The desert is infinite black and white stripes cascading endlessly before her, rising and falling in dunes. Above this ocean frozen in time, the first twinkling stars are emerging in the amethyst twilight. There is nothing else. No jungle at their edge, no bones buried in the sand, no nuns to scowl at her, no tasks to hurry to, no pictures to finish, no manuscripts to copy, no prayers to make…
There is nothing, and it is beautiful. So, so beautiful.
Her body is glass. The wind whistles as it blows through her nostrils and out her ears, producing mournful, beautiful melodies as it does. The emptiness, the hollowness, should be sad, but it feels so right. For now, to be less is to be more.
But something fills her. Sand flows through her body, pinched at her waist and slowly trickling down her hips: this is the real her, trapped in a fragile vessel.
She knows what she must do. Pointed nails dig into glass, sending cracks streaking across her body-
No, not her body, the vessel holding her!
-like lightning.
The streaks become fissures, the fissures canyons, and then-!
She is sand shifting with the wind, fleeing into the desert night.
She is free.
And then she is nothing at all.
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They wake up in darkness, not knowing where they’ve been sleeping other than it is hard and hot humid. Although they can’t see them clearly, bodies surround them, mumbling, leaning against walls, snoring, shuffling against each other like so many cockroaches in the walls. Sleep, their brain tells them, go back to sleep. Yet they can’t.
An unearthly howl breaks the darkness, one unlike that of any animal they’ve ever heard. All at once the darkened figures spring to life as queer yellow lights trapped in small cages flicker to life. The darkened figures, formerly torpid, have become a raging river of bodies, dragging them onward, forward, up, up narrow metal staircases until-
Darkness again, this time under a cloudless night sky. Stars shine brightly as so many figures huddle on the deck under the shadows of massive statues, the like of which they’ve never seen. At least, they think they’re statues. Like mushrooms with long metal pylons pylons sticking out of them, they have no idea what they might be for. But the crew does not share their curiosity. No, their attention is drawn towards the ship in the distance, silhouetted in shadow, save for a single flag, illuminated by light from an unseen source. A white flag with a red circle, elegant in its simplicity. Somewhere in the crowd, a person yells, then another voice screams out, and another, and another. The rage onboard the ship is as virulent as it is palpable, disorganized screams soon coalescing into a unified chat. The great structure, cast in shadow, moves until its pylons are pointed directly at the boat, and then-!
Fire unlike anything they’ve ever seen ignites the night sky, followed by a heaven-piercing BOOM! The screams of fury on deck turn to cheers of joy; helmets are tossed into the air. A great victory has surely been won.
Or has it?
Though it might be mere sea sickness, they cannot shake the feeling in the pit of their stomach something has gone horribly, undeniably, wrong.
For as the enemy vessel goes up in flames, within the smoke they swear they see the silhouette of a great lizard tossed up into the air as if it were a mere ragdoll. Even from such a long distance away, they can tell it must be over a hundred feet long.