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Castles in the Sand: Chapter One

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Duvir couldn't wait to crest the first hill. His older brothers had gathered everything they could afford to burn and raised a massive bonfire inside their camp, and the darting firelight tore at his eyes no matter where he looked. The pale whites and yellows of the sand beneath and all around him caught the light and bounced it back at him from all directions. That would have been fine if the sky wasn't so dark, if the pillar of smoke wasn't obscuring the moon and stars overhead. His eyes and his body insisted it was night, but if the light wasn't so ruddy it could have passed for daylight, and the contrast was giving the young kit fox a headache. The noise from earlier and the daytime fire had interrupted his nap, too, and that wasn't helping.

The loose sand shifted beneath his hindpaws, but he'd helped move the camp twice already and climbed the first ring of hills and dunes every few days at least. Most nights he wasn't carrying a palm-fiber sack of berries and herbs for offering, but even after some other clan of nomads had come up and argued with his parents his nervous energy was nothing more than the usual. The terrain was barely slowing him down; one hand was all he needed to keep himself steady. Besides, the rock was close beneath the sand here, even if most of it was smooth and the rest was soft crumbling clay. It wasn't hard for someone used to the terrain to get around.

At least the fire wasn't warming the sand the way the sun could, because climbing in the middle of the day inevitably left him with scorched and blistered skin. And those burns couldn't sweat, which left him and his siblings miserable. It certainly kept them close to the camp, at least, where their elders could be sure nobody had wandered off and gotten themselves eaten by raiders and scavengers.

The throbbing in Duvir's head immediately started to recede as he finally put the top of the rise between himself and the bonfire. The thick red glow with its skittering yellow highlights was completely out of view already, replaced by cool blue starlight. The kit flopped down on his haunches and drank in the desert landscape for a moment. It was a beautiful home, no matter how painful it could get during the day. He'd seen this view, or one from some other side of the camp, every few days for nearly four months now, but it never got old. The shadows against the scattered brown and white rock formations sat resolute in their crevices, giving far greater definition to the rest of the stone. Even as he blinked back firelight he could make out veins of clay, rough crags, tiny little warrens through the body of rock. The sand was the opposite, windblown patterns in the dunes and over the hills shimmering as he tried to pick out which were real and which were tricks. Lone pinyons and agave fruits twisted up out of the sand, skeletal figures dotted around seemingly at random.

Looking at the trees made Duvir think of chia meal soup and roast agave flatcake, and from there his mind wandered to everything he'd learned to do with date fruit. The sweet nuts and fruits that grew around the camp's oasis were more than enough to keep everyone fed when his older brothers couldn't fetch down a bird. And now his parents had given him the responsibility of taking a bag of them out to a nearby shrine. It wasn't their shrine, of course, he wouldn't have had to leave the camp for that. But creatures as powerful and impossibly successful as the clan of badgers he was supposed to be hiking towards had to have an even more powerful and successful guardian god, and hopefully he or she would be willing to listen to a worried young fox over a nice meal of dates and chia flour.

He had to get there to find out, though, which meant he'd have to admire the sandscape as he ran. It had been a while since sundown, and all the palm fronds he could have used as footwraps had gone on the bonfire. It wouldn't be any fun at all trying to hike around on scalded pads. Maybe he'd dig himself a burrow or something if it took too long...no, no, the badger god wasn't going to have much patience for him in the first place, and if he got sand in the offering it would probably just refuse to listen at all. Best if he just ran.

And run he did, at least for a little while. But sprinting with one arm over his shoulder and the other bracing it turned out to be impractical, especially in loose sand, and he'd barely reached the top of the next little rise when he set the offering down and flopped over on his back to pant. "Too much," he gasped, "time spent eating dates." His chest worked madly and he clutched at his ribs as his side started to ache. "Not enough," finally his breath was settling down, "harvesting them."

As he lay there, heart and lungs calming down at last, it occurred to him just how exposed he was. He couldn't run for long, morning would completely immobilize him unless he wanted to roast his paw-pads like agave pears, and he was all alone out here under the stars. His parents really must have been desperate to send everyone from his litter and the next oldest out to completely different shrines instead of all in one big group. Whatever that argument had been earlier in the day, it had left them frightened of something, and if his mother ever found out he'd thought that about her she'd skin him and wear the coat.

