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bakerstreet2016-02-29 10:45 pm
cornichaun) wrote in bakerstreet2016-02-29 10:45 pm
The Desert Caravan Meme
The sky is unimaginably large. Infinity as a pale, blinding blue, never a cloud. Your eyes always sting from the sand and from the bright, painful light.
This is the desert. It is the desert that lives in poetry: the shifting, formless sea of white and gold and red, in slow, sinking dune-waves. This is the desert of scorched cliffs and ancient stone; it is the desert of vast, eternal wind, bringing the bite of grit to bare skin. Sun’s heat untempered by mercy and parched land flickering with false hope of oasis.
This is the desert of legend: the desert that hides prophets tucked in endless emptiness, where djinnis whisper on the winds and magic wells from the sands themselves. This is the land that can trap you and drain you, of memory, of past, of weakness; the land that secrets treasure away in caves and holds salvation in hidden water. This is the land that bakes you and cures you, lets the soft clay of your soul shape into something new.
The desert is a place forever between, broken with paths, sliced and scarred for the sake of trade. But the desert is a place itself, too, home for the nomads, the caravanserai, the dotted strips of live eked out of the dry. Home to the snakes and the birds and the twisted, thorny scrub, the camels and the horses.
It will seduce you with the rapture of quiet, the beauty of an emptiness that is never truly empty. But it will deceive you, too: a mountain days away that seems close enough to touch; a camp close enough to hear, but hidden in a fold of the dunes. If you lose your way, you could die of thirst an arms length from salvation. Dunes shift; paths bend. If you do not know the desert, it will kill you.
Who are you?
A traveler, trusting in the grace of a guide to bring your caravan safe to the other side;
A guide, walking by stars and distant hills through the land you know by heart;
One belonging to a caravanserai, an enclave of the desert, by precious water, gleaning a living from the harsh land and the travelers passing through;
A bandit, preying on the slow, plodding merchants;
A nomad, with the desert in your blood, watching the intruders pass through;
A hermit, solitary and empty, grown accustomed to the silence;
Or a creature of magic: a djinni, a sorcerer, a witch, a prophet?
What has happened?
An ordinary, exhausting day of travel, your mouth dry as dust?
Have you lost your way, straying, along and baking in the sun —
A raid by bandits, to take money, goods — people?
War, over territory? Over water?
Strangers arriving in the caravanserai?
Happening upon a celebration, of life, water, harvest?
A rainstorm, for the first time in years? A sandstorm, deadly, and far more common?
Or something else?
A million years later...
Walks is an exaggeration. He staggers. The world is shimmering and distant, wobbling underneath his feet, the sun a palpable presence on his skin. He is already dying. His own fault; he should never have tried to get between the slaver and the girl, the one he had captured. They'd tossed him out onto the sand, bloodied, and left him behind. Tracks vanished within an hour, erased in the subtle flow of sand.
Leaving Sinjir to find his own way.
He doesn't know if he's been going in circles. If he's doubled back. At some level, it just doesn't matter; if he moves, he has a chance at life. If he doesn't, he dies here. He has to keep going. That's the only way.
And this is how a once-sorcerer, a mind-magic adept from a rigid and distant Empire, comes to his knees in front of water that he truly, honestly believes is illusion. He is sure that the cool he feels rippling across his skin from the wind is fever; he knows, he knows that this will turn into sand as soon as it touches his tongue. He drinks anyway. Lukewarm water, but it quenches a little fraction of his thirst, and he cups his hands, lifts them to his lips, drinks three, four handfuls before forcing himself away. Gasping, sobbing without tears (not enough moisture) at the miracle of his survival, or at the impending death that has made his mind break. Either way.
OH NO HOW DID I MISS THIS sorry darling
Still, he keeps his pity firmly lidded, held in place with an iron fist somewhere deep inside him. Pity can come later. Pity can be allowed once Dorian has decided how this whole affair is going to end - with one of them dead, or both of them.
Keeping his distance for now he pauses in the shade - stepping out in to the scorching mid-day heat isn't the best idea unless strictly necessary - and surveys the broken newcomer. Assessing him is difficult; beneath the sweat and the exhaustion and the sandy grime the man could be anyone, anything.
"By all means," He calls out after a moment, voice level and weary. Poor bastard.
"Do help yourself."
NO WORRIES also he's fainting now, sry dorian
Having delivered these six words, which can't nearly encompass the broad expanse of Sinjir's sardonic joy, Sinjir promptly passes out.
honestly some people have no stamina
Surveying the man's prone form he finally hefts his staff and walks the rim of the pool, bare feet sinking in to warm, damp sand as he splashes through the shallows towards the body. A prod with the edge of staff confirms, yes, his latest visitor is indeed as solidly passed out as he appeared to be.
