IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIVE *thunder and lightning*
Yes, CST is back in action! I have several excuses for the delay: I had trouble writing this chapter for who-knows-what-reason, my beta disappeared on me and I spent way too long waiting to hear back from her before asking someone else to take over for this chapter, I was busy, etc. But now we're back!
CAUSE SOME TROUBLE
Chapter 3-- A Journey Begins
Things happen in this chapter, yes indeed.
The sun was setting above the far-distant sand dunes in the west. Its fading rays silhouetted the two Sandbenders standing atop the glider’s navigation platform. They held their hands stiffly at their sides as they cast shrewd, wary gazes over their land. The smaller, more slender figure swept an arm out in a graceful arc to point at something off in the distance, head inclining slightly, the taller and broad-shouldered one nodding in agreement to whatever words passed between them. The reddish orange glow that surrounded them brought unpleasant images of the night’s battle to the forefront of Kuei’s mind as he and Bosco approached the glider. The two shifted to face him, their dark eyes shining through the gaps in their head coverings.
Zafirah hopped down from the platform, landing easily on the soft sand, and strode over to him. He spied a dagger from the shop strapped to her lower leg, the brass decorations on its sheath glinting in the light. Clucking her tongue at his haphazardly wrapped head coverings, she reached up and started tugging the offending cloth into a more suitable arrangement. Kuei lowered his head and did his best to stand patiently while she worked. He wondered if most Sandbenders were prone to such casual invasions of personal space, or if it was a habit unique to this particular one. He didn’t necessarily find it unpleasant-it was just odd. No one in Ba Sing Se would dare touch the Earth King without permission. He thought back to the Avatar’s group and the way they would embrace in comfort or solidarity, or place reassuring hands on one another’s shoulders; he recalled Toph’s arm punches (and the ensuing bruises), and the way the Water Tribesmen would clasp each other’s forearms in greeting. Clearly, this was something Kuei would just have to accustom himself to.
“We’re setting a course for Si Wong Rock,” Zafirah explained as she rearranged the fabric. “That’s where the tribes meet whenever there’s trouble like this. Chances are, some folks from the open-desert tribes have seen the smoke and they’re already on their way. If not, we’ll have a clear view for miles around from the top of the rock. We might spot one of the tribes from up there, sail out to meet ‘em. Might take a couple days, though.”
“It sounds as though these other tribes prefer not to be found too easily,” he commented.
“Yep; they don’t stay in one place too long. Or can’t, really, even if they wanted to-they gotta go where the food and water is. We’d be the same way without the iceberg here. You catch on fast,” she commented, the corners of her eyes crinkling as she smiled behind her head coverings. She stepped back and lifted her right hand in a thumbs-up. Kuei hesitantly returned the unfamiliar gesture, trying to ignore the claustrophobic feel of the cloth surrounding his head. A fresh coating of salve over his black eye kept it from stinging where the fabric brushed against the edges of the bruise.
Basam whistled from his place on the platform and Zafirah turned, catching the spyglass that he tossed to her. She handed it to Kuei with a dramatic flair that brought a small smile to his face despite his glum mood. Bosco nudged his nose against the woman’s hand, feeling left out. Zafirah sighed resignedly and gingerly patted the bear’s furry head.
“C’mon, you two,” Basam called from the glider. “We got us a desert to cross.” Kuei followed Zafirah to the glider, where she set both hands upon the lower platform to the left of the navigator’s post and hoisted herself up and onto it in one smooth movement. Basam leaped down with a solid thud to join them on the platform and stretched a hand down to Kuei, who decided that now was not the time for prideful attempts at proving himself and wordlessly took the other man’s offered assistance.
“Now the real question is, where do we put Furball there?” Zafirah mused, narrowing her eyes at Bosco.
“He oughta go up on the navigator’s post. The glider’ll be off-balance any other way,” Basam pointed out.
“I was afraid you’d say that,” she muttered. Getting Bosco up to the platform turned out to be quite a feat, but eventually both Kuei and his pet were at their assigned post. Basam took up his place on a third platform to the right of Kuei’s post, and they were as ready to leave as they’d ever be. The Sandbenders took firmly rooted stances, feet planted apart and knees bent, and lifted their arms with their fingers outstretched. Moving as one, the siblings swept their arms back and thrust them forward, once, twice, three times. A gust of sand whirled up behind the sail hanging slack between the double hulls, growing and pulsing. The yellow cloth billowed and snapped outward when the swirling sand became a tornado, pulling its lines taut, and the glider sprang to life. Kuei gasped and nearly lost his balance as the little wooden vessel jumped forward. He couldn’t help but feel a thrill of anticipation as he glanced back at the oasis, already shrinking in their wake-there he was, setting out for destinations unknown across the dunes of the perilous Si Wong Desert! If only their voyage hadn’t started under such tragic circumstances, it would have been the adventure he’d always dreamed of.
