Shlp…shlp…shlp…shlp…
The soft whispering crunch his sandals made through the sifting sand sounded just like a loaf of bread being broken open. Bread... His stomach growled irritably at the thought… How long had it been since his last meal?
"Three… four days?" The rasp in his own voice startled him with its harshness. With a grimace of disapproval, the young man ran his tongue over his cracked lips. Salt? Eyes widened from between the folds of the scarf wrapped around his head as he poked his tongue back out to affirm the taste. Blood. His lips were bleeding. Damn it.
"Damn it…" Faris called out mildly as he continued to drag his sandals through the golden grains of sand. The blazing overhead sun refracted off the millions of tiny mirrors embedded in each crystal as they churned under his feet to surround the traveler in a constant cadence of jittering light. The lights, rather than highlight him against the background, only served to further blend the solitary figure into the vast, glittering space around him. On all four sides, Faris was surrounded by enormous walls of the crystalline sand curving about him in the valley between the dunes. The sole disruption of the glassy mounds was a line of footprints trailing behind the lone shape swaddled head to toe in cloth.
And what a shape he cut. The yellow Keffiyeh that he had tied about his face to block the sun rested its well-worn edges against the dull red of the desert robes shielding every inch of his body from the merciless heat. Only the sharp whites surrounding the coffee-colored irises below the wrinkled brow could be seen from the gaps in the cloth wrapped about his face. Faris continued plodding forward, scowling to bear the tension in his hamstrings as he began to ascend the other dune. His knees were forced above his waist with each near-vertical step as he continued hiking, keeping both his gloved hands clenched about the straps crisscrossing his chest from the enormous rucksack strapped across his back despite the obvious difficulty of the climb. He couldn't afford to drop the bag, after all.
"Not again. Nope, nope, nope." Faris grunted out, accentuating each nope with a heel slammed into the sand. Last time, the thing had popped free of the plastic latches holding the top shut, spilling the books all over the sand. His frantic scramble to recover the loose sheets had made him chase each one individually.
"Probably looked like a damn fool…" Faris mused, then burst out into laughter.
Faris had an odd laugh. It consisted of two sharp bursts, in rapid succession. The first was often very low, a deep belly laugh that would have seemed strange coming from his short body. Next, the second blast came at a peculiarly high pitch, almost like a keening puppy. This second shriek was often significantly louder than the original, increasing the oddity tenfold. Ha-HA! One-two punch, and he would be done.
Done with his brief ejaculation of amusement, Faris resettled his gaze to the rapidly-approaching ridge of the dune. And what lies on the other side, I wonder?
"Why, it depends on who you ask, dear Faris." Faris chimed in response to his own monologue.
"Were you to ask of Epicurus," He tossed his head with a backwards nod to one of the compilations resting within his rucksack, "Absolutely nothing." He continued trudging on.
"And of Ignatius? Everything, apparently." He cackled again, Ha-HA! "And where are the Jesuits now? Am I the only one still trudging on with the Lord's word weighing down my body and uplifting my soul?" With a discomforted jerk, he adjusted the rucksack, jolting a copy of King James' Bible against the other texts within.
"Perhaps not mine, but I'll gladly sing His praises if anyone wishes that needlessly-heavy book." Faris muttered dispiritedly as the crest of the dune came level with his eyes.
Faris stopped. His feet sank to surround his ankles in sand, freed to the forces of gravity by his halt in motion. What cause did he have to cross the ridge tonight? Faris scowled at the sandy ridge seductively beckoning him to cross over its supple curve. His eyes followed the line of the ridge as it continued to his right, wincing as the orange flare of the setting sun split his vision white. It was getting dark.
His eyes still dazzled from the sun, Faris sank to his knees in the sand. He tossed himself back against the ridge, gently laying the rucksack beside him as he did so.
"I defy you, oh tempting foe," Faris addressed the ridge he was laying against in a haughty tone. "I shall rest here tonight, for you have nothing to offer me on the other side of your bulk." The ridge did not respond. Faris sighed, unsatisfied with his opponent's silent admission of defeat. Perhaps there may be something other than endless sand on the other side of the dune. He may run into a patch of Sticker-fruit if he were lucky. Sticker-fruit was his name for the delicacies clinging desperately to the cactuses that all-too-infrequently dotted the unchanging landscape of the desert. Opuntia ficus-indica was their proper name, if the textbooks were to be believed.
