It has been almost a week since I left the Conclave. The forests that dictate the border of the Gaian religions cover the horizon for as far as I can see. The deserts of Sol covered my surroundings, rolling hills of sand consisted of a majority of the landscape, with the occasional group of rocks or desert plant life the cropped up every now and then. From morning to night for the past six days I’ve had Sol’s watchful gaze over my shoulder, and Luna has stayed later every morning to greet me and shows up early every night to see my progress. Even if their manifestations have not made spiritual contact with me through this time, I see Sol guiding me through the day, and I know Luna has been watching over me at night. Their parent like gazes making sure that no major trouble befalls me on the first part of my journey.
Rocking back and forth under the canopy of the sand sleigh where I currently sat, I reached into my bag and pulled out the journal that… I’m not quite sure where it came from. My first guess is Tesoro somehow snuck it in my bag, my second guess would be mom. My dad is strong, but I don’t know him to be sneaky. Daphne didn’t have anything extra on her when she came and said goodbye alongside my family. With my sister being mostly asleep through the whole thing, the only other person who could have snuck this in amongst my stuff would be my mom. I’ve yet to actually open the journal as I’ve been to tired at the end of my days’ walks to actually take the time to try and write anything in it before falling asleep.
Well, due to a surprising set of circumstances, I’m currently not actually walking, so I have time to actually write something down. Where to start and what to write. Well, the first day is a good jumping off point, might as well take it from there.
Journal Entry
Day 1
I’m not sure what day this is in terms of the calendar year, so I’ll lead off with this simply being the start of my pilgrimage. Nothing much really happened, the other two who came with me mostly kept to themselves, not quite sure why, but knowing that I wasn’t traveling alone was nice. Past that, nothing really happened. We walked, we ate and rested, we walked some more, and then we decided to stop for the night. Not that that made things any easier, at most we each brought a blanket. Looks like we forgot to think about how we were going to sleep, let alone comfortably. Help the gods my foot…
Day 2
I slept better than I thought I would have, though I currently have sand in places that sand shouldn’t be in. Going to be shaking sand out of my clothes for the foreseeable future. Anyway, breakfast. We each brought some dried food with us, so no need to share, but the company was welcome. My current traveling companions are keeping their reasons for pilgrimage to themselves, but they at least shared their names. Lily and Eon. We each had different Brights and therefore didn’t know more than passing information about each other. It was another day of silent walking, but at least it felt a bit more bearable this time around.
Day 3
So… turns out that traveling through the desert is far more dangerous than we all thought. Got woken up last night to the sound of skittering coming from around us. After anxious minutes of waiting as soon as I managed to wake the other two, the skittering calmed down. For the first time since I got the ‘Moon’s Eye’, I’m finally glad I have it. It was cloudy and the natural light from the Stars and Luna were greatly obscured, so the visibility was not great. But it turns out that I don’t need a lot of light to see well in the dark. And what I saw definitely makes me want to make sure we have someone staying up at night now. A Desert Chimera, not necessarily one of Sol’s creations so much as it is the result of Sol’s influence, basically Sol’s variation of a Feary. A massive insect looking creature with a hard looking shell covered in far too many spikes, two curved tails with fierce looking barbs at the ends. Four arms, two big and two smaller. The bigger pair ended in round looking objects and didn’t move much, might be meant for defending. The smaller pair was much more nimble, constantly reaching out and looking for something to bring back to its gaping maw of a mouth. It’s face reminded me of the spiders I would see around the conclave, two big forward facing eyes with smaller eyes along its head. And finally the source of the skittering, anywhere from eight to ten legs which is probably more than what I had when it was younger, as a few of the legs kept stumbling over the others, producing the eerie noise that had awoken us.
It's eyes, while not looking directly at us, definitely had us in their periphery. It stayed far outside our reach and circled us a few times before finally disappearing off into the distance. We did not fall back asleep, and as much as I wanted to leave immediately, the other two were adamant we wait for Sol. Not that I could blame them for thinking that, but no matter how much I tried to prod them, they refused to budge until Sol rose. Needless to say it was a long night of worry, and an even longer day of walking.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Day 4:
Sleep was a luxury that wasn’t allowed last night. Not after what happened previously anyway.