****************
Zafirah fell into a steady rhythm as the dunes rolled past: arms casting forward, swinging back, over and over again. The rhythm was soothingly familiar in the madness of the past night. Their glider felt sluggish under the added bulk of Kuei’s Spirits-be-damned pet. A lion turtle’d weigh less, she thought peevishly. The owner of said slobbery hair-beast perched above her with his sights aimed at the horizon, keeping a weather eye out for any sign that the Fire-freaks might come back for a second round.
Cast forward, swing back, cast forward.
The sand around them went from burned gold to pale grey as the sun’s last light died and the first stars shone out above their heads.
Cast forward, swing back, cast forward.
The sky darkened into blue-black, save for the silver light of a crescent moon squinting down at them. Kuei checked the compass bound to the front of his post and called out a new course heading, just like they’d told him to. The man was a fast learner.
Cast forward, swing back, and call a halt. She wasn’t tired yet and she knew Basam wasn’t either, but they needed food and water, tired or not. Wouldn’t do to push themselves too far. The three people and the bear ate and drank in silence and moved on quickly.
****************
The first leg of the trip went smoothly enough. The trio sailed through the night until the faint light of dawn began to brighten the eastern sky. The Sandbenders lowered their arms, sinking the sand-tornado back into the earth, and the glider coasted to a stop. With the glider turned westward to face away from the oncoming brutality of the day’s heat, the three of them lashed down the corners of the sail, stretching it tight between the hulls and the navigator’s post so that it became a shelter against the sun. They retrieved some food and necessities from their supplies, coaxed Bosco down from the glider platform (an even more trying task than getting him up there to begin with) and retreated to the shade of their makeshift tent. The trio sat in a huddled circle, while Bosco curled up behind his master, and tucked into their rations.
“So what’s it like living in Ba Sing Se?” Basam asked suddenly, helping himself to a second portion of the dried fruit and pig-chicken jerky that comprised their dinner. Kuei paused with a strip of dried meat halfway to his mouth and glanced at the Sandbender.
“Yeah,” Zafirah chimed in. “What’d you do there, what kinda folks did you know?” The two looked at him with nothing but open, friendly curiosity in their eyes. Don’t be paranoid, he scolded himself.
“I was a student,” he began slowly, “I had just graduated from the University of Ba Sing Se when the coup happened.”
“Student, huh? Did you ever take any classes with, uh, now what was his name…” She drummed her fingers against her knee. “Zei! There we go. Professor Zei, ‘head of Anthropology and expert on exotic cultures’.” She rolled her eyes.
“Ah, no, that… that wasn’t my department,” Kuei said quickly. “You didn’t get along well with him, I assume?”
“What I didn’t get along with was the notion of bein’ an ‘exotic culture’,” she replied with an annoyed snort.
“He did have a habit of talkin’ at us Sandbenders like we were all slow in the head,” Basam admitted, tapping one forefinger against his temple. “He’d turn up now and then, rambling at anybody who’d listen about some Spirit Library-“
“-And he’d wander off into the open desert on the hunt for the damned thing, and we tried tellin’ him that he was goin’ about it all wrong-“ Zafirah cut in.
“-But he brushed us off every time, like he knew our desert better than us-“ Basam continued, gesturing animatedly as he picked up the cadence of a well-practiced storyteller.
“He was the ‘expert’ after all, hah!”
“He’d drag his sorry behind back to the oasis a few days later, half-dead from thirst and the heat-no luck on the library, of course. Sometimes he’d drink too much sake when he came back, and then he’d get going on a rant about ‘those nearsighted, narrow-minded ignoramuses who dare call themselves scholars’ back at the University…”
Kuei couldn’t help but smile as the rapid-fire conversation danced from one topic to another-from the misadventures of the professor, to all the various dishes of Ba Sing Se cuisine that would’ve been preferable to pig-chicken jerky, to swapping myths, legends, jokes and riddles (at which point Kuei discovered that he was rather bad at telling the former but excellent at answering the latter). When the three finally settled down to get some rest, Kuei fell asleep with a lightness of spirit that would have seemed impossible the night before.
