Burrs and Chameleons

As Wanderer and Emio set off on their journey toward the boneyard, dying day eventually became true night, accompanied by all that entailed in the endless sands. As had the night before, neon lights rose from the ground and shifted in mesmerising patterns before being sucked in to herald the falling of a lightning bolt. It was those lightning bolts that were the chief concern throughout the first half of the journey, dodging and weaving in an effort to avoid their careless retribution. In fact, this simple effort took up so much of their attention, despite its relative ease, that they didn't even notice when they had walked into the middle a peculiarity in the desert sands.

Walking through a particularly flat area of the desert, Wanderer was idly signing something to Emio when they heard an odd popping sound and a pain in their leg. They quickly looked down and found that their leg and the surrounding area was covered in tiny white seeds, with white tufts of fibre on the end. By the looks of it, the seeds had been ejected with force, many of them having become stuck in the Vessel’s leg or a few centimeters underground.

They were easily removed but caused Wanderer to think of a question.

“Where did these seeds come from, and what was the popping sound.”

Perplexed they looked around and found nothing out of the ordinary, it was as if they had appeared from thin air. Confused, Wanderer continued on before not five minutes later a similar occurrence happened, heralded by another pop.

Again the Golem brushed off the seeds and looked around, again coming up inconclusive.

In desperation, they even asked Emio who predictably didn't know. Again Wanderer set off, this time making it all of one minute before another pop.

Bewildered, the Golem scoured the area once again, finding something not on the ground or in the air, but on Emio. On one of their many limbs, a small, black twig was clinging on by a spine of splinters. The twig itself seemed to be bone dry, and snapped easily when the Golem picked it up but that was of little interest, what was interesting was its fruit.

Hanging off one side of the stick was a small, oval fruit with hexagonal white patterns running throughout its black body. Curious, Wanderer poked it and had their suspicions confirmed when it popped and spat seeds all over their face.

After cleaning up, the Vessel began to search for the final piece of the puzzle, where the twigs were coming from. They were quite certain that a twig as small and dead as that wasn't the whole plant, plants needed roots and leaves and that had neither. So they searched the one place the plant could have hidden from their repeated inspection, underneath the ground. They were correct in their guess, burrowing a narrow hole in the ground and pulling out the culprit of their confusion.

It was a very odd looking plant, a far cry from the leathery cacti which was the only other resident of the sands that the Golem had seen. At its roots it was green and plump, fleshy leaves bundled together to create something resembling bok choy. However, as each stem shot its way to the surface, it gradually grew drier and thinner, splitting off from the main stem into little black branches. The closer to the surface these branches were, the drier and blacker they became until they stuck out above the sands, so brittle and splintered that they would snap and stick to any passerby.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

The little explosive pods followed this same process, originally starting as green buds before growing and drying with its accompanying stem, until it grew so brittle that a touch could release its life bringing payload. And while this process was incredible to Wanderer and mildly interesting to Emio, there was still a single question nagging at the Vessel’s mind.

“What are the plants here for?”

The plants were trying to spread their seeds, but despite this fact there was seemingly nothing anywhere, animal or man, for hours. Wanderer was in the middle of nowhere with nothing but sand for ages and ages, nothing that could spread seeds and as such, no reason for the plant's aggressive reproduction technique.

As if synced to the very thought, Wanderer heard a sudden pop come from their right, the distinctive sound of a seed pod bursting. Looking at the source, they found something incredibly peculiar, two twigs and a collection of seeds was seemingly floating in mid air. Moments later these objects began moving in a rhythmic, natural sense, indicating to Wanderer the nature of the anomaly.

There, only ten or so steps away must be one of the giant chameleons they had seen the merchant riding when they stowed aboard their cart. The creature was truly and utterly invisible, their deception near perfect with the fog to hide their footprints and smother their sound. It really made Wanderer wonder just how many of the creatures were actually around, hiding beneath their magic.

Another pop sounded a little further away, the Golem only just spying the seed covered foot of its culprit a few hundred steps away.

“This is what the plant preys on” the Vessel thought.

The revelation brought a joviality to their step as they continued onward, jumping and dancing around the small black twigs that stuck up from the sand as the towers of bone grew ever closer.

Eventually, Emio, ever-hungry, dug up almost twenty of the subterranean herbs in order to replace their form, becoming stranded with soft tones of green and white, rejecting the dried and brittle elements of the plant. That was fair, Wanderer supposed, Emio was a very mobile creature and a body created to be brittle wouldn't be very pleasant to possess.

While that process was taking place, the Vessel turned their mind back to the chameleons, pondering their presence in the desert. They seemed to be heading in much the same direction as Wanderer, perhaps hoping to seek shelter in the bones from the sun, but this journey raised a perplexing question.

Every living thing the Golem has seen in their journey hid itself away at night because of the desert’s entrancing aurora, with exception of Emio, Spirit and themself. Despite this, these chameleons were saundering their way through the aurora with no issues at all, even managing to avoid the lightning with perfect accuracy. So the question was, were the lizards immune to the mist or did they have some other method of resisting the influence.

Walking up to one, Wanderer walked alongside it and stared it down like the mere action would force it to reveal its secrets. The lizard didn't even seem to notice, continuing on like ever.

At first the Vessel saw nothing wrong with this, knowing well just how aloof the chameleons could be, but an inkling of an idea of what was happening came together when the lizard reacted shocked when Wanderer poked them It makes sense to react when poked, of course, but the extremity of the action by the lizard, jumping nearly five steps away and going completely still, seemed a little out of sorts for a threat you were ok with having by your side only a moment ago.

It was almost like the chameleon didn't know they were there. And with that idea everything fell into place, the lizards couldn't see. Wanderer didn't know how the chameleons kept moving in the right direction, but other than that everything made sense.

They held their invisibility by letting all light pass through them, thus seeming like they were not even there. But if light simply passed through them, then there was no way that light could ever reach their eyes, thus rendering them blind as well as invisible.

In this way, the lizards had no issue with the mesmerising lights just because they never saw them, using the same strategy as every other creature of flesh and blood, just with a different method. As for how they managed to dodge lightning and head toward the boneyard so consistently, that was a mystery, and with no Spirit to answer them it was something that could only be uncovered by the books that had to reside in the cities.

With an acceptable majority of their local mysteries solved, Wanderer stopped their dallying and continued on, pondering random and unrelated thoughts as they did so.

It was in this way that they passed the time, interspersed by hopping around herbal mines and dodging electrical fireworks, until an odd feeling came over them, the idea that something was very wrong.

They ignored it, unable to find a source, yet the feeling remained and put the whole group on edge.

And it was this way that the Golem remained on their slow journey to the graveyard, unaware of the trillion grains of flying devastation shooting toward them in a wall of wind-swept glass from beyond the horizon.