Time and again had the Dust Mother passed through the Sea of Bones. Her eyes past two dozen paces saw the sand more as a blur of mirage and dirt. She did not need her eyes to see far enough to the far dunes; she could see farther still.

"We do not travel tomorrow." she said. It was all she had spoken that day. The group of caravaneers she walked with held her in little regard. While proud, she was no one's fool. She had not expected the prestige afforded to her by a Kaimerian clan that may have crossed her paths. The gentle ones took her for a senile grandmother; they were incorrect on both accounts.

[i]They take me for a piteous creature,[/i] she thought, seeing the faces of the humans and the fair one soften as they witnessed her. She moved slowly through the desert, true, but she did not stumble. Neither did the weight of her wares make her sink into the sand. The sun rose and the Dust Mother rested. In the cool light of dusk and dawn she traveled. No more and no less. Yet thrice or more a day, she seemed to walk past an oxen ankle-deep in the dust as its master tried to pry it free from the loose dirt of the dunes.

The last time she had spoken, she had worn out her welcome. The gentle ones were not like her people. Their flesh was as soft as their skulls. Three oxen fell in the first fortnight, and two more in the second. Their pace slowed with each beast they carved apart for spare meat and left at the wayside. More bones to the sea. The gentle ones offered to carry her belongings, but her belongings were few, and the Dust Mother was not coddled. [i]I was carried before my legs had strength to stand, and you shall carry me when that strength leaves them.[/i] Over each beast that fell, she drew up a handful of magenta powder from one of the pouches that hung from her neck and sprinkled it over the corpse, murmuring words in a tongue foreign to the gentle ones. The beasts were loyal. They deserved no burial, but they had done their duty. In turn, someone would say the words when she fell. The Dust Mother had faith enough that wherever this parchment of the gentle ones took her, it would not be so far from her home that none at her graveside would know the words the gods had taught them. She would not buried in her homeland, but she would be buried, and she would be buried well. That solace, at least, she had to believe the gods would grant her.

When the last oxen fell there was fighting between the gentle ones. The Dust Mother sat silent. The sun had boiled their blood and the blood had boiled their minds. One slew another with a sword and was cut in two just as quickly. She sat, walking stick lain across her lap. She held no pretenses about her fate should she come to blows with any of them, least of all the fair one, but a daughter of Kaimeria did not pass into the earth without blood to mark the way. Should any raise their hands against her, she would lame them with a strike as their swords hit their mark. She may need three legs to pass through the dunes, but none alive could make it with one.

As the fair ones screamed over provisions and providence she stared at a lump in the sand. [i]Curious.[/i] She stood and walked over to it, brushing the dirt aside. A half-buried donkey. The bones were not a rarity. The kindness was. [i]Other strangers walk this land,[/i] she mused. Perhaps it was a loyal beast as well. She dusted its corpse and spoke the words, then left it for the crows.

They slept that night, but uneasily. Weakness. The Dust Mother told them as much, and was told in turn to silence herself before she was silenced. So the pretenses to respect for one's elders had passed. So be it. The desert had burned the honor out of better men than these goldmongers.

It was three days later she told them. "We do not travel tomorrow."

They spoke back, a flurry of fair and gentle words. There was still a chance the horses could pull enough provisions to salvage the caravan. They were running low on water as it was, and further delays would mean doom. They needed to keep going - for fear of the sun or a knife to the throat, the Dust Mother could not deduce from their tone. At this distance their faces blurred into one another. She had not bothered to learn their names. Were their names important, she would read them etched into their bones when they fell to the wayside. She spoke again. "We do not travel tomorrow."

At this they broke away, cursing. They made camp for the night, sharing the sparse jerky they had left. The meat was far too foul and tough for the Dust Mother's teeth, which was all as well for her. The blood soup she'd made from the fallen oxen had not been appetizing enough even for the starving gentle ones. So be it. The stomachs and steel alike of the gentle ones were not as strong as in Kaimeria. She drank in silence. The next morning came and the Dust Mother had already risen. She had been at work since the Latecomer Star was aglow in the east, digging a hole into the desert dirt. The first few stabs into the earth were difficult, the soil burned almost as stone. After that they came more easily.

The fair one shook his head. "You are mad."

"The bones speak. We do not travel today." she said back, simply.

She dug. They packed their things and left her in the sun. The woman did not have the strength to dig deeply. They may have had the strength to dig enough for all of them, had they lain closely and cast their tarps well. There would have been no time nor energy for the horses. The horses were dead the moment they breathed the dust of the Bone Sea.

The Dust Mother laid her blankets over her and laid down in the shallow grave, resting her eyes as the desert sun rose high in the sky, then darkened, then went out completely. It was two hours after dawn, and the sandstorm raged two hours more. When the winds died down she rose slowly, shaking the dirt from her tarp. She went onwards.