****************
The winds had picked up while the three slept, sweeping across the dunes from the southwest. Zafirah peered out into the sunset-lit desert, shielding her eyes against the grains of sand flying on the breeze.
“Not a good sign,” Basam muttered to her as they repacked the glider.
“Yeah, no kidding,” Zafirah whispered back. “Think we’re headed for trouble?”
“Could be. Probably, with the way things’re going for us lately. Let’s not scare the tourist just yet, though.”
“Keep this between us for now,” she agreed. They glanced over at Kuei, who waved back at them cheerily before going back to coaxing Bosco up to his spot-without much success-and back at each other. “Spirits and ancestors,” Zafirah sighed as the weight of the situation crashed over her again. “What a mess this is.”
Basam clasped his hands behind his head and shrugged. “Hey, it could be worse.”
“How? How could this possibly be worse?” she demanded.
“Gimme a minute, I’m sure I’ll think of something,” he answered lightly.
“Thanks, that’s helpful,” Zafirah grumbled. Her brother shot her a crooked grin.
“Sure thing, sister.”
The winds were getting stronger still. About an hour later, as they sailed towards the dark bulk of Si Wong Rock in the distance, Kuei aimed his spyglass back to look out over their wake. When he spoke up, his voice quaked.
“Za…Zafirah? Basam? I, uh… Behind us…?” Zafirah glanced over her shoulder and felt a sudden chill through every corner of her body. She heard a hoarse curse from Basam as he caught sight of it, too.
It thundered across the sands towards them, gaining on them with every minute: the boiling front of a towering sandstorm. She shot a desperate look forward at Si Wong Rock, but it was too far away. They’d never make it to the leeward side before the front caught up, and all the Sandbending in the world wouldn’t protect them from a storm of this size. With ten of their kin at their side, they might have stood a chance. The two of them, alone against this monster? It was a fight they couldn’t win. Oh, no. No, no, no, no no no no! Spirits, please no… Raw, animal panic set her blood on fire, and her mind flashed to memories from four years ago: the one survivor from their parents’ foraging party, stumbling back into the oasis with news of a sandstorm that had hit them off-guard… Spirits, Spirits, no…
****************
Kuei couldn’t tear his eyes from the monstrous wall of sand hurtling towards their helpless little glider. He may not have known Professor Zei personally, but Kuei had read more than a few of his essays on the Si Wong Desert. Three of the most common causes of death among the tribes were dehydration, starvation… and the desert’s infamously massive sandstorms, arising from the frequent high winds that sped unimpeded across miles and miles of open desert. Somehow, the sight of that storm was almost more frightening than the Firebenders they had faced. Fire Nation soldiers were cruel and ruthless, but they were nonetheless mortal men-and mortal men could be defeated. The awful thing about to engulf them didn’t bleed, didn’t hesitate, and it never showed mercy.
“Halt! Halt!” Zafirah shrieked in a voice choked with terror. She and her brother swung the glider around so it stopped sideways to the oncoming storm. The twins all but flew off of their platforms and rushed to heap sand up along the windward hull to hold it down. Kuei finally wrenched his gaze off of the storm and leaped down to join them.
“What should I do?” he shouted fretfully over the howling winds.
“Remember how we lashed down the sail this morning?” Zafirah answered tersely, not taking her eyes off of her Sandbending.
“Y-yes, I do, yes.”
“Lash it down again, and tie it tight!” He vaulted over the hull to reach the sail and seized hold of the first corner, fumbling at the ropes with sweat-slicked hands that shook from the blinding adrenaline coursing through him. After what felt like hours of agonizingly slow work, the third corner was tied down.
“Done!” he yelled. Zafirah was a tan blur as she hurtled past him, seizing his arm and hauling him into the cramped shelter with Basam following close on their heels. Kuei called to Bosco, who must have understood the urgency of the situation-he hurried to his master’s side without a trace of his earlier stubbornness. The three crouched down in a huddled circle beneath the glider, while Bosco curled his furry mass between them and the uncovered end of the shelter, as if shielding them. A fine time for his animal instincts to wake up! Kuei thought wryly. He jumped as a pair of slit-eyed goggles were thrust into his line of sight. Looking up, he saw that both Sandbenders were already sporting similar eyewear.