"Oh, fine. Be like that then," he tuts, frowning over the man's body, if only to fill the ensuing silence with something that could almost be thought of as the last word.
***
Moving the newcomer's unconscious body in to the relative coolness of the tent had been no small thing but it had been born out of sympathy rather than any real need to keep the stranger safe or imprisoned. The scorching sand didn't make for a fun place to pass out (Dorian could personally attest as much) and at least within the tent there were ancient rugs and decadent silk pillows to rest more easily upon. They were the trappings of desert princes and travelling merchants, long dead victims of the oasis but remembered by what few possessions they had left behind. Comfy furnishings, if outdated and horribly creepy - something Dorian regularly tried to make himself forget.
Checking the man for injuries had felt like a ridiculous thing to do considering where they were and what was bound to happen, but Dorian did it nonetheless if only for the same reason he had moved the man inside - pity. Perhaps the little bit of healing magic he had woven in to the man's skin while he slept - soothing the redness of sunburn, balming over any angry red blisters - was hopelessly redundant. Healing had never been Dorian's forte - necromancers generally don't like their subjects too alive - and he had given the unconscious man an apologetic look as he tucked a pillow firmly beneath his head.
"You poor bastard," Dorian he had murmured to himself, before leaving the newcomer in the peace and quiet of his tent to sleep off the worst of his exhaustion.
no subject
He doesn't open his eyes, not on immediate awakening -- he's much too paranoid for that. And he keeps his breathing slow and even, while taking personal inventory.
All limbs intact. His entire skin surface doesn't feel abraded and throbbing, so it seems he wasn't sunburned. He's resting on something soft, that is not sand or mud. Everything smells vaguely of dust, and... sandalwood?
He listens carefully for movement.
no subject
Today there is a sandstorm on the horizon, a thumb print of orange cloud smeared across the blue sky that grows ever bigger and more ominous. Dorian can taste it in the wind, the grit and the energy, and there's a subtle crackling of static in the breeze that sends the magic in his nerve ends flaring in sympathy. He watches the storm swell and shift, running along the sand dunes to the north, and finds himself hoping it will turn their way. A little bit of destructive entertainment to brighten up the afternoon, something like that.
Dusty book in one hand, he remains at the tent mouth to watch the storm's progress in fleeting glances between pages. The visitor at his back, lying in the depths of the tent in his bed, is forgotten for now, assumed too mentally broken to awake for at least another day yet.
no subject
He tries to speak, coughs, and then has to roll his tongue around his mouth to moisten it. "To whom do I owe my salvation?" he asks, soft and just a hint sardonic, in case there's a hidden price (there's always a hidden price). He is grateful, of course, that he hasn't been executed for trespass. The law of the desert says that all oases are places of peace, shelter, free passage to water. That doesn't mean that the law is always followed.
no subject
But he doesn't want to be discouraging. Turning his back on the sandstorm brewing in the distance he closes his book over a finger, marking his place, and folds his arms primly.
"I wouldn't know. Do tell me when you find out," he replies lightly. Pointedly even, as if to say it's cute that you believe this is salvation.
Dorian tilts his head enquiringly. He remembers how disgustingly hoarse he'd felt when he's first been trapped.
"I daresay you could do with a drink, hm?"
no subject
"Oh, yes," says Sinjir. His eyes, calculating, never actually leave Dorian. "Who are you?"
A beat, as Sinjir's hands tighten. He makes the decision to just go ahead and ask: what's the catch? There's always a catch, when an oasis arises out of the desert, literally or figuratively. When life is rescued from the jaws of death. There's debts owed, if not in an economic sense then in the sort of deep blood magic that Sinjir has barely touched. Magic runs deep; it's life, and it's death. There are spells and bindings out there that make Sinjir's power look like a trickle of water next to a raging river.
The desert brims with that kind of power. Where a jungle is a hotbed of life, a desert is a hotbed of magic. It wells from the ground, whips in the dust.
Sinjir can feel it heavy in the air, here.
"Storm's coming," he notes, and whatever drink he gets first, water or alcohol, goes straight down his throat.
no subject
The poor fellow at least deserves a stiff drink.
"Dorian, of house Pavus," he introduces himself formally as he pours, timing the end flourish of the terracotta bottle with a half-mocking bow. "Custodian of these waters, although not by choice..."
A second glass is poured - Dorian is certain he'll need it before the day is through. Might as well start the misery bender pre-emptively.
"Do you know much about sandstorms, ser...?" He tails off expectantly, lifting his eyebrows as he sips at his own glass.