She did not sprinkle the twilight dust on the bodies of the caravaneers. They had not died with honor. She spared a touch for the horses, who had served their duty, even to fools, and pressed on.

The inclines grew sharper, and for a moment the Dust Mother let herself doubt. Perhaps it was her time. Then the moment passed, like a cloud across the desert sun, and she was steady once more. What strength was left to her was enough. Exusia. Exusia. It was a soft land, she was sure, but a soft land was better than none, and children nursed on sweetwater could be made to stand the taste of iron. Seventeen sons and a daughter had she born on the surface of Deadwood; seventeen sons and a daughter had she lain beneath its dust. It had been long ago since her womb quickened, before the last war, and before the one before it. She would bear no more children. But she may yet make a home for some. There was that. There was that.

The Dust Mother reached the encampment ten days after the caravaneers drowned in living sand. The guards did not raise their weapons as they had to the others. Even in a land of witches, ones like the Dust Mother did not draw immediate suspicion. She raised a crooked hand to her hood and drew it back, eyeing the two. Hmph. Gentle ones. There was no courage to be had in numbers, and she had found precious few of their kind who had true iron in them. "I come to seek foreign lands," she spoke, drawing forth the paper from her parcel. She could not read the text, but knew the honor of the one that had given it to her. The guards exchanged a look and let her pass, hobbling along with her stick, the dirt of the Bone Sea thick upon her clothes.

Hmph. A bastard's collection lay before her. A son of stone stood taller than the rest, a mountain made to walk and breathe. Strength of oxen in that one, but strength of iron? This was yet unknown. A man had brought his beast in with him, a horse well-groomed. A fair one. Perhaps he knew of loyalty, then, or the least of duty, insomuch as his kind did. The others had left their beasts to graze. Perhaps this was a waking beast. The Dust Mother could've told once, but her eyes had dimmed in her decades. It was no matter. A small husk stood before her, armored in its own skin. She had seen some of their kind before, she remembered. Her third-born had quarreled with them once. She gave him a terse nod and no words further. A laughing man, but he was not dressed in motley. There was something beneath it, yes, something like iron, but perhaps not quite. A godly man, she could tell, though she doubted the power that rested in the altars of the gentle ones. A harrowed man sang to himself, a blade at his belt finer than any of the piecemeal armor he wore. The Dust Mother scowled. It was a fool of a child who kept a toy in better shape than his waterskins, though she could see he was bloodied at a glance. The gentle ones were full of fool's confidence. A girl sat alone with an artificer's arms to her. She had the trinkets of false gods about her neck, and a weapon of false strength across her lap. Another girl sat alone but apart from the other. Her stomach was bare, but even the Dust Mother's dimming eyes spotted no scars about them. Her hips were too thin and her posture too sure. This one was no mother, yet garbed as one. The fashion of the gentle ones perplexed her on the best of days and irritated her all the rest. [i]If you have no scars to bare to the desert sun, cover your flesh. Seventeen-and-one cuts across my stomach, and not a one on yours.[/i] Still something in the two girls had some semblance of strength, even if the Dust Mother detected a distinct lack of smack-marks to the tops of their skulls. Two stared at the parchment on the table, as if the writings of men too green to leave their porcelain towers was worth a moment's time. A suckling boy gabbered at them. [i]If she opens her bed to you, runt, then it will be tough to say which of the two of you is more piteous.[/i] The last looked to be the scion of goliaths - good, strong folk, if no Kaimerians - and the sole one the Dust Mother seemed to feel an initial flicker of respect for. She sat quietly. Battle-bloodied. Before the Dust Mother spied the mark across her back, she had an inkling of the girl's history. The Dust Mother had seen slavers, killers, lovers, singers, poets, dancers, spies, and crooks. They walked differently, held themselves apart. This one carried the weight of too many. [i]It is not the weight of the spear that bends her back so young,[/i] The Dust Mother mused. [i]This one carries the iron that should run in her blood.[/i]

The Dust Mother had rarely been in the company of so many gentle ones, and even more rarely enjoyed said company. "Pardons if I am late," she spoke in their tongue, a touch out of practice if serviceable. "The others were lost at sea."

The apology was a formality she doubted the little ones still held to. Guest right was important, even if not to the "gentle" ones. She could hardly expect herself to be called late either, given that it seemed most of the lot had been born a few hours before she found the tent. 

The old woman's tone was curt but firm. Late she may have been, but these unbloodied ones seemed to be wasting the luxury of time the Dust Mother had not possessed for a decade, perhaps more. She sat near the front, leaning on her stick, the necklace of bones clattering quietly as she rested.

The children needed to hush. There was work to be done.