Sand Mother's Mercy

Demarian Desert - Demaria


 * Rolling dunes spread off into the distance as the hot glow of Demaria's twin suns pound upon the rippled landscape like hammers on a warped anvil. Tracks of small desert animals can be seen on the leeward side of the dune slopes.

For more than a day, naked but for his fur and unarmed but for fang and claw, Whitestripe Sandwalker has wandered the wastes of the Sand Mother Desert. Night has fallen as he clambers up yet another slope in pursuit of the next horizon. But when he gets to the top, he loses his footing in a rut in the dune and tumbles down the other side until he rolls over the collapsed form of another Demarian, breathing raggedly, snout pressed against the sand.

Whitestripe pulls his own snout from the sand, snorts, then sneezes, causing a spray of sand and dust to puff momentarily in the moonlight. He lies there for a moment or two, then tiredly rolls to one side and looks back up the slope towards the other form. "Beloved Mother, you send some odd trials somedays..." he mutters as he tries to make the form out in the semi-darkness.

Sharpeye cries out weakly at the impact, a short and unintelligible string of curses in the native tongue. He coughs and spits sand, the whites of his eyes flashing briefly before they close again. One arm cradled against his side, where by the starlight some fur can barely be seen as matted with dried blood, he lifts the other to brush sand from his whiskers before laying still again.

Whitestripe perks his ears at the faint cry. Eyes narrowing, he sniffs at the air delicately, straining to catch the scent of the other on the faint desert zephyr. He raises his head up, head titled to the side for a moment, thinking, then uses his bound hands to push himself to his feet. Tiredly but steadily, he trudges up the face of the dune to the other one, falling to his knees lightly as he arrives beside the other. He lightly taps the other one on the cheek and asks in a surprisingly conversational tone, "Excuse me, oh most hated of Gleaming Star. Aren't you supposed to be dead and hung right now?"

A moment after Whitestripe taps his face, Sharpeye's eyes shoot open and he lunges up with surprising strength, free arm flailing out. "BLACKTIP!" he screams, voice shrill and hoarse, but loud. "Ru--" his voice cracks and he has to start again. "RUN!" He starts scrambling in the sound, trying to get away from the nearby figure, though he falls back against the dune before he can successfully make it to his feet.

Whitestripe sits there on his haunches, a look of surprise and amazement on his features. "Indeed." He shuffles on his knees up the dune a bit, keeping pace with the other, muttering as he does so. "...dead traitors...crazy people...Mother touched...could use the fluid...maybe bleeding?" He pauses at that thought, then starts using his teeth to undo the bonds tying his wrists together as his ears start flicking about, listening. As he does so, he says around a mouthful of wet leather, "Imperator one, yes? Would you mind shutting up, please? Or at least not yell? Mother can get quite upset if you wake her."

Sharpeye breathes heavily in the intervening silence, letting it stretch for minutes before he finally picks himself back up, this time moving slowly. The starglint off his eyes lessen as they narrow. He leans over as he coughs before speaking up, voice soft this time and barely audible. "Who runs there?"

Moonlight glints off of suddenly twitching whiskers. Through that Demarian equivalent of a grin (and a smaller mouthful of leather now as the bonds start to loosen), the naked figure replies, "Whitestripe Shandwalker. Deshert walker, hunter, shtoryteller, and commonly called..." He pauses from gnawing on the bonds, and his voice drops into a melodically deep theatrical voice as he continues, "...the Crazy one." He flicks his tail in mild greeting after this and returns to gnawing on the bonds. "Shlrr-shelf?"

Sharpeye ponders this for a moment before his head tilts and he suddenly barks a laugh. "Crazy? Crazy!" He looks up at the stars, laughing quietly before his laughs turn to coughs and he makes an effort to stop. "What are you doing? Gnawing your paws off?" He leans forward, peering suspiciously at Whitestripe's silhouette.

Whitestripe shshshshshs suddenly, ears twitching as he pauses to look about for a moment before looking back to the Imperator. Genial eyes a moment ago have flash-hardened to something much more flat and colder. "Must you be so loud, your Excellency? Noise carries in the desert, and if you wake the Mother, then we'll likely both pay for it." He wiggles his wrists a bit, then pulls one free. Nimble fingers rapidly undo the twists and turns of the bonds, and momentarily later, Whitestripe dangles the leather bonds from a hand for the Imperator's perusal. "Bonds. Those in New Alhira thought to commit me to the Mother. Possibly fortunate for them, as the Mother is fickle about all her children." A snuffling sound can be heard for a moment as Whitestripe sniffs the air. "Are your wounds still bleeding?"

Sharpeye shakes his head and shrugs. "No," he answers. Then after a pause he asks, "Who can know?" He shrugs again, letting out a long breath. "I wonder," he says, "what fates I have angered so, to garner so much hatred among the gods and the stars, that to destroy not just me, but my planet entire, silently do they conspire."