“Keep the sand out of your eyes,” Zafirah said. The deafening roar of the winds raging around them nearly drowned out her words. He tucked his eyeglasses into his pocket and slipped on the goggles. He hardly felt the ache of the stiff material pressing against his bruised eye.
And then the storm was upon them. The scream of straining wood planks lent an eerie edge to the cacophony as the oncoming wall of sand slammed into the glider. Kuei’s heart lurched in his chest, as for a breathless moment it seemed that the vessel wouldn’t hold against the maelstrom. Gusts of sand streamed in through tiny gaps in the planks. He could see Zafirah shivering next to him. She sat with her knees drawn tightly up against her chest and her head bowed, her slender fingers rooting absently through the sand at her feet.
Time stretched on in their flimsy shelter, minutes indistinguishable from hours. From his left, he heard Basam’s husky voice lift in the strains of a song he didn’t recognize-barely audible at first, then slowly rising above the howling winds. He was singing in the old tongue, Kuei realized, a language from the days before the first Earth King had united the scattered towns and cities into one kingdom. He glanced at the other man; the Sandbender had produced a stone talisman from a pocket somewhere and was tracing his fingers over its smooth sides as he sang. Basam sang on by himself for a few moments, then Zafirah picked up the tune as well. Kuei lowered his head, his eyes sliding shut. After a while, he realized that he was humming the melody along with them.
The song faltered when several planks gave way under the hammering winds with a sickening crack. Sand poured through the rupture and into the shelter; trying to block it would have been an exercise in futility. The voices quavered so much that the words were all but unintelligible, but still they sang on.
****************
Achingly bright daylight lanced into the shelter. It turned the insides of Kuei’s eyelids crimson and snapped him out of the dazed half-trance he’d fallen into. He groaned at the headache that made its presence known and lifted his hand to shield his face. Shadows fell across the light as voices spoke from outside the shelter.
“-Looks like some kinda Spirit monster.”
“Oh, as if you’d know!”
“Shut it, the both of you. Show a little respect for our kinsmen.”
“Sorry, Qamar.”
“I’m just sayin’, it isn’t any animal I’ve ever heard of-“
“I said shut it.” The sudden realization that the storm had ended filtered through Kuei’s muddled mind, and he dropped his hand and opened his eyes. Three Sandbenders stood at the open end of the shelter, bending down to peer in at the trio. He could see the hazy shapes of more people behind the newcomers. Bosco stirred, shook the sand off his wide head and rumbled curiously at the strangers, making them gasp and scuttle backwards. Zafirah stumbled into his peripheral vision, staring up at the strangers.
“We’re alive,” she mumbled weakly. The shortest of the three hurried back to the shelter’s entrance.
“Zafi?” she asked incredulously. “That really you?” She was pushed aside by one of the others, who scrambled into the shelter and knelt by Zafirah’s side.
“Zafi?!” he echoed, sounding horrorstruck. “Son of a hogmonkey, woman! What’re you doing out in a sandstorm?”
“Nice to see you too, Shai,” croaked Zafirah. The newcomers ducked beneath the glider and brought the three travelers out into the glare of the afternoon sun. A cloudless blue sky stretched overhead, with no trace of the sandstorm to be found. Kuei got an unpleasant shock when he looked back at their glider-the wooden craft was all but swallowed up by a small sand dune. Had the storm lasted any longer, or their rescuers found them any later, they might have been buried alive.
As if acting on an unspoken signal, all of the Sandbenders unmasked and faced each other. Kuei followed their lead, pulling down his face coverings and hastily replacing the goggles with his eyeglasses. Row upon row of copper-brown faces sprang into focus, peering curiously at their trio.
“Who are they?” he whispered to Zafirah. She spread her arms in a gesture that encompassed the crowd before them.
“They’re the Aqila Tribe.”
****************
That line about Kuei not being good at joke-telling: If you’ve seen Firefly, remember that scene where Simon tries to tell a funny story about being a doctor (because sick people are hi-larious!) and just fails miserably? That’s what I was thinking of when I wrote that line. :3
Playlist time!
1) Cross the Hot Sand and Wilderness, Great Gurren Brigade (Nesshya no Arano wo Nukete Dai Gurren Dan ga Ikuno Da) [Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]-The trio begin their desert voyage.
2) Theme From Spire [Myst IV: Revelation]-The winds from the southwest are picking up and a storm’s brewing…
3) Sandstorm [Hidalgo]-Saaaaannndstoooorrmmm!!! You can watch the sandstorm scene from Hidalgo here, to get an idea of what I had in mind while writing this part of the chapter.