Still, it was true. His family only went out to other shrines just before harvesting the little pinyon grove a distance from the camp. They didn't need other gods to help with day-to-day life, didn't need to feed anyone's ancestors but their own. It had to be something completely unprecedented to make them scramble like this, and Duvir doubted it was something as tasty as an early harvest season. Still, the little fox wasn't entirely sure why they didn't make journeys like these a little more often. After all, what could it hurt to ask a few extra gods for help or take some of their surplus and make sure an unfortunate neighbor's ancestors didn't go hungry in the next world? Ah well, there had to be something he hadn't been told. His family was too clever for anything else – how else could they have held onto three different oases until they dried up?

Duvir finally rocked back up on his hindpaws, then immediately stooped again to grab the offering. He exuberantly dusted off the sack with the less sandy side of his tail. And from there he started off down the next slope, a little more sedately this time. The desert stretched out ahead of him, dark but never lightless, wind-waves on the dunes flickering and darting in the distance while the stones gradually grew into giant ruddy spires against the horizon. Vulnerable he may have been, but the kit fox pup was content regardless as he trotted on through the sand.

***

Every great journey had to stop eventually, and dawn was only starting to threaten when Duvir finally collapsed. He held the offering sack to his chest as he rolled over onto his back, then let it go and slapped the sand with both hands. He hadn't stayed up so late since the feast after the last pinyon harvest, and that hadn't been nearly as strenuous. He could climb scrub trees for days on end, but he had to face that he wasn't designed for crossing long distances quickly. After such a tiring night even digging a burrow might have been too much. He felt his stomach slosh around. The offering pouch was looking remarkably tempting – not even whatever sweets were wrapped up in it, just the green palm leaves on their own.

"No, that's for the badgers' spirit. It's not yours. Your parents said to hurry and get straight there." But he still couldn't see any tents, or the clustered trees and slick stone that would go with another oasis, and the sand was turning a soft milkweed-pink around him already. Even if he had the energy to press on, he'd only have a little while longer before he started to blister, and that would end his journey very quickly. No, he needed shelter, and if he was going to have to make it for himself he needed something to eat first.

He pulled himself back up for probably the twentieth or thirtieth time that night. While he scanned the area for fruit, his big palm-frond ears cast about in all directions, hoping some unlucky lizard or small sand-bird would give itself away. Nothing seemed to be moving, just the usual skittering sand from distant breezes, but there was at least a little cluster of yucca plants atop a flattened red rock. All he had to do was drag his sorry carcass halfway up one more dune and he could eat without worrying about anyone's wrath. For that matter, with a little digging the rock might give him some decent shade during the worst heat of the day, and he could keep traveling once the sun went past. He had a plan.

The promise of food was a powerful motivator. Duvir didn't even need to crawl, and given how gritty the sand had gotten he wasn't going to complain. He'd climbed steeper slopes back at the camp anyway, and the coarse grains underfoot around here were actually holding together quite nicely as he stepped across them. Now if only they would stop bruising his poor abused paw-pads.

It was a little early for the yucca fruits to be properly ripe, but the kit wasn't particularly worried. The casing would be softer, if almost impossible to chew through, and each fruit would be a little bit wetter for it. He scrabbled at the base of the plant for one of the thick yellow berries, letting the layer of sand mixed in with his fur turn away the worst of the fronds on the big sharp leaves. It took a little tugging, but the fruit came free, and Duvir immediately brought it to his mouth and bit in. The skin was just as irritatingly thick as usual, but he'd dealt with that on long hikes before. He could keep chewing at it as long as he had to, and eventually he'd get the juices flowing.

That just left shelter. Yucca roots were long enough that he didn't have to worry about digging into a layer of mud, but the water might be close enough to the surface for him to stay cool without worrying about drowning. Gritty sand like this would be fairly good for making a temporary den, at least, although he'd much rather have a woven palm tent than a hole in the ground. Focus, will you? You can get back to your tent once you've visited the badger shrine. And in order to last that long, he needed somewhere safe to sleep, and – All right, get to work. He left the offering pouch on the rock overhead and rubbed his paws together apprehensively. This was going to work, certainly, but he'd be rubbed raw by the end of it. Why'd they have to burn all the wrappings?

