Lost in the Sands and No Oasis in Sight

[Rotzi]

The desert was nice, sunny, and dry.... just like it was every day. The only sounds that could be heard were the winds blowing.

It was then that a ear piercing shriek interrupted the serene dryness. With a spectacular slide in the sand, Sijji fell from the sky, literally.

Coughing, the monk stood and took in her surroundings. What in all the hells...? She sheilded her eyes from the sun. "How did I get in the desert?"

Sijji paced about more a moment, trying to figure out her predicament. She had been walking in a forest... and then seen something shimmery and distorted in front of her. "..and now I'm here."

The monk pouted to herself. Now what the hell am I s'posed t' do? Deciding not wanting to be a Damsel-ish thing in distress, she began walking in the direction she seen a tumble weed come from.

I need t' find me some shade before I wilt...

[dazura]

The wind from the south suddenly picked up, bringing a sandstorm with it. As the sand drew close to to Sijji, the wind began doing strange things, shifting directions, trying to avoid blowing too hard on her, and dropping its sand into a large dune. The dune grew taller and longer by the minute, soon growing tall enough to provide a sliver of shade and long enough to curve around Sijji, ensuring her adequate shade there until the sun fell.

A voice seemed to come the wind:

"Hello, Sijji. You can wait here until nightfall, when you can continue in safety from the sun. If you travel south, you will come to an oasis. I will contact you again there."

[Rotzi]

The monk twitched an ear upon seeing the sand and was surprised to see it form a dune. What in all the hells...?
The voice reassured the halfling. "Uh.. thanks?" Sijji offered and adjusted herself comfortably in the sand.

As night fell (much too slowly for Sijji's comfort, tho), the monk was stretching her legs. Now.. th' voice said t' go South... She looked at where the sun had set and did a quick East, West, South configuration in her head. So I go this way!

The womanish monk began her trek to the oasis, humming random songs to herself, like a CD player on shuffle. Every now and then Sijji would have to empty her shoes of sand. "How much further...?" Her eyes scanned the desert, but she couldn't make out much. With a grunt she pulled her goggles over her eyes and looked again. Apparently this enhanced her night vision.

Laughing a bit to herself, she proceeded to the oasis just twenty yards away. "I'm here. Now what?"

[dazura]

The winds, however light they were at the time, carried a response. "There is a hut over on the other side of the pool. It is not terribly substantial shelter, but it will protect you from the sun. The water here is freshwater; I would hate to have seen you come this far only to die of thirst. Keep in mind that dawn is coming soon.

"As for why you came, it was because something is missing. You can become better if you gain knowledge of it, and learn to accept it, and come to take it into yourself. You have a purpose, which will come into your realization in due time. But for now, rest, reflect on what it is that is missing, and prepare yourself for tomorrow night, when your journey will begin."

[Rotzi]

The monk sighed again. ...why do I not seem t' like the sound of that? Her ears pwipped down. Well, so long as it's legal then there's nothing to worry about... unless a certain trouble maker comes along...

Sijji sat by the water, pondering what to do. Many questions were running through the shemale's mind at the time, but she didn't voice them.

After a while, she decided that she needed some rest. Falling out of the sky into the sand wasn't exactly the least stressful thing to happen, and the sun had taken its toll on her. Sijji splashed her face with some water, and then drank from the clear pool.

Time for rest... She thought, going into the shack. The first rays of the sun peaked over a dune, but nothing would bother her now that she was asleep.

Just before nightfall, Sijji stirred. After doing a quick routine she exited the shack, looking around once more with the aide of her goggles.
"Reportin' for duty!" She saluted with a chipper smile. Amazing what sleep can do for some people.

[dazura]

"I almost forgot. Your type needs food, if I remember correctly. A long time has passed since my last . . ." The windy voice hesitated. "Inhabitant."

The voice paused for a while, as a sandy vortex hopped around, pointing at the various plants taking advantage of the oasis. It finally stopped over a large, flat-leaved cactus. "He ate a lot of these. He would peel the leaves and eat out the insides. Be careful, though; the first couple of times he tried to peel them, he got some spines stuck in his hands and he was cursing all night long about them. He found a knife to be better than his bare hands at getting them open.