CAUSE SOME TROUBLE
Chapter 3-- A Journey Begins
Things happen in this chapter, yes indeed.
The sun was setting above the far-distant sand dunes in the west. Its fading rays silhouetted the two Sandbenders standing atop the glider’s navigation platform. They held their hands stiffly at their sides as they cast shrewd, wary gazes over their land. The smaller, more slender figure swept an arm out in a graceful arc to point at something off in the distance, head inclining slightly, the taller and broad-shouldered one nodding in agreement to whatever words passed between them. The reddish orange glow that surrounded them brought unpleasant images of the night’s battle to the forefront of Kuei’s mind as he and Bosco approached the glider. The two shifted to face him, their dark eyes shining through the gaps in their head coverings.
Zafirah hopped down from the platform, landing easily on the soft sand, and strode over to him. He spied a dagger from the shop strapped to her lower leg, the brass decorations on its sheath glinting in the light. Clucking her tongue at his haphazardly wrapped head coverings, she reached up and started tugging the offending cloth into a more suitable arrangement. Kuei lowered his head and did his best to stand patiently while she worked. He wondered if most Sandbenders were prone to such casual invasions of personal space, or if it was a habit unique to this particular one. He didn’t necessarily find it unpleasant-it was just odd. No one in Ba Sing Se would dare touch the Earth King without permission. He thought back to the Avatar’s group and the way they would embrace in comfort or solidarity, or place reassuring hands on one another’s shoulders; he recalled Toph’s arm punches (and the ensuing bruises), and the way the Water Tribesmen would clasp each other’s forearms in greeting. Clearly, this was something Kuei would just have to accustom himself to.
“We’re setting a course for Si Wong Rock,” Zafirah explained as she rearranged the fabric. “That’s where the tribes meet whenever there’s trouble like this. Chances are, some folks from the open-desert tribes have seen the smoke and they’re already on their way. If not, we’ll have a clear view for miles around from the top of the rock. We might spot one of the tribes from up there, sail out to meet ‘em. Might take a couple days, though.”
“It sounds as though these other tribes prefer not to be found too easily,” he commented.
“Yep; they don’t stay in one place too long. Or can’t, really, even if they wanted to-they gotta go where the food and water is. We’d be the same way without the iceberg here. You catch on fast,” she commented, the corners of her eyes crinkling as she smiled behind her head coverings. She stepped back and lifted her right hand in a thumbs-up. Kuei hesitantly returned the unfamiliar gesture, trying to ignore the claustrophobic feel of the cloth surrounding his head. A fresh coating of salve over his black eye kept it from stinging where the fabric brushed against the edges of the bruise.
Basam whistled from his place on the platform and Zafirah turned, catching the spyglass that he tossed to her. She handed it to Kuei with a dramatic flair that brought a small smile to his face despite his glum mood. Bosco nudged his nose against the woman’s hand, feeling left out. Zafirah sighed resignedly and gingerly patted the bear’s furry head.
“C’mon, you two,” Basam called from the glider. “We got us a desert to cross.” Kuei followed Zafirah to the glider, where she set both hands upon the lower platform to the left of the navigator’s post and hoisted herself up and onto it in one smooth movement. Basam leaped down with a solid thud to join them on the platform and stretched a hand down to Kuei, who decided that now was not the time for prideful attempts at proving himself and wordlessly took the other man’s offered assistance.
“Now the real question is, where do we put Furball there?” Zafirah mused, narrowing her eyes at Bosco.
“He oughta go up on the navigator’s post. The glider’ll be off-balance any other way,” Basam pointed out.
“I was afraid you’d say that,” she muttered. Getting Bosco up to the platform turned out to be quite a feat, but eventually both Kuei and his pet were at their assigned post. Basam took up his place on a third platform to the right of Kuei’s post, and they were as ready to leave as they’d ever be. The Sandbenders took firmly rooted stances, feet planted apart and knees bent, and lifted their arms with their fingers outstretched. Moving as one, the siblings swept their arms back and thrust them forward, once, twice, three times. A gust of sand whirled up behind the sail hanging slack between the double hulls, growing and pulsing. The yellow cloth billowed and snapped outward when the swirling sand became a tornado, pulling its lines taut, and the glider sprang to life. Kuei gasped and nearly lost his balance as the little wooden vessel jumped forward. He couldn’t help but feel a thrill of anticipation as he glanced back at the oasis, already shrinking in their wake-there he was, setting out for destinations unknown across the dunes of the perilous Si Wong Desert! If only their voyage hadn’t started under such tragic circumstances, it would have been the adventure he’d always dreamed of.