Despite his misgivings, the gravelly sand soon fanned out behind him, scraping out fresh channels in the grit as it trickled down. Duvir's vestigial claws scratched against a much firmer layer of earth very quickly, making him wince as his fingers bent backwards under the unexpected resistance. At least the yucca fruit in his mouth stopped him from yipping like a fool – in fact, he bit into it sharply enough to draw out some nectar. And, of course, a mouthful of tiny dry seeds, but those were at least a little tastier than the grit he was spraying around. Rejuvenated by the lukewarm fluid trickling into his dusty throat, the pup dug into the thicker, sturdier soil, tossing the scraps far behind him. The sun was going to cross over the crest of the dune anyway, so there was no real need to close his little den in behind him.

Something other than clattering gravel and grinding sand sounded behind him, but Duvir was too focused, too closed off in his hole, to really pay it any mind. A few moments later he felt things change behind him, but he couldn't pin down exactly what was so different. And as the soil parted in front of him and he suddenly fell deeper in, whatever it was disappeared. Of course, that change was itself noticeable, and he paused his work for a moment to work it out. His hindpaws felt a little cooler for some reason – had the dirt been bouncing off of a crag and back against his pads? That would account for the odd feeling, certainly. He squirmed around to face back out of the den. No crag. He'd probably just snapped it off in that last burst. The yucca fruit was turning pleasantly mushy in his mouth, and he curled up with his chin on his wrists and closed his eyes. This would do, yes. This would do.

Duvir's eyes snapped open and started watering as a long paw looped around his ears and yanked him back out into the early morning sun. He yipped with pain, spreading the pasty yucca across the roof of his mouth. Then his vision flashed white as something rapped hard against his skull. He tried to blink back the haze but the second blow undid his efforts. All he could do was whimper deep in his throat, until the third strike landed squarely between his ears and hammered his throat against the gravel.

Whoever was holding him was muttering something, but the kit's ears were singing too loudly for him to hear any of it. He couldn't catch his breath, couldn't open his eyes, but he could feel the panic surging through him anyway. His whole body tensed, trying to fight back without even knowing what was happening, and the hand released his ears. Duvir tried to recoil, find some room to recover, to run, but then the grip was back against the side of his head. Something cold wormed through his fur to his battered face.

Then all the sensations went dead as his attacker slammed the side of his his head against the lip of his den.

***

Duvir was surprised to wake up. He was also disappointed – his face was soaked and sticky, his jaw and muzzle burning like his family's bonfire. He left his eyes shut, trying to endure the pain, but he didn't put up much of a fight. As soon as his throat and lungs stopped seizing, he let out a keening moan. The pitch dropped sharply as he stretched his damaged mouth past where it was willing to go; the smooth tone turned gravelly and harsh. It tore at his throat and his jaw, but he couldn't stop either, not until he ran completely out of breath again and started sobbing for air.

His body strained against something he'd never felt before. It was bristly, but still softer than a yucca frond. He moved his hand out experimentally and rubbed the thick cord. It might have been woven, but if it was it was from something much thicker and drier than any palm frond he'd ever braided. Every so often he could feel a full net of the heavy cord pressing against him, then his heartbeat sent fresh pain surging through his head. The rest of his body was warm, but he couldn't feel any burns, which meant he was probably out of the sand somehow. Or the more immediate pain could just have outweighed anything else, like when he would scratch himself to make a cut or bruise less sore.

A voice from above him filtered through the pain, and this time Duvir was conscious enough to actually listen to it. Whoever it was seemed like they were trying desperately to speak his language, but while half the sounds were simple words the other half were nonsense and everything was out of order. He shook his head, hissing as the movement brought fresh pain. The speaker paused, probably waiting for him to reply, then gave up and started walking again. Duvir could feel the jolting and scrabbling of feet on sand, but it wasn't quite harsh enough to make the pain any worse. And at least he knew he was in some sort of sack over this person's shoulder, just like the offering he'd failed to deliver.