Whitestripe chuckles a low laugh, his eyes returning to something more friendly. "Well, not my patriarch at least, if the news reports are valid. Imperator, where are you trying to go? Right now, I mean, not as a metaphysical question."

Sharpeye is silent for a while before he answers, sitting back against the sands and gazing up at the sky. Finally, he says, "I'm not sure. I want to find a transmitter. Leave a message for my mate, for my kits, should luck be so gracious as to spare them this horror. Just some words before this virus sunders my defenses and I succumb." He picks up a handful of sand and tosses it ahead of him. "My cause is lost. I've failed this world, now. Through armies and missiles, our people survive. Against traitors and evil, our people survive. But now we are lost, to something so small my eye cannot perceive." He throws another fistful of sand. "Now our world is lost to us, and there's nothing I can think to do."

Whitestripe mmms, something theatrically wise for a moment. "May I make a suggestion, oh hated one?"

Sharpeye shrugs, sand grains drifting down between the fingers of his outstretched paw. "What's that?" he asks.

Whitestripe's whiskers twitch again in a grin. "Use fewer words. You'll need the water that you're wasting while speaking those speeches." He harumphs, like some old senator preparing to propound on the latest tax levy, then says, "Let's take stock, yes? What do we have." He indicated his naked body with a wave of his hand, then waggles the dangling bonds, setting them aswaying. "That is it for me. Now you. Do you have water?"

"Water," Sharpeye croaks with a faint chuckle. "Oh, yes, I have water." He turns his head toward Whitestripe, teeth flashing white. "You see, I have prayed this night. And since they saw in their wisdom not to grant my wishes before, that Demaria and her people might be saved, I figure they might grant at least this one, small request of mine." He chuckles. "Oh yes, I am sure it shall storm any moment, now. A brief rain to assuage our thirst." He looks back up at the sky. "Though knowing how things go, it's more likely as not to drown us."

The wind begins to grow raucous, a swirling moan that kicks up sand in gritty spirals. Faint, modest dust devils for now, but with the promise of something more dramatic.

Whitestripe's eyes flicker again. "Only one crazy person on this monorail at a time, Imperator. And use fewer words. You've likely lost much water from your wound." His ears suddenly perks at the rising wind, straining...

"Dead and hung?" Sharpeye suddenly asks, ears swiveling. "You said dead and hung, earlier. But this is no afterlife." He snorts, climbing to his feet. "Let's find shelter. There's no shelter, but we'll find some in any case."

Whitestripe also climbs to his feet. "Yes, perhaps we will find some shelter, since you have obviously woken the Mother now." He scans the skies for what visible stars there are, then glances about the dunes, thinking.

Sharpeye lifts his snout to the air, breathing deep. "Water has its scent. Shelter has its scent. Can you smell it?" he asks. "It scents of home."

Whitestripe eyes Sharpeye warily for a moment, then too faces his head into the wind and sniffs at the air delicately.

A new sound comes through the rumbling dissent of the wind: The whining roar of a starfighter's atmospheric turbines as it rockets above the dunes from the north, dodging the thrumming blasts of energy cannons fired by a similar fighter in hot pursuit. The fleeing fighter, bobbing and weaving between spiraling columns of sand whipped into a frenzy by the wind around Sharpeye and Whitestripe, dips its port wing drastically to avoid another shot from the pursuer. Too much dip, however. The wingtip catches in the crown of the dune and suddenly the fighter is spinning out of control, rolling and roaring, sending a rain of whistling shrapnel skyward as it is torn apart while shedding velocity in a fatal series of somersaults along the dunes. Within moments, the ravaged shell of the smoldering fighter is half-embedded in a not-too-distant dune, while the pursuing fighter zooms off into the night sky, its quarry neutralized.

Whitestripe starts laughing.

"Mayhap we pray for gifts from the sky, whence they come we shall not tarry in their use," Sharpeye intones as if quoting something solemn before taking his first steps off toward the crash site.

Whitestripe shakes his head as he too starts sliding down the dune face in the direction of the downed fighter. "I'll stick with the Mother. Fickle, yes, but she's my home." He glances over to the Imperator. "That being said, Thank Altheor. Quick, hated one, quick! The Mother's Voice will strip the meat from your bones!"

"That she may," Sharpeye says morbidly in response as he strides toward the distant dune with renewed vigor, leaning slightly for balance in the wind and uneven footing.

Whitestripe picks up the speed in his walk, breaking into a trot as he pads up and down the dune faces, or along the crests. "The storm is not far off, Imperator. To hurry would be the wise thing!"

"Does it look like I'm just out for a stroll, Crazy One?" Sharpeye growls as he strides along at Whitestripe's side. "I told you I want to send a message, and I'll be involved in no acts of dying until I do."

