The wind blew hard across the desert landscape. The wind seemed to come in giant waves, covering everything, devouring everything, letting nothing it touched survive. One of the benefits of already being dead was, naturally, not being able to die again except superficially, or indeed the lack of ability to sustain any meaningful injuries at all, but Tavros Nitram still preferred to stay indoors with the zephyrs started. There were more than an enough ancient temples to make this easy; old puzzles, all long since plundered of their interests and merits. The sand was miserable; it was painful when it hit him full force, and even when there wasn't a storm, it was unbearably hot. Sometimes Tavros would consider leaving the Land of Sand and Zephyr, and finding a more pleasant land in a dream bubble. He knew he never would though; he felt attached to his planet and its gecko inhabitants, for whatever reason. He even felt attached to the sandstorms no matter how unpleasant they were.
How long had it been since he had challenged Vriska? He remembered how he died, clearly; how he had managed to prove his worthlessness once and for all. It was his one chance to save everything, to save the day, but he was just killed before round one could even start. Sometimes he wondered what became of his timeline. In all the others he had met in different bubbles, he could never discover any evidence of his own universe. Only all the other hundreds and thousands and infinities of doomed timelines. Tavros never thought too hard about it, but it still made him feel sad every time it occurred to him.
He stared out the window of the temple and sighed. It didn't look like this zephyr was letting up any time soon. "Maybe I should go see if I can find any friends," he thought to himself. If he left the dream bubble, it would most likely pop, and he would have to try to get another one. He thought of his makeshift hive. There was no sopor, of course, but it felt a little like home. He had spent a long time trying to make it as close to perfect as possible – he was even able to get some posters from other bubbles, with the help of a few alternate Vriskas. He even dissected some temple's traps and was trying to reconstruct them in his respiteblock. It was fun, but wasn't going so well. He would hate if all that popped and he had to start from scratch.
He walked towards the back of the temple. This one had a relatively simple puzzle in it; he just had to push a series of blocks into their corresponding whole, opening up a chamber filled with dancing fires, at the back of which was a tidy sum in boondollars. The fires went out when he retrieved the money, so it was now perfectly safe and trap-free. He wandered towards the back. It wasn't a very large temple, at least not comparatively to the others on the planet. Its rooms were sized to allow a great deal of maneuverability in pushing the blocks and avoiding the fire, and it only contained the three. The building had recently been taken as a home by a tribe of geckos, but they didn't seem to be in at the moment. "I hope they didn't get caught out in the storm," Tavros had thought when he noticed. Not that it mattered too much anyway. The poor fools had the lifespans of socks even normally. There had probably been over a hundred generations of them since he entered the bubble and plundered the temple's treasure… but again, it wasn't something he thought about. It made him sad to know they lived for such a short time. It seemed like there wasn't too much about dream bubbles that didn't make him sad.
He examined some of the geckos' fine art, as they called it. He didn't know too much about art, but it had always seemed to him that gecko art look a lot like meaningless scribbles. In fact, he was pretty sure that gecko art was nothing but meaningless scribbles. Geckos weren't very intelligent. "But at least they try," he concluded, taking pity. "Or, they tried, if they're dead now."
Tavros remembered his purpose for retreating to the back and scrounged the geckos' things. He never used to steal others' things, but now it just really didn't seem to matter. The geckos often carried their things in frog-shaped vases they got from who knows where, so it was quick to see if there were any usable parts for the trap in their things. He found a bolt and something that was probably a rusty gear. It would probably not still be able to turn. It seemed that none of the gears he found could turn anymore.
He walked back to the front of the palace. The zephyr was over, for today. He returned to his makeshift hive and worked.
The zephyr blew on.