24 hours before the Second Awakening event

In the wild places there was a desert of static, grains of technicolor and cathode buzz forming rolling dunes. It made one’s skin tingle. The sky swirled with oily blues and indigoes. Sometimes it rained stars, and when it did, constellations were separated and transformed. Where stars fell, starfire burned. The technicolor around the flames were dispelled, and the sand became gold and mostly still, ghastly unchanging. The sharks did not wander here, not where the dunes were solid; there was nothing to eat here. But there was something to drink, if one was lucky.

When it rained, it poured. In the shifting seas away from the starfire burning, the rain was swept away almost immediately. But around these impromptu camp fires, the moisture could be cupped and sipped.

Hagathar poured a batch of wet sand on a minuteglass filter. The grains stopped at the narrow funnel, relinquishing droplets like a pregnant sponge. Transparent green began to fill a carved horn made from the skull of a bedouin yak.

“Hurry up, I’m thirsty!” Grogor said. He stomped the sand in an impatient dance, swaying side to side. His hands clapped above his head like cymbals.

“Shut it,” Hagathar said, grumbling. He adjusted his position, changing to his left foot from his right. Grogor’s incessant needling tested Hagathar’s patience. Damned two-footers and their strange posture. He bet Grogor only did this to annoy him. Well, let him get blisters on both soles if he so wished.

When the horn filled, he shoved it at the rotund creature. A splash fell on Grogor’s chest but he didn’t seem to care. He drained the cup in seconds and began to pull at the folds of skin at his chest in order to lick the spillage off the mild carpet of hair.

Hagathar filled his own horn, sat with one leg on the sand, and sipped thoughtfully. Experiences ought to be taken slowly, he insisted. You never knew what you missed, constantly hurrying through existence, binging time and chugging absinthe.

“More! More!” Grogor clamored.

“You’ll simply have to wait until it rained next,” Hagathar said.

Grogor made a chain of unintelligible noises, as he usually did when the drink ran dry. But he got over it quick, and began to roll around the starfire like a tumbleweed. Hagathar allowed several orbits before he snapped at him to stop. Grogor did, and fell onto the sand. He became still, and quieter.

“Hagathar, what’s happening?”

“Hmm?”

“It’s raining less. And the turmoil is shrinking. Stars have been falling more and more. The seas are dying.”

“Oh don’t fall into conspiracy just because you’re thirsty.”

“The dunes used to make mountains. There used to be wyrm sharks to ride. Now the color is going away.”

Hagathar sighed. It’s not as if he didn’t notice. But that had always been the nature of this place. Turmoil necessitated there be islands of calm. It was simply the way things were. He couldn’t let Grogor know it bothered him too.

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“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “I’m turning in. Don’t tumble in your sleep.”

“Okay,” Grogor said dejectedly. He tumbled. But only for one orbit around the ebbing starfire. Then he stopped. Snores came from his open mouth.

Hagathar stood straight and peered around them. The dunes shifted endlessly where starfire did not shine. Great hills and fjords of vibrant waves. As of late, they had grown less and less prominent. Even as he watched, another shooting star streaked across the sky, curving onto a spot far, far away. He heard its ‘Boom!’ moments later. That one was loud. Have the stars become larger as well?

“Madness,” Hagathar said, refusing the thought. Hagathar turned upside-down, raising his feet above the sand, and fell into a comfortable sleep.

He was torn from a good dream by tremors. His eyes blinked open. A sleepy stupor quickly turned to anger.

“Grogar, what did I say about the tumbling!”

“Nuh uh, not me!” Grogar said. He had woke before Hagathar. That never happened.

The starfire had reduced, but not by as much as it should have. They had not slept for long. The tremors were coming from somewhere over the wavy dunes.

“I’m scared!” Grogar exclaimed, his knees knocking.

“Just stay close to the fire,” Hagathar said calmly, despite being frightened himself. “The sharks would never-”

It was not a wyrm shark. The tremors were too even. Hagathar returned a composed, one-legged stance.

“Ah, it’s nothing,” he said. “Just a tumbleweed.”

The great ball of roots poked over a dune as it was collapsing. It turned from side to side, then rolled towards them, coming to a stop several spans away.

“Fellow walkers of the Nourishing Turmoil,” it said, “How fare you on this blessed night?”

“Well enough till we were woken,” Hagathar said.

“I do apologize for the disruption, but I have a proposition for you fine gentlemen.”

“What?” Hagathar said with a roll of his eyes. Tumbleweeds, always making deals, wanting nothing yet never without something you wanted.

“We all know the land is dying,” it said.

“See! See!” Grogar said.

Hagathar ignored him. “What are you suggesting,” he said.

“We parley with the Emerald Mistress, the Lady in Green, the Verdant Delirium,” the tumbleweed said, twirling once.

Hagathar laughed.

“Silly vegetable,” he said, “She’s not real, a figurehead, a deity to project our hopes and fears.”

“And that makes her unreal?”

“What would we give her? What could simple figments like us have that such a being would desire?”

The tumbleweed unraveled its branches with a salesman’s flourish. The darnedest thing crawled out. And what a thing it was, to have such strange colorings and such awful symmetry. It draped flat substances on itself. And it stood, on two legs, motionless save for what must have been its face. It looked wildly about.

“Jesus Horatio Christ,” it said. “Is this really what goes on in there?”

“What manner of creature is this?” Hagathar exclaimed.

“Holy fuck!” It said back when it caught sight of him.

“What is a fuck and why is it holy?” Asked Grogar.

“I’m going to throw up,” it said when its face turned to Grogar.

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Hagathar said. “The ‘weed said you have a way to restore these lands.”

“Restore?”

“Yes, yes! To bring back the change! The beautiful change that used to course through the dunes and shape mountains and valleys into being in instants!”

“…yes. Restore. I need to speak to the- what’s the word. Personality? No you wouldn’t call it that. Who’s in charge of this place?”

“No one is ‘in charge’. But if you want to speak with the Emerald Mistress, I’m afraid her throne is, according to the legends, the singularity from which change radiates. The star whose light is chaos. No traveler would find it.”

“Then we don’t travel,” the thing said. It glanced at the starfire. “We resist the change. If all else but where we stand changes, this star will come to us.”

Hagathar stepped back, mortified. Grogar squealed.

“That would be unbearable for us!” He said.

“Do you want to revive your land or not?”

“…Fine. We will help you accomplish this. I am called Hagathar, a humble traveler. My companion is named Grogar.”

The thing’s face changed. So it could do that after all, though Hagathar could not decipher its meaning.

“Call me Oscar,” it said. “I’m a traveler as well, of sorts.”