The swirling maelstrom of sand continues to grow in violence around the two Demarians as they weave their way through a minefield of shrapnel-studded dunes until they can see the tortured remnants of the Demarian starfighter that's now half-buried in a dune. Through the gritty wind, Whitestripe and Sharpeye can make out movement along the hull of the fighter - the pilot, badly injured, crawling from the wrecked cockpit. Blood streaks mark his passage, quickly becoming clotted by sand.

Whitestripe tosses acomment back to the Imperator. "Good. You tend to only get one scene in such acts, and then your script is all used up." He eyes the fallen pilot as the twosome approaches. "Some, it seems, are about to exit regardless."

Sharpeye squints as he tries to make out any of the crafts markings through the cloud of darkness. "Why were they fighting?" he suddenly asks. "War in the skies! Can they still be fighting? They're madder than I!"

"No." Whitestripe, now jogging along, says over his shoulder to the Imperator, "Just scared. Scared of the virus. Scared of being left alone. Scared of the future. Pretty common, really." He points ahead towards the pilot. "Reviled one, do you know any method to sustain this one's life?"

"Who are you?" rasps the pilot, now crouching weakly on the upturned starboard wing, leaning against the battered hull, a plasma pistol aimed unsteadily at the approaching Demarians. "Which side? Speak ... speak! Or be ..." His snout dips and his eyes go a little muzzy, shifting left and right before re-fixing on Sharpeye in the dust-peppered darkness. "Shot."

"There should be a medkit with the pilot's kit in the cockpit," Sharpeye replies quietly to Whitestripe before stopping when the pilot speaks. Eyes darting toward the raised weapon, then toward the pilot's clothing or uniform, Sharpeye slowly raises his hands. "We're all the same side down here now!" he yells across. "Has there not been enough blood spilled this day? Lay down your arms!"

Whitestripe mutters in a reflective tone, "Side? Which side? Mine, I suppose. Maybe his. Hmm. Silvereye's?" He shakes his head, then looks to Sharpeye as he speaks. After the Imperator has spoken Whitestripe adds helpfully, "Yes! If you shoot us, then we can't help you! If we don't help you, you _will_ die out here, and your body will feed the sanddancers!"

The Demarian pilot is wearing a militia flight suit, although it's been badly shredded, scorched and blood-soaked in the crash. "All on the same side?" He laughs, a harsh, pathetic rasp. The barrel of the plasma pistol comes up. It points first at Sharpeye, then sags, then jerks toward Whitestripe. "No sides on a circle," the pilot observes before squeezing off a wild shot that zings past Whitestripe's right ear - missing by several inches, but leaving the crazy Sandwalker slightly deafened as the wind continues to grow in howling strength. The shot goes wild mostly because the gun-wielding pilot topples over sideways, off the wing and into the dirt. Dead, or close to it. The gun skitters downhill until it is lost in the tumult of the storm.

"Help me get him into the lee of the ship!" Sharpeye yells out to Whitestripe, paying no attention at all to the shot. "Before the sand kills all of us!" He starts running toward the pilot.

Whitestripe follows the Imperator motion, more then the words. Although it may be just as well that the growing sandstorm helps to obscure the expression of 'By the Mother's left tit, why am I doing this?' "It is good of you to recognize the Mother's Voice finally, Imperator! But to the side! The side! Beneath the engine cowling, else the sand will pile up over us in the lee!"

"Fine, just damn well help me!" Sharpeye roars, growling as he approaches the pilot. "You get the medkit!" He leans down to check the pilot's condition and grab him from behind, beneath the shoulders, to drag him around the craft.

Whitestripe's nod is lost in the sand and wind. Staying close to the fuselage, he makes his way around to the cockpit, and upon reaching it, ducks his head into the opening the pilot slithered out from.

The pilot has no pulse or signs of respiration. The cockpit, Whitestripe finds, is a jigsaw puzzle of its former self, all bent and twisted virtually out of recognition save for the fact it appears to be a cavity in the upper hull. Jagged pieces of metal poke into the seating area. The seat itself is twisted virtually sideways, blocking access to flight controls or the medical kit.

Sharpeye drags the pilot around toward the engine cowling, ducking down in the search for shelter from the storming sands. "This is what I miss!" he yells into, or perhaps at, the raging winds. "An honest... enemy!"

Whitestripe glances about the gloom of the cockpit once more, tugging fitfully on the wedged chair. he seems to realise that it's a lost cause, and taking in hand a sharp, jagged piece of metal, worms his way out of the cockpit and begins to make his way back to the Imperator and the wounded pilot.

"No good!" Sharpeye bellows over the noise as he attempts to resuscitate the pilot. "No pulse!" One, two, three, four, five. "Medkit?" he asks, looking up.