"He made his knife from a smooth, black rock that covers a wide area a few miles east of here. It chips easily, and it can be made to be very sharp. He used it once to bring down one of the camels that would visit this oasis.

"His cooker . . . I forget where it is; but you could probably find it around here somewhere. It was, as far as I could tell, a box made out of the black stone, that he would put his food in in the morning, and leave it out in the sun, and eat it in the evening. He jut liked it better that way, for some reason.

"I would certainly hate to see you die. Everybody else here has gotten old and died, and there was nothing I could do about it, but one of them told me about these long-lived people who all had pointy ears. You are one of these, right?"

[Rotzi]

"Well.... half elf, actually." Sijji looked at one of the cacti. Without warning she pulled out a dagger and sliced off one of the leaves. "Never had one of these before..."

After finishing the innards of the poor plant, the monk sat near the water. "But I don't cook.... I suck at it." She chuckled to herself. "It's hard t' find someone that can set water on fire... actually I don't think it was water... but that's beside the point."

The halfling eyed the area suspiciously. "What are you, any way? The way you move the sands, I'd think you're a sand spirit..."

[dazura]

"Sand spirit? Nobody has ever called me a spirit before, not that I can remember. I was unaware sand could even have a spirit.

"But, what am I. Who am I, perhaps. Forest calls me 'Desert'; the caravans of times past called me other things, narrow, unpleasant things like 'Sand Sea' and 'Parched Fields', names they spoke with fear, though they never seemed to stop coming through me until they stopped existing entirely. I never liked their names for me; they only ever captured what they saw, and disliked, in me. 'Desert' is a far better, far more complete name for what I am.

"The sand is only part of me, like your skin is part of you. There is nothing I can do directly to it; I have my winds move it when it needs to be moved. They act as my voice, too; they can sound a bit unnatural, but far better than I can do. The most I could do to make noise would be to make the pool gurgle, and that neither intelligibly nor frequently.

"But the winds are mindless. Uninteresting. When I don't need to be using them, they go do whatever it is winds do, and never bother to talk to me. It gets lonely when all the company I have is them."

[Rotzi]

"So.. you are the Desert. Interesting." Sijji walked over to the pool to drink. "I've met sand spirits in my travels, and you kinda reminded me of one."

The halfling sat down, watching the night sky. "I guess it has been lonely, ne? I know that wind spirits tend to just blow from place to place and not bother with getting to know anyone..."

[dazura]

"'Lonely' is somewhat of an understatement. 'Solitude' would be more like it. Can you imagine complete and utter solitude, nobody to even talk to at all, for years on end? I have heard people describe loneliness as being without 'love', whatever that is; without some 'special someone', even given so many somehow lesser people there who could provide contact. Whatever that sort of loneliness is, I have been through much worse. I hope you never have to go through that.

"The winds simply cannot suffice. Now that I think about it, they might not even always be the same spirits; I know them so poorly, and not for lack of trying. Whatever mind they might have, they inhabit some other world."

[Rotzi]

"Hmm..." Sijji stretched. "So I guess it's safe to hang around here for a while, ne?" She closed her eyes, enjoying the moonless night.

Another world, ne? Oh well... I'll understand it sometime...

[dazura]

"Yes. I have nothing that will try to eat you, at least, and you have enough here to last as long as you end up staying."

There was a silent pause before Desert continued, on a different subject. "What brings you into the desert, anyway?"

[Rotzi]

"...I was hoping you could tell me. I literally fell from the sky." The monk laid back, staring up at the sky.

"There was a rumor that there was some sort of rift in the forest I was in... but that was so long ago when it was last seen."

[dazura]

"Strange. Maybe the rift came back. What did the rumors say the rift was like? How long ago was it that it had last been seen?"

[Rotzi]

"..." Many things were running through her head. After a long time, she finally answered just abover a whisper, "It was last seen when my parents were murdered." She closed her eyes, blocking out what had happened.

"But I never heard what the rift was like... just from passerbyers that talked about strange things happening, like people disappearing."