****************
Zafirah fell into a steady rhythm as the dunes rolled past: arms casting forward, swinging back, over and over again. The rhythm was soothingly familiar in the madness of the past night. Their glider felt sluggish under the added bulk of Kuei’s Spirits-be-damned pet. A lion turtle’d weigh less, she thought peevishly. The owner of said slobbery hair-beast perched above her with his sights aimed at the horizon, keeping a weather eye out for any sign that the Fire-freaks might come back for a second round.
Cast forward, swing back, cast forward.
The sand around them went from burned gold to pale grey as the sun’s last light died and the first stars shone out above their heads.
Cast forward, swing back, cast forward.
The sky darkened into blue-black, save for the silver light of a crescent moon squinting down at them. Kuei checked the compass bound to the front of his post and called out a new course heading, just like they’d told him to. The man was a fast learner.
Cast forward, swing back, and call a halt. She wasn’t tired yet and she knew Basam wasn’t either, but they needed food and water, tired or not. Wouldn’t do to push themselves too far. The three people and the bear ate and drank in silence and moved on quickly.
****************
The first leg of the trip went smoothly enough. The trio sailed through the night until the faint light of dawn began to brighten the eastern sky. The Sandbenders lowered their arms, sinking the sand-tornado back into the earth, and the glider coasted to a stop. With the glider turned westward to face away from the oncoming brutality of the day’s heat, the three of them lashed down the corners of the sail, stretching it tight between the hulls and the navigator’s post so that it became a shelter against the sun. They retrieved some food and necessities from their supplies, coaxed Bosco down from the glider platform (an even more trying task than getting him up there to begin with) and retreated to the shade of their makeshift tent. The trio sat in a huddled circle, while Bosco curled up behind his master, and tucked into their rations.
“So what’s it like living in Ba Sing Se?” Basam asked suddenly, helping himself to a second portion of the dried fruit and pig-chicken jerky that comprised their dinner. Kuei paused with a strip of dried meat halfway to his mouth and glanced at the Sandbender.
“Yeah,” Zafirah chimed in. “What’d you do there, what kinda folks did you know?” The two looked at him with nothing but open, friendly curiosity in their eyes. Don’t be paranoid, he scolded himself.
“I was a student,” he began slowly, “I had just graduated from the University of Ba Sing Se when the coup happened.”
“Student, huh? Did you ever take any classes with, uh, now what was his name…” She drummed her fingers against her knee. “Zei! There we go. Professor Zei, ‘head of Anthropology and expert on exotic cultures’.” She rolled her eyes.
“Ah, no, that… that wasn’t my department,” Kuei said quickly. “You didn’t get along well with him, I assume?”
“What I didn’t get along with was the notion of bein’ an ‘exotic culture’,” she replied with an annoyed snort.
“He did have a habit of talkin’ at us Sandbenders like we were all slow in the head,” Basam admitted, tapping one forefinger against his temple. “He’d turn up now and then, rambling at anybody who’d listen about some Spirit Library-“
“-And he’d wander off into the open desert on the hunt for the damned thing, and we tried tellin’ him that he was goin’ about it all wrong-“ Zafirah cut in.
“-But he brushed us off every time, like he knew our desert better than us-“ Basam continued, gesturing animatedly as he picked up the cadence of a well-practiced storyteller.
“He was the ‘expert’ after all, hah!”
“He’d drag his sorry behind back to the oasis a few days later, half-dead from thirst and the heat-no luck on the library, of course. Sometimes he’d drink too much sake when he came back, and then he’d get going on a rant about ‘those nearsighted, narrow-minded ignoramuses who dare call themselves scholars’ back at the University…”
Kuei couldn’t help but smile as the rapid-fire conversation danced from one topic to another-from the misadventures of the professor, to all the various dishes of Ba Sing Se cuisine that would’ve been preferable to pig-chicken jerky, to swapping myths, legends, jokes and riddles (at which point Kuei discovered that he was rather bad at telling the former but excellent at answering the latter). When the three finally settled down to get some rest, Kuei fell asleep with a lightness of spirit that would have seemed impossible the night before.