When Sol got into the sky, we made pace like a demon was chasing us, which for all we knew one was. In our hurry running away from the prints the Desert Guardian left in the sand, all but making sure we ran in the opposite direction or where they disappeared to, we saw another set of interesting tracks. Not that we could tell what it actually was, but there was a lot of them, and they were in a line. The only mark I recognized was the tell-tale signs of a sand sleigh, two unnaturally flat tracks about six inches wide, and about four feet apart. Not that I could tell how many there were or what direction they were going, but that was a sign of life. It didn’t take much to convince Lily or Eon to follow the tracks. According to what my dad said, Raiders are more of the animals only mode of transportation, less the carry your lives with you kind of travel. The ones who travel like that are usually the Faithless, as they take their lives with them wherever they go, picking up new bits of life, and trading other parts of life. I’ve never actually met any of the Faithless before, but Eon has. Anything I mention comes secondhand from him.
Turns out that Eon’s family has direct dealings with the Faithless in terms of trade. I’ve never had the chance to meet them as their arrival and departure schedules aligned with the various times of harvest. Eon comes from a family of carpenters and craftsmen, who knew? But with affirmation from a second source, we began walking with renewed vigor, and with he hope that we even picked the right direction to begin with.
Day 5
Not much happened this day. Simply more walking, all the interesting stuff basically happened at the end of everything. Aside from thinking that I kept hearing skittering from behind us.
We decided to continue to follow the tracks rather than sleep as Sol went beneath the horizon. Turns out we got lucky with our choice of direction, as a few hours after Sol set, we saw tell-tale signs of life. Lanterns. It wasn’t much longer before we walked up to several circles of sand sleighs, with four sleighs to a circle. We hurried our way over to the first circle. Not sure if Sol or Luna was looking over us, but I know for a fact that one of them was, because with more luck than what one would otherwise expect, at least of the Faithless recognized Eon. I mean, before that we were quickly surrounded by warriors of some form with a mixture of some wielding bows with nocked arrows and others wielding a variety of close-range bladed weapons. Things were just a little tense to say the least.
After the shouting match that erupted between us and the Faithless guards, it was not long before other Faithless became curious. Among the first to show up was the person who recognized Eon. Turns out, that person oversaw this circle. After managing to calm the guards down and finding out who we were, he was very surprised to find out who we were. Being greeted with a warm welcome was nice. Being greeted with a shelter from the elements was even nicer.
Day 6
That was the first night since I started this pilgrimage that I actually slept worth anything.
As Sol broke the horizon with his presence, I woke to multitudes of people bustling back and forth, preparing for departure. Coming out of the shelter that was provided to us pilgrims, leaving the out cold bodies of Lily and Eon where they slept, I was greeted by a strange looking creature. It had a long face, a pair of side facing eyes, two large humps on its back, six triple jointed legs, and covered in light brown hair that looked like sand at first glance. It looked similar to one of the animals that we used on the farm, but more… monstrous? I guess? It was different was all I could think of when I saw it.
Turns out, there were multiple of those things. And it takes about three of those things per sleigh to pull them across the sand. Come to find out that this group of people is called a caravan, and multiple caravans tend to band together when traveling long distances, strength in numbers and whatnot. Each caravan is named after the group leader to keep things simple. This caravan’s leader is named Joshua, usually referred to as Joshua’s group. Not very creative, but its effective I must say.
Not much longer after Sol rose, everyone was set and ready to go, my two current traveling companions included, groggy as they were. As everything began moving, we finally had a moment to sit down and talk to Joshua. We explained that we were on a pilgrimage, and what we had been through to this point. Including the Chimera. He simply chuckled at that and said something along the lines of, “welcome to the real world”.
As we explained that our destination was towards the Gaians, Joshua offered to give us a ride to one of their fringe settlements, to which we wasted no time accepting. The Sand sleigh rocked gently back and forth as it was dragged along by the long faced creatures. Come to find out those are Faerys raised by the Faithless, never becoming a fairy, but never being corrupted. This Fae was called a cameldon, apparently it has it’s origins on the other side of the world, but being from Sol’s domain, they appeared here over time. As they walked forward, the sand sleigh would jump forward slightly, come to a rest, and jump again as the Cameldon’s pulled ahead again, causing an rather calming rocking motion.
By the end of the day, the forests of Gaia were starting to come into view. Though Sol was getting ready to bid farewell to us, so we decided to camp for the day. Time to set up.
Day 7
That brings us to today, all of these few days was actually written today. Not much has happened so far, aside from the forests getting bigger in view as time goes by. If anything else happens, I’ll make sure to write it down.
Closing the journal, I looked forward to the ever growing green, I stored the fountain pen that came with the journal. And an inkwell. Starting to think that it wasn't a person who gave me these items. Looking out at the view in front of me, I wondered what was in store for me next.