He shuddered again, for entirely different reasons this time. He'd lost the offering. And it was his fault, no doubt about that. He'd done something wrong, displeased his family's guardians with his behavior. How else would these people have known exactly where to attack him in the middle of so much desert, half a night's run away from the camp? What was it he'd done wrong – traveling alone, eating the yucca, digging a den when he should have kept going? Maybe it was something as small as not wearing the usual palm footwraps. He had to tell his family so they could decide what was so wrong and learn to never do it again.

He started to squirm against the network of cords, pressing his back against his captor and pulling at the heavy fibers with all four limbs. He even tried to lunge forward and bite through the cord, but the person carrying him reached over their back casually and grabbed under his arm. He flailed a little longer, but he felt himself tiring quickly. His captor flipped him back around and dragged him up a little, letting Duvir's arms and muzzle dangle down their chest. Another odd texture batted at his chin gently, something damp and slick but still completely different than palm fronds. It was soft, flatter than fur but too dry and coarse to be the leaves he knew. Whatever it was, he liked it, and he let himself relax after all.

He couldn't get to sleep though, the thoughts started flashing through too quickly for that. He was bundled up just like the fruits and meal he'd been carrying to the badgers' shrine, and his attacker was being careful not to get him any sandier than he already was. It's fitting, I suppose. I lose my offering and end up as someone else's because of it. He didn't have the energy or the room to struggle against it anymore, and he couldn't even panic properly with his body doubled tightly over his captor's shoulder. Hopefully he'd have a chance to run for it when they set him down. But even then, he had no idea where he was. Unless he found some friendlier family on the way, he'd never know where to start looking for his own camp. He started keening again, keeping his jaw shut this time.

To his surprise, his captor stopped walking. They placed a soft hand on his back and rubbed gently, and he reflexively arched into it. His right ear flicked with pleasure, and the high whine quickly faded into something closer to a purr. No, I won't be corrupted that easily! he protested to himself, but it just felt so nice after everything else that had happened. His captor started speaking again, and Duvir did his best to listen this time.

It sounded like the same thing as earlier, but he hadn't heard it well enough to tell. Still, it was an impenetrable mess of familiar words and nonsense sounds. And then the pup kicked his heel for not catching onto it earlier. His parents had taught them all a trade language once, a gruel mashed together from every major tribe's words and meanings. But how was he supposed to remember that while he was dangling from someone's back with a swollen face?

"You walk?" Well, that answered that question. The phrase had come out like coughing up gravel, and it was still as battered as Duvir's jaw, but the words and pitch made it fairly clear what his captor was asking.

The fox pup gently swung his back half to tap his captor with his hindpaws. "Yes, I can," he ground out, holding his jaw as still as possible. Even if turned out to be a lie, he wanted to get these cords off his back and have room to breathe on his own terms again.

"You..." "You" something. Duvir didn't recognize the other words in the phrase, but it was a statement this time. And judging from the firm pat his captor gave him and the soft pointed ear that brushed against his neck, it was amused more than anything else. At least, he'd have cocked his head that way at a fun comment.

His captor crouched suddenly, and the kit fox found himself sprawled across curiously cool ground. It was tepid at worst, and he could feel the water puddling just beneath a dry and cracked surface. In fact, the cords splintered that dry crust, and flakes of it crumbled against his back and haunches. For the first time since being ambushed Duvir opened his eyes, going slowly to ward off the glare.

That proved to be a wise decision, since the pale gray skies mirrored the sunlight straight onto him. Still, the entire idea of gray skies was fascinating enough to make him sit up fully and blink back the light and the pain. The ground was the same shade of gray, maybe a little darker, and for all the cracks and crevices dropping through it it was impossible to tell where it reached the horizon and became sky. It all blended into a smooth wall that went on forever, and the kit's head spun as he tried to wrap his mind around it.