Whitestripe ducks into the semi-lee of the engine cowling, glancing at the pilot and the imperator as he does so. "No!" The voice is overly loud, even with the noise from outside. "Wedged! Can't get it out! The warrior?"

Sharpeye shakes his head slowly after it appears his CPR isn't doing much, and he sits back into a crouch, one hand splayed against the sand in front of him to keep his balance. "Nothing to do for him. Not without supplies." He pulls the pilot's ID tag from its chain.

Whitestripe starts tugging the helmet off the corpse. "Well, best get on with it then," he says at a normal if slightly grim tone of voice as he begins to search the body.

The ID tag reads: Freewind, Browntuft.

Sharpeye shakes his head, looking at the small metal tag in his paw. "Too many of us," he says softly, almost inaudible against the backdrop of wind noise. "Too many lost. We'll be gone from the world entire unless something is done." He shakes his head again before looking up at Whitestripe. "Find anything?"

Whitestripe holds up the helmet and a few strips of bumbler jerky. "If there is anything else, it's either somewhere in that hell of a cockpit or in his footlocker." He tosses the jerky to the Imperator, and starts moving the body a bit to wedge the helmet, upside down, underneath the corpse's neck. "I hope your hatedness isn't squeamish."

Sharpeye nods, glancing up at the ruined fighter craft. "We'll get it when the storm dies down. If anything, at least we'll get an emergency beacon out of this." He looks back toward Whitestripe and the helmet. "What are you doing?"

Whitestripe takes the jagged piece of metal in hand and places against the neck of the corpse, right above the upturned helmet. "Tomorrow will be hot. Likely hotter. Best to drink now, then to cry for water later, Imperator." With that he presses down, expertly slashing the neck so as to drain the blood into the helmet.

Sharpeye whiskers twitch slightly at Whitestripe's actions, but he shows no other signs of emotion. "That won't work," he intones after a moment. "Blood's not a hydrating fluid; it has high salt conent, and you need to digest it. It'll just make you even more thirsty."

Whitestripe looks up from the draining body. "True...it will make you feel thirstier. But you and I have lost much in fluids, and this will replace much of it. i have to get you intact back to the mountains, Imperator. Please don't argue. Just do."

Sharpeye grunts. "The mountains?" he asks. "Do you think the ones there will welcome those who bring a plague to their home?"

Whitestripe sighs tiredly, tilting the body to get more drainage. "The mountain towns may have commlinks. New Alhira definitely does. The various weapon caches scattered under the sands may, may not. The mountains have water and food. Here does not, and Gleaming Star is too far away for us to make it to my caches. The mountains are the best local source of life for us, Imperator."

Sharpeye nods. "Fine, but keep your distance from the locals. I'm not going to visit this disease on them as well."

Whitestripe snorts. "The locals? If we're lucky, fallen one, we'll avoid the locals. They don't like you much, and I know they definitely don't like me much." He tilts the body back, lessening the flow of bloody form the wound. Then he carefully lifts up the helmet closing his eyes, holds it out as though presenting it to someone etherial. He mutters quietly for a moment, a short prayer in thanks to Altheor, the Sand Mother, and this fallen warrior. Finishing, he opens his eyes and presents the semi-full helmet to Sharpeye. "You best drink first, Imperator. You have the most need of it."

Sharpeye nods grimly and accepts the helmet chalice, lifting it to his lips. He pauses before he drinks, though, and speaks quietly. "Thank you, Browntuft Freewind, for sustaining our lives with yours. You will be remembered." And he drinks, handing the helmet back to Whitestripe when he is finished with his portion, then leans back against the ruined and twisted spacecraft.

Whitestripe's features take on an expression of 'I hate doing this sort of thing', before chugging the contents down. With that, he sticks the helmet back under the corpse's neck, and tilts the body back to drain. Shuffling into a half-hunched position in the almost-complete darkness of the hovel, Whitestripe speaks up. "It would be best to sleep now, but I suspect you may not want to. It will be along night to pass, so permit me a command performance, my Imperator, and let me tell you a story of Altheor and the Daughter of the Sea..." With that, Whitestripe launches into a tale to spin away the night. One of love, lust, questing, and success in rediscovering one's mate. Just the thing to keep the flagging spirits up while hiding from a raging sandstorm beneath the shattered fusilage of a downed fighter, while the world grows ever darker.

The roaring wind bellows in earnest as it sweeps around the twisted hull of the wrecked fighter, swirling sand that pelts both the living Demarians huddled along the wreckage and the dead Demarian beside them. A gust catches at a bloodied piece of fabric that flutters loosely from the right shoulder of the dead pilot's flight suit: The insignia of the Demarian Militia. The ragged rectangle is lofted on the wind, swirling higher and higher into the sand-blotted night, until it is lost in oblivion ... leaving Sharpeye Skygazer and Whitestripe Sandwalker to a similarly uncertain fate.