Chapter 3: Desert Aurora

Aurora stared at the desert before her. Its warmth seeped into her, and she felt instantly felt at ease. She smiled to herself out of simple happiness of being where she was. She could not imagine a better place than the Mal’kai dessert, and she didn’t understand why people called it barren. It was full of life, and she could feel all of it around her. She had a hard time explaining it to people, but she could feel everything across the desert when she was connected to it.

She had discovered this connection when she had for the first time ventured into the desert, and now the connection was a part of her identity. After a few jobs she had become known as the ‘Sand girl’, and she sort of liked the name. She didn’t know where from it had originated, but it suited her well.

Shaking of her old memories, Aurora grabbed her board and set off to ride the dunes. She felt a thrill of exhilaration as soon as she was sliding down the slopes and up the dunes to go down again. It was like nothing else in her life, pure fun. Aurora had grown up in an environment where everything that you did had some meaning, and you were almost forced to take pleasure in it since you couldn’t find pleasure in anything else.

Sand boarding was different since she did it just for fun and it didn’t serve any other purpose other than her enjoyment. Sometimes she competed with her friends, but if you compared her skill to theirs they were incompetent. Some of the travellers that arrived in town tried the sport out, and some became quite good. Those travellers also compared it to a sport called ‘snow-boarding’ but Aurora had no idea what it was.

Today, Aurora was thinking about trying something new. Her boarding skills were quite good but she wanted to see if she could board and use her sand powers at the same time. She had often thought of doing this but she had rarely had time, and she didn’t feel like showing off her boarding and magical skills at the same time. After all, her friends could come to the conclusion that she always used sand powers to make them fall and to help herself.

Deciding to try it, Aurora raced down her current dune to try her powers on the next dune. The air billowed around her face as she raced down the slope, and she crisscrossed against the rocks that covered the dune’s surface. She gathered in her mind the sands layout and was about to change it when she felt a sudden disturbance. Then at the same time something fast and furious knocked her off her board.

Aurora fell with a loud thump into the sand and would have scrapped herself quite badly if the sands weren’t so soft for her. Still, when she finally stopped rolling down the hills she was covered in sand and her clothes were torn and dirty. She stood up to shake some of the sand off of herself when she saw what had knocked her over.

It was a slender but ragged clad boy. His clothes were mainly leather, and he was covered in sand. He wore baggy pants and had a belt chockfull of items. He wore a simple shirt that had a few buttons opened at the front. Around his torso was another belt from which a sword was sheathed, and on his shoulders a light cape. His head was uncovered except for a pair of goggles that covered his eyes, which drew even more attention to his long and spiky hair of dark green.

All in all, he didn’t appear odd to Aurora except for his skin tone and his stance. It was obvious that he didn’t come form these parts, which only fuelled Aurora’s anger at being knocked down. She quickly strode towards him as he picked up his board.

“What the hell was that?” she raged at him “look where the bloody hell your going, you moronic idiot!” she continued as she stood face to face with the young boy. The boy in question looked quite surprised at her appearance.

“I’m very sorry, but I couldn’t see you” he apologized quickly “but you were going awfully fast so I had no time to stop myself or to warn you.” As Aurora looked at him, he did seem quite apologetic about knocking her down, but she still felt angry. She had been in tune with the desert and when that connection was broke abruptly, she went into a foul mood.

To make sure that she didn’t look like a fool, she decided to stampede off to her board and to totally ignore the idiot who had knocked her over. She went of into the dunes once more. Again she felt the desert around her, and her elation rose. Now she was in place of perfect bliss and she moved on instinct, as if her mind and body were one. There was no thinking or planning, everything seemed to happen on its own.

Suddenly, she felt a different presence near her. As her mind awakened to deal with this anomaly, she realised that it was the boy whom she had seen before. Her mind instantly coupled him with what had happened before, and in a sort of animalistic way she attacked him. Suddenly feeling that she was going to hurt him, she made the sands trip him over. The sands obeyed her will and struck out to knock the boy of his board.

Aurora broke the connection with the desert. She felt terrified that she had subconsciously attacked somebody who had done nothing wrong. Before she had ordered the sands to only knock the boy over, she had seen a vision of the sands turning into spikes and impaling the boy instantly.

As she felt suddenly nauseous she fell of her board. She fell and bounced and rolled of the sand, but again it was gentle to her, even more so than before. A gentle creature that caressed her fall, making it feel as if she had fallen on feathers.

She got up almost immediately after having fallen to see if the boy was allright. As she looked around to see where he had fallen, she saw a body lying on the sands. She rushed forward, anxious to know if she had hurt somebody out of pure annoyance. As she came closer, she heard nothing nor saw anything from the boy that made it appear as if he was all right. Then, when she had come very close she heard a loud groan from the boy. He rolled over to look straight into her eye.

“That hurt!”, he complained loudly to her. Then, he rose up from the sands and brushed it off his clothes. Aurora could barely see the difference between the sand on his clothes before he fell, after he fell, and after he had brushed the sand off.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to do it... well, kinda”, she finished lamely whilst wringing her hands behind her back and looking down at her own feet.

“Uhuh, from your expression it looked like you were trying to kill me! Guess your not that powerful huh?”

“Hey! Listen here you asshole, I could squash you like a bug if I wanted to! The only reason I didn’t do it before is because you looked so pathetic!” she vented at him and then spun around to stride away to her board.

“Yeah? Well about me saying sorry before? You can forget about it! I’m happy that I knocked you over, bitch!” he responded, “and by the way, your sand boarding sucks!” he added while she was striding away.