He was so caught up in the bizarre sight that he barely noticed the cables falling away. He dragged himself away from the captivating horizon to look up at his captor. There were five of them, in fact, each maybe half again his size at most, except for the thick plush tails as long as their bodies. The black and tan rings along those tails were almost invisible against the cracked soil. Much stranger were their coats – Duvir could see fur on their muzzles and hands, but everything else was covered in some sort of flowing full-body wrap that most definitely was not palm fiber. The one who'd been carrying him rose, hooking her arm under his and hoisting him up next to her. One last heavy brown cord kept them lashed together, but the fox was too curious now to bother running away. If he wasn't being bagged up as an offering or a meal, then why had these people taken him at all?

His pads spread across the ground, squishing into it as he finally put his full weight on his hindpaws again. How was there water this close to the surface? If this was some sort of giant oasis, then, where were the plants? He opened his mouth to start rattling off questions, but stopped himself as he remembered that they probably wouldn't be able to understand them. The last thing he wanted to do was get himself cast off in this bizarre place.

"Near home," said the woman who'd carried him. Duvir squinted at her. No, no, I'd recognize something like this. He'd barely finished the thought when the actual meaning started to make sense. Of course. Her home, not mine. The kit started tugging on the cord, pushing forward, and the people around him joined in a high chittering sound he was certain was a laugh. He bristled a little, but he could put up with it if it meant he was going to get to see where these odd creatures lived.

He squished his way through the mud alongside his captors, curiosity overpowering all else, The oddly abrasive crust could hardly deter him, although the slippery clay beneath it sent him over on his tail more than once. Finally, though, it all gave way to more familiar open red rock and dull sand, sweeping up and away from the soft flatlands, and something rumbled like fire beyond it.

Duvir couldn't wait to crest the next hill, but something held him back. He tugged on the cord to wait a moment and turned around. The horizon was swallowed up in all directions, the gray silty soil stretching out to catch the sky as far as he could see. He gasped in amazement at the very, very distant hills he thought he could see past the shimmering mirage water that covered the farthest stretches of mud and silt. He couldn't make them out clearly, but it seemed like the hills were themselves floating, their ends curling up and their bases surrounded by glistening white. The hand that hoisted him back on his paws was almost merciful – he had no idea how long he'd have spend trying to understand the impossible landscape without someone to usher him along.

The strange rumbling grew louder as soon as they came over the crest of the hill, but Duvir was more amazed by what he saw than what he heard. Rock and sand sloped rapidly down to brown, silty soil completely overgrown by trees and bushes of all sorts. There were palms, there were willows, there were things he'd never seen or heard of before, and all of them bore rich green and blue leaves. Many were in flower, such a brilliant glow of blues and purples he nearly missed what lay beyond them.

Duvir raised a hand limply, pointing past a grid of impossibly regular white stone formations punctuated by square brown and black holes. "Water," he croaked, taking in the huge course of brown and green and white that wound between the trees. The woman who'd carried him cocked her head again, a perfect mirror of his brothers' smiles. She guided his wrist down a little, straight towards the boxy rocks this time.

"Home."

4402 words, 11 pages.  Not bad for an introduction!

I do not intend to upload all of this as I develop it, just the first few chapters.  I need to figure out how well I'm conveying the world to readers and how awkwardly it all comes across.  I'd very much like to publish this thing eventually, though, hence the restrictions.

Any feedback is welcome, though please try to keep it germane to the writing itself.  Yes, it's furry/anthro - I'll have more samples of exactly who's around and how big they are relative to one another next chapter.  As for the religious discussion, the less argument I hear, the better.  The structures and conceits are based on ancient Mesopotamian culture in particular.  Hopefully it'll all stand on its own anyway, but I felt like I had to get that out there.

In any case, this isn't the only project I'm working on in this world.  I've got two other ideas I'm trying to sort out, plus several others that I could probably adapt if the setting really takes root for me.  If nothing else, this got me to actually decide on names and species at long last, and we'll see where everything ends up.

...Of course, now I need to name my *supporting* cast...

For the curious, the terrain is based closely on the deserts of the American Southwest, particularly the Mojave.  The big grey expanse in particular is based on the Bonneville Salt Flats on the Nevada-Utah border.  Researching the region has really helped me focus and stop dithering about what my characters are going to look like, since I can just look at a wildlife guide and call it a day.
© 2014 - 2024 Phaenur
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