[right]Those who seek even if they do not know what (or where) it is that they are seeking.
Those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them.”
[color=gray]- Erin Morgenstern, [i]Starless Sea[/i][/color][/right]

The storm whipped at the strider’s crystal skin, thin scratches splayed across its mass with every passing grain of sand. The sun, far above, may as well not have existed through the weight of the desert above. Entire dunes collapsed over from the gale that threatened to drag the strider with it. Their body rattled through it all, glowing eyes desperately swung around, looking for their companion.

There was some colossal moving structure vanishing into the sand on the north horizon, hazy through a hundred tons of sand dragged upon the air. There was blood here, quickly drying and quickly covered over where the goblin once sat. But there was no corpse, it was as though they had simply vanished. A harmonization, lost to the wind. Another, a desperate call hoping for a response. Nothing but the howling wind and the deep dark.

Nothing but the great breaking wheel on the north horizon. Faster than the strider could ever be, its trail obscured rapidly by the falling sands. Nothing but a direction to travel, and the hopes of escaping the hell of the desert. The hopes of finding companionship once more, as short-lived as it was, rested on that horizon. Now that the strider had been exposed to a world beyond its imagination, one of language and creatures and cooperation, its mind spun with possibilities beyond bare animal instinct.

It was enough to, at last, feel full. There was so much to study, so many concepts to consider purely within its own mind. The strider was freed from the trepidations of the sand, invigorated for a journey, and given a goal. Travel north, and never stop until all is well. It began to walk, step after step through the sandstorm as it considered the possibilities of language.

As the sun slowly emerged from the clouds of sand and the wind died down, it considered the utility of names. It named the fine grain on the ground, it named the wind, it named the sky and the sun and the stars that rose in the night. And then it considered what you could do with those names. It needed some way to string them together, something conjunctive. It needed active descriptors, ways to identify what the named substances were doing and names for those actions. It had never felt so full before in its life.

The formation of language spun around in its mind until suddenly, a drop of liquid impacted on the crest of their head. They stopped, suddenly confused, and they looked up at the sky. Nothing but the endless sandstorm; they lowered their head again and – once more, another drop, this time on their back. They spun around to see nothing, and looked up once more, and this time they could see the source.

Drop after drop of blood, like the strider had seen on the goblin, began to pour down and batter the sandstorm to a temporary halt. It sizzled into steam on the hot sand, the world filling with a deep hissing noise as the blood-storm began. The strider, confused, looked down at the sand and the residue left behind by each droplet. It wasn’t sure if this was real, but it felt real enough. It sat and pondered on this development as, in the divot between two dunes, blood began to collect.

It looked down at the pool, and for the first time, it saw its reflection. It startled back, terrified it had been ambushed by some other strider, but was surprised when the strider in the pool of blood jumped back as well. It tentatively approached once more, and poked at the expanding pool with its arm. The apparition poked back. It startled back once more, and the creature in the pool also jumped back.

Then, the strider began to realize what was going on. It tilted its head, and stretched out its arm to look at it. The reflection mirrored the action, and a single thought went through its head; [i]that’s me?[/i]. It splashed an arm into the pool, and the reflection broke up into waves. Fascinated, it sat down and watched the blood until it stilled again. There was so much to study, and so little time to do so.

[hider=ITS NAME IS NOT JAXXX]

The strider is left behind when Jaxx is sucked up by the cycle. It sees the cycle on the northern horizon, and with nothing else to do, it begins to head that way. It ponders language on its way and gets a nice feast out of the whole affair. It’s wanderin’ along all fine and fancy when the blood rain comes.

It sees itself for the first time ever, reflected in a pool of blood and it freaks out at first. Then it quickly figures out that the reflection is it. We end with it sitting and pondering this while being blood rain’d on.[/hider]