The Agudner - Preview
The whistling of the sand raking across the fallow sea of land pervaded his mind, adulterated his tongue with the dry, metallic taste of its erosion, and turned the visibility into a goldenrod mist of blindness. The wind blew incessantly, sending sheets of the golden-brown sand across the deserted plains in sheets and plumes of obscurity, removing any sense of bearing from sight. There was no sense in moving - the winds were strong enough to knock a grown sergal over from sheer force, and the sand felt like it would do nothing short of tearing the flesh off of one's bones. Hidden in the recesses of one of many sandstone formations that dotted the sea of sand, there was a sort of respite from the cruelty of the earth, but still the sand was scattered in the air, obscuring and eliminating the visibility at the very superficial level, and obscuring and eliminating the ability to simply breathe in the open. Four silhouetted figures were hunkered down in this natural harbor of sorts, intending to wait out the storm, having been caught up in the unrelenting invasion of sand. All of their faces and bodies were obscured by cloth, making it nearly all but impossible to decipher their identities or even where they had come from. They were unarmored, making for better mobility, but also giving the impression that these individuals, while heavily armed, were not a part of any official military force. Whether they were raiders, adventurers, or soldiers of fortune hardly mattered at the moment. Weathering the storm was the only priority, a subconscious and conscious drive to stay alive and hide until the force of nature that could and _did_kill abated or moved elsewhere. There was silence among the huddled individuals as the wind howled and the sand roared around them, save for the occasional weak, choking cough that always came with sand in the air, regardless of whether one's mouth was covered or not. The sand seeped in everywhere. The four people sat miserably, wishing and willing away the storm so that they could continue undisturbed.
In the meantime, the four were left to their private thoughts. Naturally, in a time like this, one's mind wanders to more pleasant circumstances. This was no exception to the four travelers. One of them in particular, shorter than the rest and only identified as an agudner by the short, yet curved horns protruding from his head and the hooves at the end of his legs, closed his eyes miserably and thought of the one thing he could not bear to think. He thought of home. Not his lodgings in the east, which had certainly become a home of sorts with him, complete with a small set of friends who seemed not to question his travels - but his home. The home that was his innocence, his childhood, and his family - and it was the only thing he could not bear to conjure up in the space of his mind's eye. He could still see the sharp, yet darkened and dulled green of evergreens, a plant considered only myth in almost every corner of this accursed world of desert and fallowness. He could still hear the calling of the various birds, the flashing beauty of the milky luminescent butterflies that seemed to flash with a blue light then they flapped their thin, transparent wings and caught the sunlight. He could still see the snows of the winter, the rains and sunshine of the summer, and the colors of the deciduous autumns, and the brook that he often followed from the back of his home up the mountain, broken by waterfalls short and tall.
He remembered his mother. She was a kind, loving, and devoted mother, there to praise and rebuke evenly, to comfort him from the small terrors that plagued his small mind at night, to help him back onto his feet and bandage him when he fell and hurt himself, and to ensure that no one in her house went without food, warmth, and love. And yet it was a mistake to remember her. It was always a mistake to remember the dead. While the agudner would never know if she actually was dead or was still alive, living a life of broken servitude to the monster who had violated her so wholly, she was torn from his life as violently and quickly as if death himself had come for her to defile her sanctity.
The agudner knew this, and tried to stop the racking sob in his chest; and yet it came of its own accord, ignoring all efforts to quell it. Small tears welled up and then fell from his closed eyes, dampening the fur on his cheeks, as one of the other, taller people, whose facial shape indicated they were a sergal, carefully cradled the agudner's head in their lap, quietly giving words of consolation that were torn from the others' ears by the wind, as they were only for the agudner to hear.