[ What Do You Have To Say? | Ni'Srilan: The Desert ]
Posted by Inigo on February 8, 2009, 6:54 pm, in reply to "thread"
216.165.13.168
But you can’t do that in the desert.
A horse with a practiced piaffe is the horse that sinks, the weight of heavy measured footfalls will leave a horse hock deep in the sand before they can realize what has happened. The desert can be a trap. There are scorpions and snakes under foot, and some of them are neither insect nor reptile.
That’s why Inigo ran as he did, strung out, skidding across the sand, floating through his beloved dunes on disjointed gaits that spread out his footfalls and spread out his weight. He was ever so light as he went, barely there, his silhouette disappeared into the sun as it passed. He seemed to be followed by a trail of airborne sand because he charmed it as piper, not because he touched the ground. There was some music to it, he left no telling sound of a horse passing, his pace sounded more like sand scattered across the top of a taut drumhead. The wind whipped through his mane and made its own cries, lifting it in an arc that mimicked the wind caught sand that lifted in his trail, that mimicked the rolling edge of the dune, that mimicked the curve of the horizon, and he disappeared into it. The sand covered his sweaty body as he banked a turn, coughing, breathing. The scorching air billowed in his wasted lungs, leaching sense from his mind. He curled his head towards his chest, closing his eyes. His flank was foaming and heaving.
A thin line of sweat that rolled down his shoulder dropped between his hooves and was sucked up by the sand. He lowered his head to look at it, but the breath from his dilated nostrils blew the sand away. Huyana. He should have known. The shard would protect itself, it would gift its most dedicated disciples with the ability to ferret out those that were less loyal. He turned his head toward the dunes, they were crawling with enemies. His mane was plastered to his neck with sand plastered over that. The desert had eaten the white elegance off his hide, and now rumbled with its satisfaction. The dunes were moving again, and so should he, even if his legs protested. His dry mouth spoke for itself.
Water.
He looked to the sky, his forelock shading his eyes as he regarded the straight path of a vulture. With dragging hooves he followed it, even the dead wouldn’t be too far from an oasis and the vulture knew that as well as Inigo did. In a little while they hit scrubland and familiar landmarks emerged. Inigo’s instincts had been right, two miles south of the mountainous ridge that he now saw rising above the horizon he knew there was a stream that tricked through a mud flat. He shuddered a little, how nice it would be roll in that! He picked up the pace, but then the vulture swerved. Inigo stopped and swished his tail, the river wasn’t far but Inigo was subject to pangs of curiosity. He ground his teeth and rocked his weight back and forth. With childish impracticality, he followed the vulture. That’s when he came upon the feathered piebald sweltering in the desert heat, and said without any awareness of the irony of the statement, “Jeez, you look like hell.”
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