****************
The winds had picked up while the three slept, sweeping across the dunes from the southwest. Zafirah peered out into the sunset-lit desert, shielding her eyes against the grains of sand flying on the breeze.
“Not a good sign,” Basam muttered to her as they repacked the glider.
“Yeah, no kidding,” Zafirah whispered back. “Think we’re headed for trouble?”
“Could be. Probably, with the way things’re going for us lately. Let’s not scare the tourist just yet, though.”
“Keep this between us for now,” she agreed. They glanced over at Kuei, who waved back at them cheerily before going back to coaxing Bosco up to his spot-without much success-and back at each other. “Spirits and ancestors,” Zafirah sighed as the weight of the situation crashed over her again. “What a mess this is.”
Basam clasped his hands behind his head and shrugged. “Hey, it could be worse.”
“How? How could this possibly be worse?” she demanded.
“Gimme a minute, I’m sure I’ll think of something,” he answered lightly.
“Thanks, that’s helpful,” Zafirah grumbled. Her brother shot her a crooked grin.
“Sure thing, sister.”
The winds were getting stronger still. About an hour later, as they sailed towards the dark bulk of Si Wong Rock in the distance, Kuei aimed his spyglass back to look out over their wake. When he spoke up, his voice quaked.
“Za…Zafirah? Basam? I, uh… Behind us…?” Zafirah glanced over her shoulder and felt a sudden chill through every corner of her body. She heard a hoarse curse from Basam as he caught sight of it, too.
It thundered across the sands towards them, gaining on them with every minute: the boiling front of a towering sandstorm. She shot a desperate look forward at Si Wong Rock, but it was too far away. They’d never make it to the leeward side before the front caught up, and all the Sandbending in the world wouldn’t protect them from a storm of this size. With ten of their kin at their side, they might have stood a chance. The two of them, alone against this monster? It was a fight they couldn’t win. Oh, no. No, no, no, no no no no! Spirits, please no… Raw, animal panic set her blood on fire, and her mind flashed to memories from four years ago: the one survivor from their parents’ foraging party, stumbling back into the oasis with news of a sandstorm that had hit them off-guard… Spirits, Spirits, no…
****************
Kuei couldn’t tear his eyes from the monstrous wall of sand hurtling towards their helpless little glider. He may not have known Professor Zei personally, but Kuei had read more than a few of his essays on the Si Wong Desert. Three of the most common causes of death among the tribes were dehydration, starvation… and the desert’s infamously massive sandstorms, arising from the frequent high winds that sped unimpeded across miles and miles of open desert. Somehow, the sight of that storm was almost more frightening than the Firebenders they had faced. Fire Nation soldiers were cruel and ruthless, but they were nonetheless mortal men-and mortal men could be defeated. The awful thing about to engulf them didn’t bleed, didn’t hesitate, and it never showed mercy.
“Halt! Halt!” Zafirah shrieked in a voice choked with terror. She and her brother swung the glider around so it stopped sideways to the oncoming storm. The twins all but flew off of their platforms and rushed to heap sand up along the windward hull to hold it down. Kuei finally wrenched his gaze off of the storm and leaped down to join them.
“What should I do?” he shouted fretfully over the howling winds.
“Remember how we lashed down the sail this morning?” Zafirah answered tersely, not taking her eyes off of her Sandbending.
“Y-yes, I do, yes.”
“Lash it down again, and tie it tight!” He vaulted over the hull to reach the sail and seized hold of the first corner, fumbling at the ropes with sweat-slicked hands that shook from the blinding adrenaline coursing through him. After what felt like hours of agonizingly slow work, the third corner was tied down.
“Done!” he yelled. Zafirah was a tan blur as she hurtled past him, seizing his arm and hauling him into the cramped shelter with Basam following close on their heels. Kuei called to Bosco, who must have understood the urgency of the situation-he hurried to his master’s side without a trace of his earlier stubbornness. The three crouched down in a huddled circle beneath the glider, while Bosco curled his furry mass between them and the uncovered end of the shelter, as if shielding them. A fine time for his animal instincts to wake up! Kuei thought wryly. He jumped as a pair of slit-eyed goggles were thrust into his line of sight. Looking up, he saw that both Sandbenders were already sporting similar eyewear.
“Keep the sand out of your eyes,” Zafirah said. The deafening roar of the winds raging around them nearly drowned out her words. He tucked his eyeglasses into his pocket and slipped on the goggles. He hardly felt the ache of the stiff material pressing against his bruised eye.
