Sugar and Sand, Skin and Bones
The golden sugar-dust cakes my eyelids, forcing me to peer out of thin slits. All I see is a narrow strip of tawny gold and deep blood red.
My foot shifts slightly in the soft sugars, causing me to stumble. Three shining amber sugar diamonds tumble out of my satchel, clinking with a keen resonance as they impact something hard in the sand. Grinning halfway into a curse, I dropped to my knees and immediately began shoveling the fine, powdery wind-swept sugars aside. I was rewarded with the sun streaming into my eyes.
Despite my momentary blindness, I seized hold of what I think is safe to assume is a glittering, no, glowing, absolutely massive sugar diamond! Wiping the sugary crust out of my eyes for the first time that day, I turned desperately upon the sweet gem, hungrily noting every detail.
It was a fine, transparent white with a dusting of rosy red, about the size of a grapefruit, with sharp, shining angles just waiting to be cut into perfect shape. I don’t even know how many carats this thing is. All those years, thrown to the Sugar Wastes, and this thing is... This thing is...
“Mine.” A unicorn stallion with a youngish, scarred face held a scimitar in my direction. It was rusty, but fresh blood dripped off it. DecibelI, I thought in anguish. Decibell was the earth pony colt who warned me of danger, dust devils, angry djinns... Sheer’quan. His voice was high and clear enough to be heard over the rushing winds of the desert. He had sharp, green eyes, a face only a mother could love and the best singing voice in all of Saddle-Arabia.
There’s another kind soul I can never repay a debt to.
The scarred stallion with the ugly rust-colored coat waves his sword at me surreptitiously, as if trying to clue me in on the fact that there is, in fact, a sword floating in front of my face right now. “Hey, Gallican nopony! That rock of yours is mine, do you hear? Or do you want to go the same way as your friend!?”
I turned slowly to face him. I felt a tear carve a path through the sickly-sweet sugar sand that always cakes my face. An unusually cool breeze tickles the naked skin before it is quickly sealed by sand particles blowing in the hot, dead air. “Yes, I do. Believe me, I do.”
My fingers closed over the rusty iron sword, holding it tenderly like one would the neck of a newborn. “Because I have no doubt he’s in a much better place now.”
The stallion’s pupils shrunk as he attempted to yank his sword out of my grip. In vain. I’m tired of letting go. Hot, angry pain filled my hand as the rust-worn edge sawed into it, mixing Decibell’s blood with my own. Always with the blood.
“You... What’s your name?” I said softly. The stallion was silent, breathing heavily from his exertion. To not give one’s name when asked is considered a base insult in this country. I’ve never been a stickler for courtesy, but now as good a time as any to start.
I wrenched the sword to the side, snapping it in two. A good chunk of blade remained in my hand while the hilt skittered to the ground, useless. The stallion uttered a cry of dismay. That sword must’ve cost him at least fifty diamonds. Or possibly that missing ear.
I closed the distance between us in two paces, digging the point of the scimitar blade into the stallion’s quaking neck. “I won’t ask twice.”
“Cuffs- akk!- My name is Cuffs!” He choked, trying to shy away from the wet edge of the blade.
“Cuffs, eh? Apt. Now, Cuffs, what could possibly possess you to venture out here in the wastes, kill one innocent soul and threaten to waylay someone if they didn’t hand over their hard earned gem?” I grated, punctuating my sentences with tiny jabs from the blade.
“Heard-- You had a nose for gems-- Also, you weren't a fighter-- Geh!” He squealed as I added a new line to his face.
“I don’t care about what you heard, fool, I want to know WHY!”
He totally transformed. Gone was the hard-faced, swarthy criminal. He melted into a blubbering, weeping child right before my eyes. “M-my brothers! There’s ten of them, two hardly more than three! W-we have no mother, nor a father, nor uncles or aunts! P-please, sir, if it weren’t for me and my thievery, they’d all starve!”
I looked at him, totally dead to emotion. He looked at me, eyes swimming in tears. “Give me names.”
“Wh-what?” He stammered.
I slapped him with the flat of the blade. “Their names, you scum. Name all of your brothers. If I’ve met one before, I’ll believe you.”
He gulped. I didn’t give him very charitable odds. “P- Peppercorn!”
“No.”
“Mooneye!”
“No.”
“Scutter!”
“Mm-mm.”
He was shaking hard enough to knock his bones out of joint by this point. “Alley-Cat?”
“No, but I’ve seen his graffiti.”
“Chalktooth!”
“That’s an odd one. Keep trying.”
“Honeymouth!”
“No.”
“Feather-Palm!”
“No.”
“Dusty... Juniper!” He choked out the last name.
“No, no and no. Last chance.” I said, heart sinking. Maybe all those foals were real. What would happen to them if I killed this one?
He was heaving in breaths, trying to taste a lifetime of air in the few minutes he had left. Or at least I thought as much.
Suddenly he was quiet, save for small, hiccuping sobs... “Well?” I said softly. “You still have one more brother, or so I’ve been told.”
“N-no, no I don’t... Not anymore...” He turned his face up to mine. I’ll never forget that face, as long as I live. I feel as if I can still count the thick, salty tears that streamed down his face.
Nor will forget the short jerk of magic that drove the broken scimitar into Cuffs’ throat. He fell, whispering, “Please... Help them...”
Add ten more to the long list of people I owe much more than I could hope to break even on.
I buried Cuffs next to Decibell. I thought they’d appreciate being buried close to each other. I stood over the small, inconspicuous mounds of sugar sand, attempting to sing snatches of a song I was fond of between fits of hysterical crying and silence, for my friend and his brother.
I planted a sugar diamond over each of their graves. I could at least pay them their due wage, aside from treating their dead bodies with respect.
My name is Bones. Welcome to the golden sugar sand deserts of Saddle Arabia. Make your stay as brief as possible.