And were they? Faris' nose crinkled in intense displeasure at the thought.
What if the books weren't true? That would mean, and Faris turned to rest his right cheek against the sand to stare at the rucksack as he mused, that everything he had read had been a lie. The collection of philosophers' essays, the biology books, the Bible, the various stories, and on and on until the rucksack was fitting to burst at the seams. Those books and Nani's stories were his only links to the world outside of this endless desert. If those were lies, then his existence was worth no more than these grains of the sand that, for all he knew, comprised the sum of existence. Faris' eyes blinked once in sad consideration, as he fingered his grandmother's charm hanging from his neck, then slowly closed. A slow smirk curved his lips crooked as he stretched luxuriously.
"Will there be an objective truth just for your piece of mind, dear Faris?"
In any case, the nature of this reality didn't matter to him. His path was to the South. And why was that?
"Porque la abuela lo dijo." (Because grandmother said so) Faris grunted out, folding his hands across his chest. And why she did that? "Je ne sais pas." (I do not know) The French flowed as easily from his lips as the Spanish before it. He was getting better at his French, though he still found himself inadvertently mixing in Spanish words for the gaps left by the textbook.
Faris scratched the stubble growing on his chin as he pondered how he was to complete his mastery of the language when only having a first-year textbook in his bag. Well, that, and the text of that play with the sad little girl on the front. The title of that one roughly translated to The Miserable Ones.
"Ainsi," (Thus) Faris mumbled out as he rolled to his side and unlatched the plastic latches holding the leather top of the rucksack closed, "Pendant ces dix-neuf ans de torture et d'esclavage, cette âme monta et tomba en même temps." (During those nineteen years of torture and slavery, did this soul rise and fall at the same time) He extended a palm into the dark interior of the bag, feeling about amongst the engorged interior with searching fingers. "Hah!" Faris' fingers first traced the symbol burnt into the front of one of the books, then clamped down about the edges of the worn journal. With his other palm braced over the top of the bag to prevent any other books from spilling out, Faris extracted the book. "Il y entra de la lumière d'un côté et des ténèbres de l'autre!" (Light entered on one side, and darkness on the other) Faris crowed out, his delighted tone entirely contradicting the solemn words coming from his lips.
It hadn't quite been nineteen yet, though. Not by his count. Faris flipped open the book and began paging through, seeking the page that he had left off from. The small journal, fitting almost perfectly into the niche his hands made when he placed the sides of his palms together, had its yellowed sheets nearly turned black by the characters covering every page from top to bottom. Faris continued leafing through, eventually coming to a page with black numbers proclaiming 30 from the bottom.
This page was also covered in markings, identical in form to all of the pages behind it. However, this text was different from any of the languages filling the other books within the rucksack. The only figures fighting for space upon this page were squares. Many squares. 8 rows of 3, to be exact.
Faris reached back to the spiral binding of the journal, snaking out the grey stick of graphite contained within it and bringing it close to the page. His eyes squinting to concentrate on the square in the rapidly-graying light of the sunset, Faris drew a single line connecting the top-left corner of the box to the bottom-right, making it identical to the rest of the squares covering the page.
Each square had been begun with an initial vertical line standing alone. On the next day, Faris would draw a horizontal line from the top of this initial line. The following day, Faris would draw a parallel to the starting line, this time beginning it from where the previous day's horizontal line had left off. And so on he would continue, until he had finished a box shape and slashed it with the diagonal line, indicating a passage of five days.
"And that makes five more," Faris muttered out as he finished, closing the journal and returning the pencil to its place in the binding of the journal. His recording of the day done, Faris replaced the journal into the rucksack.
Snapping the latches shut with a sharp click, Faris laid the rucksack again beside him as he returned his hands to their folded position behind his head. "And now… to sleep." Faris mused as his leaden lids slipped closed. "Perchance to dream, as the prince said." With the poet's words echoing about his head, Faris succumbed to the black fog filling his mind.