And then the storm was upon them. The scream of straining wood planks lent an eerie edge to the cacophony as the oncoming wall of sand slammed into the glider. Kuei’s heart lurched in his chest, as for a breathless moment it seemed that the vessel wouldn’t hold against the maelstrom. Gusts of sand streamed in through tiny gaps in the planks. He could see Zafirah shivering next to him. She sat with her knees drawn tightly up against her chest and her head bowed, her slender fingers rooting absently through the sand at her feet.
Time stretched on in their flimsy shelter, minutes indistinguishable from hours. From his left, he heard Basam’s husky voice lift in the strains of a song he didn’t recognize-barely audible at first, then slowly rising above the howling winds. He was singing in the old tongue, Kuei realized, a language from the days before the first Earth King had united the scattered towns and cities into one kingdom. He glanced at the other man; the Sandbender had produced a stone talisman from a pocket somewhere and was tracing his fingers over its smooth sides as he sang. Basam sang on by himself for a few moments, then Zafirah picked up the tune as well. Kuei lowered his head, his eyes sliding shut. After a while, he realized that he was humming the melody along with them.
The song faltered when several planks gave way under the hammering winds with a sickening crack. Sand poured through the rupture and into the shelter; trying to block it would have been an exercise in futility. The voices quavered so much that the words were all but unintelligible, but still they sang on.
****************
Achingly bright daylight lanced into the shelter. It turned the insides of Kuei’s eyelids crimson and snapped him out of the dazed half-trance he’d fallen into. He groaned at the headache that made its presence known and lifted his hand to shield his face. Shadows fell across the light as voices spoke from outside the shelter.
“-Looks like some kinda Spirit monster.”
“Oh, as if you’d know!”
“Shut it, the both of you. Show a little respect for our kinsmen.”
“Sorry, Qamar.”
“I’m just sayin’, it isn’t any animal I’ve ever heard of-“
“I said shut it.” The sudden realization that the storm had ended filtered through Kuei’s muddled mind, and he dropped his hand and opened his eyes. Three Sandbenders stood at the open end of the shelter, bending down to peer in at the trio. He could see the hazy shapes of more people behind the newcomers. Bosco stirred, shook the sand off his wide head and rumbled curiously at the strangers, making them gasp and scuttle backwards. Zafirah stumbled into his peripheral vision, staring up at the strangers.
“We’re alive,” she mumbled weakly. The shortest of the three hurried back to the shelter’s entrance.
“Zafi?” she asked incredulously. “That really you?” She was pushed aside by one of the others, who scrambled into the shelter and knelt by Zafirah’s side.
“Zafi?!” he echoed, sounding horrorstruck. “Son of a hogmonkey, woman! What’re you doing out in a sandstorm?”
“Nice to see you too, Shai,” croaked Zafirah. The newcomers ducked beneath the glider and brought the three travelers out into the glare of the afternoon sun. A cloudless blue sky stretched overhead, with no trace of the sandstorm to be found. Kuei got an unpleasant shock when he looked back at their glider-the wooden craft was all but swallowed up by a small sand dune. Had the storm lasted any longer, or their rescuers found them any later, they might have been buried alive.
As if acting on an unspoken signal, all of the Sandbenders unmasked and faced each other. Kuei followed their lead, pulling down his face coverings and hastily replacing the goggles with his eyeglasses. Row upon row of copper-brown faces sprang into focus, peering curiously at their trio.
“Who are they?” he whispered to Zafirah. She spread her arms in a gesture that encompassed the crowd before them.
“They’re the Aqila Tribe.”
****************
That line about Kuei not being good at joke-telling: If you’ve seen Firefly, remember that scene where Simon tries to tell a funny story about being a doctor (because sick people are hi-larious!) and just fails miserably? That’s what I was thinking of when I wrote that line. :3
Playlist time!
1) Cross the Hot Sand and Wilderness, Great Gurren Brigade (Nesshya no Arano wo Nukete Dai Gurren Dan ga Ikuno Da) [Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]-The trio begin their desert voyage.
2) Theme From Spire [Myst IV: Revelation]-The winds from the southwest are picking up and a storm’s brewing…
3) Sandstorm [Hidalgo]-Saaaaannndstoooorrmmm!!! You can watch the sandstorm scene from Hidalgo here, to get an idea of what I had in mind while writing this part of the chapter.