Wyldes that I still wasn't familiar with. I contented myself to quiet thoughts, and kept an eye on the odd feeling I had.

Kai was a quiet guide, watching the dunes and occasionally bending down to collect one of the stray plants for kindling later. I didn't really want to distract him from his duties, but I also had burning questions for him. It was almost nice to talk to a human again, albeit one who didn't know anything of my home culture in the mountains. After a while, I gave up my quiet contemplation and decided to try to know Kai better. After all, we would be with him for a while longer.

"Kai, is everything alright?" I asked. "You seem quiet."

He turned his head enough to see me from the front of our group, but didn't stop walking. "Heh, usually my customers don't want to talk to me, I'm used to the quiet. But honestly I'm just still wrapping my head around guiding three aoyi'ka across the desert."

"Ow-ye what?" I asked.

Kai gave a ghost of a smile. "Aoyi'ka. It means... hm. Nature people. I suppose that's the closest thing in the common tongue for it. It means you're made of nature."

Nassir laughed behind us. "I suppose that is a pretty fair assessment of the fae, but really I think a sprite would be more of an aoyi'ka than we would."

"Are there fae in the desert then?" Schula prompted. "Since you have a name for it already."

Kai scratched his chin and frowned. "Hm, I don't know. I don't know if the aoyi'ka are related to the fae or not. I haven't seen one before, only in paintings and things. I used to think they were just legends, but then I spent real time traveling the desert and..."

Kai shrugged. "Well, you see some interesting things if you stay out here long enough. I'd believe a fair amount of those old stories now."

I glanced out at the sand before us. The thin moon and the stars overhead cast enough light for me to see. I wondered what could be out there.

"So Kai," Nassir started. "These nomads seem very interesting. What are the chances we will run across them?"

"Pretty slim," Kai laughed. "Their scouts will see us coming long before we see them, and if we're in their path, they will move. Most of them don't set up a village anywhere near the usual paths someone might take from Sulls to the other ends of the desert anyway."

"That is a shame," Nassir said. "I would like to meet such an interesting new people."

"They are hardly new," Kai said. "The tribes were here before the city was, at least a thousand years."

Schula snorted and I elbowed her lightly with a smile.

'Stop it' I mouthed.

"So what will a typical day look like?" Nassir asked. "I am told we will sleep when the sun is out, but that is about it."

"Hmm." Kai scratched his chin in thought.

"If you're physically able to keep to it, the easiest method of travel to fall into is one long break in the middle of your night time walking. For some of these fat merchants and traveling lords I'd have to take three or four breaks, even if they had horses to ride. For you three I'm sure we can do with just one."

"I should hope so," Schula said. "So what else can we expect?"

"We have what we need if there is a sandstorm. If we see anything else in the desert..." Kai shrugged. "We'll face that as we come to it."

Kai's cryptic answers were maddening. I wanted to know what was out there, but it didn't seem like he would give me a straight answer even if I asked. 

My gut feeling was still barely there. Not quite bad but not quite good. Just... off.

I adjusted the strap on my bag and sighed, continuing to follow our guide. 

This could be a long trip.

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