It was a dreamless sleep.
"Squee!"
Jolted into the mire between sleep and wakefulness by the sound, Faris pondered the interjection. Squee? Faris frowned with his eyes shut. What is squee? His brow twitched as he browsed through his mental library of words. Squee did not ring bells in any of the languages he knew. What an oddity…
The next sensation he had was of moisture. Dank and stinking wetness covered his eyelids. Almost as if in response to his recognition, a second mist of hot air blew over his face. Growling in disgust, Faris slapped a palm across his face. The thin slime of the condensation about his face stuck with nauseating strength to his fingers, binding the digits together with the mucus. Ugh. "What the hell is this?" Faris barked aloud as his sleepy eyes snapped open. And with a wail of terror at what he saw, Faris brought himself screaming into full-awareness.
The sun was shut out in the penumbra cast by the figure perched over his face. Almost glowing in the encompassing blackness, the empty eye-sockets of a skeletal countenance leered at him from inches away. The beast again huffed a blast of hot air over his face in response to his scream, mucus pouring from the eye-sockets to drip down onto his face. The goo ran in rivulets about his face, some of it dripping into his open mouth.
"Uaaauuhgh!" Faris choked out as he attempted to scream again, gagging on the noxious taste of the beast's slime as it flooded his throat. With a speed fueled by panic, Faris wrenched his arm out of the sand to slam into the face of the beast. His calloused fingers thrust into the eye sockets of the monster as he flailed sand about the top of the dune.
"Squeeeeeee!" The monster staggered back at the unexpected assault, toppling over the edge of the ridge and dragging Faris with it. With his fingers lodged in the viscous channels of the beast's barren eye-sockets, Faris could only continue to yell helplessly as the much-larger creature dragged him down the opposite side of the dune.
This is it, death has arrived. Faris clawed at the sand with his free hand as he continued his headlong descent on his back, the scalding sand searing his spine raw as it streamed into his clothing from the collar of his robes. This is Thanatos, he has come for me at last.
With a somewhat anti-climactic wumph, the pair came to a halt at the base of the dune. Faris kept his eyes tightly closed while he waited for his soul to be torn from his body… And waited… And waited?
"Squeee!" Death's call rang again, this time tinted with a slight edge of confusion.
"Wha-…?" Faris cautiously opened a single eye to look at his executioner.
Pink. Death's visage was pink. Faris became aware of the hideously clammy sensation enveloping his hand. With a yell of disgust, Faris wrenched his fingers from what he thought were Death's eye-sockets. With an appreciative grunt, Death vigorously shook its head from side to side. The spray of mucus from the beast's recently-vacated nostrils further blanketed Faris' face in slime.
"Blargh!" Faris spewed out a cry of disgust as he rolled to his knees, grabbing a handful of sand as he did. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Faris began to scrub his face with the sand. When his face had exchanged the viscous goo for tender rawness from the rough treatment, Faris was finally able to view his attacker.
He recognized it immediately. Sus Scrofa. Where this strain had turned pink, however, he had no idea. The biology textbook listed them as being predominantly darker in color, yet this creature's long fur was unmistakably rose-colored in hue. Twin tusks gleamed white from under the grizzled lip of the beast, menacing him with their ivory edges. The squat legs carrying the rotund body were powerfully muscular, fit for the deadly sprints that these creatures were feared for. Or at least, what the book feared them for. Faris himself was too frightened to consciously be afraid of the beast. His reasoning was restricted to a simple Wha…wha…what…? echoing about in his own head.
With his hands outstretched in a futile attempt to keep the beast at bay, Faris slowly raised himself to a kneeling position before the beast.
"Stay…?" Faris was unsure if he was ordering the beast or his bowels to abjure movement. Nonetheless, the beast refrained from impaling him as he climbed to his feet. "Good. Now…" Faris slowly eked out his words as he turned his body back to the South, keeping his head turned backwards to keep the monster in his field of vision. "Don't move!" Faris screamed out behind him as his limbs churned into movement. His head snapped forward to guide his panicked flight, taking in the view on the southern side of the dune.
He stopped.