Aurora stopped short. She was really angry with this foreigner for not just insulting her, but for also doubting her skill and power. It had been a very long time since she had felt such anger, and she had never been very angry in the desert. The sands seemed to feel her anger, and somehow fuelled it with its power.

Aurora started shaking with the power building up inside of her. If he says one more thing, just one more thing, she repeated to herself over and over, while shaking trying to control her anger and power. If he says just ONE more thing, I’ll snap!

“And another thing! Your town sucks!” he shouted with his hands cupped around his mouth. And as the words left his mouth, Aurora turned around with hate in her eyes. The mere look of her made the boy stop and stare. She raised her fist and rushed at him, and so did the sands.

Aurora was completely blinded with fury, and the sands obeyed her will. She stopped short in her rush and hit the thin air with her fist. The sands accelerated in the direction of her punch, which was of course aimed at the boy. The sands would have hit him square in the chest and broken his, if he hadn’t raised his board as some kind of protection.

As the power and anger left Aurora, she felt better. She felt a tiny bit of guilt at hitting the boy, but she felt mostly relieved at having released her anger. It was often the case with her emotions that she just needed to get them out, and this was usually how her anger expressed itself. Usually she had less power, and would often strike att a wall but here in the desert she had nothing to strike other than whoever she was angry with.

Still, she had to check on how the boy was. Hopefully, he wasn’t dead but just slightly bruised. Hopefully he bit his tongue, she heard herself think. Grimacing at her own evil, she nonetheless went over to the pile of sand to check on her victim. But as she arrived at the sand pile, she couldn’t see the boy.

Assuming that he was trapped underneath the sand, Aurora opened her mind just to make sure. Almost overshadowed by the power of the sands, she saw the aura of the boy. Then she slowly told the sands to part, and so they did. When she next opened her eyes, Aurora was once again staring into the face of the boy.

“Right, I take it back. You can fight”, he conceded to say once most of the sand had fallen out of his mouth. Oddly, he didn’t seem to angry with the entire situation, only slightly annoyed at once again being covered in sand. As he proceeded to once again brush of the sand, Aurora started laughing.

“What?” he asked bewildered

“Eh, it’s just that every time you try to brush off it doesn’t get any better” she told him in between fits of laughter, “and… hehe… you should have seen your face… when you came out of the sand!”, she said before falling down on the ground laughing. After a moment’s perplexion, the boy started laughing as well and they were both soon lying on the ground. Every time they were almost done, they would look at each other’s sandy faces and quaff into another fit of laughter.

“Well, my name’s Fazil” the boy told her when they had finally finished laughing and were lying on the sand staring up at the sky.
“I’m Aurora” she said, “you’re not from here are you?” she asked. At this Fazil rolled over on his side to look at her.

“Nope, but then you don’t exactly look as if you’re from here. You have the skin tan but not exactly the face.” he said to her.

“It’s because I was found in the desert when I was around three. Nobody knew where I came from, so I was left in the streets of the town. I only know about it cause people at the tavern told me” she told him whilst still staring up at the clouds.

“Heh, that’s almost like me” he told her, staring up at the sky “I’m not exactly from the empire, I was found and raised by this nobleman, but he threw me aside for his son later on. So I had lots of time to myself” he concluded.

“Seems like we both had our childhood screwed up, huh”

“Yup” he said. Aurora continued to stare at the sky, enjoying the heat and soaking up the sun. It made her happy and a bit drowsy. As she went into a state of half-consciousness, she once again connected deeper with the sands. Her conciousness raced across the desert, feeling everything around her. Suddenly, she felt an immense anger from around her. The connection broke so abruptly that Aurora opened her eyes with a scream of agony.

“What happened?” Fazil asked as he rushed over to her. He held her in his arms, and she felt slightly relaxed again. Then she threw herself off his grip and started to shake her head.

“Not good, I think something dangerous is coming this way” she told him, her voice revealing how worried she was.
“What could possibly be dangerous to you?” he asked bewildered.

“I don’t know” Aurora started before she felt the danger being even closer. The sands exploded as a creature pounced out of the sands like a shark out of water. It charged itself towards Fazil, and all he could do in the few seconds that it took for the beast to reach him was to stare in terror. Aurora managed to gather her wit before the beast completely killed Fazil, and sent out a wave of sand to veer it of course in midair.

The beast’s path through the air was slightly altered, but as is passed Fazil and missed him, its tail hit the awestruck boy straight in the head.

“Fazil!” Aurora screamed. He lay motionless on the ground, blood seeping from his head. Aurora turned abruptly to leer angrily at the monster that had done this.

It was a giant four-legged creature. Its skin was covered in sandy scales, and its twin-tail whipped around ferociously behind it. Its head was shaped like an arrow, its red eyes stared hungrily at the body of Fazil. It seemed reptilian, and its face was like nothing Aurora had ever seen. A thick skull, with the eyes pointed like an eagle. It also had two tentacle like things that swayed behind the head.

Its forearms were made of almost pure muscle, and several claws protruded from each paw. Its back legs were slightly folded so that it could spring at its victim. It barred its curved fangs at Aurora at she stared at the monster in front of her.

It was a Senaviar, a deadly sand creature that ate anything it met. She had heard tales of them, but she hadn’t meet them in person. She had been told that they often attacked caravans that travelled with a lot of cattle or just a lot of people. Its tail hid a couple of spikes, but she couldn’t remember if they were poisonous or not.

Aurora knew that she faced a fierce creature, but she that didn’t deter her from fighting it. She let the sands into her mind, but this time she controlled it. It took quite a bit of her concentration of her concentration to not succumb to the sands will, but she managed to control it. Then, filled again with power, she stared straight into the Senaviar’s eye. Neither of them blinked.