[indent][color=#A4A4A4]A desert, very dead; dead in name, dead to anyone or anything. For the first time in the longest time, a wind whistled over the sand, jostled the dunes, and led a bubble on its path. Suspended at its center, a trigonal gem caught the light and glinted back, green and pink, in its persistent drift to the center of the desert.[/color]
[center]______[/center]
The wind had died and the sun was unrepentant so she shook off the hood of her poncho, stifling a twinge of fear. Hieroglyphics crowded the monolith, giving off a faint white iridescence where they passed over panels popped, conspicuously, out of place. And she couldn’t possibly read all of them, all them that hadn’t left a first impression. The meaning of four border-sharing quadrilaterals turned onto their sharpest points — the diamond shapes — was the intergalactic symbol of imminent destruction. Forcibly engraved into every planet at the cost of everything there.

Cat’s Eye Tourmaline thought[i], Long live Her Clarity,[/i] and the spite hardened her resolve and her hope, enough to enter this ruined, rotting place at her own risk.[/indent]