It couldn't be possible. He was afraid to blink, for fear that the image would vanish in the interstice of darkness. The landscape poured out in front of him in a dizzying plethora of color, the glittering carpet of golden sand finally ending a short distance away. The colors! Faris' eyes began to inexplicably water at the eruption of chromatic light in front of him. The rolling emerald hills were bathed in the vivacious white light of the morning sun. Like a great sentinel, an enormous mountain rose from the green hills to rupture the soft white clouds interspersed throughout the blue-jay sky covering the whole land. It was just like the books. No, better, because it was real.
Faris could not move. He couldn't think. He could hardly see, come to think of it. The only colors he had seen in the entire time of his travel, no, his entire life, had been the blinding gold of sand and the muted blue of the desert sky. To suddenly be confronted with a barrage of color, of the blues of the rivers crisscrossing the land in veins of cerulean current, the dark earthy brown of the powerful trees stretching upwards to tickle the heavens, the jade reflection of the gleaming dew on the omnipresent foliage; it was almost too much to bear.
"Elysium…" Faris stumbled forward, his hands outstretched to the beckoning paradise.
"Elysiu-UUGH!" Faris' back bent double as the forgotten beast behind him slammed its head into the meet of his spine and hips. With a soft sigh of agony, Faris toppled to the ground. The beast snorted once, then trotted in a slow circle about its vanquished enemy. It came to a halt in front of Faris, depositing its flabby rear on the ground as it cocked its head to look down at him. With a gentle snort, the beast leaned forward and dragged a long, slimy tongue across Faris' forehead. Faris looked up at the satisfied expression of the beast with a dour expression, then burst out in laughter. Ha-HA!
The wild boar jerked off of its hindquarters in shock at the sound, baring its tusks at the offending creature as Faris picked himself back up to his feet. "You are some little bugger, aren't you?" Faris was delighted at the immediate reaction of the pig to his voice, the flabby ball of pink fur immediately relaxing its tense shoulders upon being spoken to.
Faris laughed, Ha-HA! "But you are not Death, I think." Faris extended his hand forward to the boar.
"My name is Faris. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance." The rose-colored boar curiously sniffed the palm of his hand. With a perceivable consideration, the boar licked his sand-covered fingers. A smart monster, this one was.
"You have my thanks," Faris' eyes softened in genuine appreciation as he gazed down at the beast running its tongue over his extended digits, "You brought me to death, and from it to life." He couldn't help but smirk at the archaic words tumbling from his lips. Indeed, though, this pig had inadvertently brought an end to his desert life.
Faris again turned to stare at the lush land before him. The land stretched before him, for miles and miles. Beyond the boundaries of his vision, Faris could still guess at the hints of craggy mountains in the distance. Faris' heart swelled again. His Nani… if she had been able to see this… A lump formed in Faris' throat as he clenched the charm hanging about his neck with trembling fingers. No, he wouldn't do that. She was beyond the clutches of the desert now.
Faris swiveled back around to the pig. "Your name shall be Thanat-" Faris' voice trailed off awkwardly as he stared at the vacated space where the pig had been sitting. It was gone.
Stiffed by a pig, go figure. Faris moodily kicked at the sand by his feet. Well, it was not like it could actually understand what he was saying. It was just a dumb animal, incapable of higher-level thinking. The book had said so- The books! Faris turned again to the North for his rucksack, and only had time to let out a quick yelp of panic before-
"Nooo-OOF!"
Faris lay gasping for breath on the ground. The swine perched on his chest did nothing to aid his laborious breathing, despite its furious lashing of his face with its slimy tongue. A few feet away, miraculously still latched despite being dragged through the sands by the beast, his rucksack lay with its precious contents unharmed. Groggily pushing the pig off of him, Faris crawled over to his rucksack and shouldered it. Placing both hands on the ground, he again brought himself to his feet. After a brief dusting-off, Faris turned to address the pig.
"Your name shall be Thanatos," The pig cocked its head inquisitively at his words. "Can you dig it?"
"Squee!"
"Then we are off." Faris put the desert to his back and strode towards the beckoning scene before him, the pink boar close to his heels. "Let's see what this world has to offer."