The Duned City

I sat quietly and tried to keep the sand out of my eyes. It was an impossible goal, but it was still all I could do. I was fortunate enough to hitch a ride on a mostly empty cart, allowing me to actually lay out of some of the wind. My driver, a camel I had met in the town prior, seemed unfazed by the sand that had been whipping through the air around us for what seemed to be hours. He didn't speak more than a dab of Equestrian, nothing more than the rare single word or phrase, but introduced himself as Elrish (I have no idea how he spelled it) and seemed willing enough to take me provided I didn't touch his goods, most of which consisted of honey and large jars of something that reeked of apples and vinegar. He also carried several large cases of what was marked as charcoal which loudly rumbled every time the cart thumped even slightly. There was also a large jar of what sounded like water but caused an audible smack from the inside whenever it bounced.

I had originally planned to start my logs upon reaching my destination but this desert makes me feel like recording more than usual. Pessimistic to a certain degree, but I would argue also quite rational.

Several days prior I had arrived in the trade outpost of Hay Bail. That is how it's spelled, by the way, check an atlas yourself. I remember being told the origin of the name and finding it impressively underwhelming, leading me to forget the origin only a short time later. Something about the mayor or barkeep catching some hay thief. It was not exactly a hub of commerce, despite it's designation. It was reasonably sized for it's location (the very eastern edge of the Equestrian map) but I suppose there are only so many traders (or at least pony ones) willing to take any route that would bring them that far. Regardless, I wasn't looking for goods, I was looking for a ride.

I had originally planned on using a government transport but was apparently ignorant of the fact that government shipping of any kind had not continued past my penultimate stop for years. I asked around the town market and was met with varying degrees of confusion from every trader. My net profit from the interactions was hearing "Nothing past here, friend." in every accent found in the town. It was soon after that when I met Elrish.

Elrish had appeared after my unsuccessful attempt to persuade an elderly unicorn running a water post that there was, indeed, another town past theirs. Elrish had been filling several containers with water which I assume is how he overheard my little exchange. He was big, even for a camel. He had the thick legs of the caravan driver coupled with the extended gut of the merchant. He wore cloth over most of his head, I guessed more for protection than any sort of cultural attachment since he also wore a rather exquisite equestrian saddle covered in thick pockets. It was beaten-up and scratched, but the intricate markings certifying it's pedigree could still be seen. It was the closest thing to fancy I had seen in the town that wasn't gaudy jewelry.

He had waved me over to his cart once I left the stop and said in a heavy voice, "No town."

I was surprised that he would pull me aside just to repeat what the unicorn had said. "Um yes, I had heard, but there most definitely is a town to the north-east of here."

"No town. He," he pointed to the unicorn at the water stand, "he no town." He spoke in a loud, clear voice just bordering on aggressive. The type you could perfectly place in any bazaar within this region.

"Oh! You mean that he-" Elrish nodded rather slowly, feeling the same communication gap as me, albeit with more confidence in his meaning, "Y-yes! He said there is no town."

Elrish swooped his hoof around him at the surrounding town. "No town."

"Yes, exactly! Everyone has said there is no town!" I don't know why I let myself get so excited, Elrish had hardly given me any confirmation to my ramblings. I could have simply been misinterpreting his attempt to understand me as knowledge on his part. Luckily, that was not the case.

Elrish nodded, closing his eyes. He opened them and pointed his hoof to the edge of the town, toward the north-east. "Town. Elrish town, yes." He pointed to himself and grinned at me, revealing rough teeth, all stained at the edge to varying degrees of orange-red. "Bits?"

"Yes, bits! Good bits!" I was so ecstatic to have found a guide I had made the tourist mistake of promising "good" compensation, which Elrish quickly took notice of. We eventually settled on what we agreed was "good" and with only a small wait for Elrish to get the rest of whatever he had come for, set off into the desert.

And about a day later found ourselves getting up and setting off into the largest dust storm I had ever seen in my life.

It may seem very silly, but I found being inside a dust storm exceptionally boring after the first day. It was certainly unpleasant, lots of sand and wind whipping you all day, but then you find a nice sack to bury your head in and count the hours until it's time to set up camp. I would have enjoyed seeing the landscape but unfortunately ponies don't have the dual-layer eyelashes and sealable nostrils found in camels, so burlap it was. I did realize with some humor early on that I was being nearly equivocal to a sack of potatoes on Elrish's cart but over time the thought turned far too correct to be funny anymore. I was almost ready to start sprouting out of boredom had the monotony not been broken.

Occasionally during the storm Elrish stop the cart and look into the sand blowing in the distance. When he did this the long cloth he wore tied around his head and down to his mouth would whip wildly around him, granting form to the wind that hammered on us. The wind was incredibly loud at all times, rendering conversation even more useless than usual. He would stare, sometimes for only a second, sometimes for ages out at the horizon, watching. He did it constantly, sometimes stopping after only a few steps to look again. It made the already slow progress of our trip come to an almost complete halt. There were days where I could have sworn we had traveled less than five miles before Elrish would break-down the cart and we would make camp. I was sure Elrish knew this area better than most to bring me so I let him do whatever he needed to do. It was on the fourth day of our trip when Elrish raised his head and, instead of lowering it again, turned to me in the cart.

"Must out!" He yelled, fighting against the storm's volume.

"What?" I replied, unable to hear and certainly not loud enough to be heard myself. Elrish rapidly gestured for me to, in not so many words, get the heck out of his cart as soon as possible. I scrambled up to get out of the cart and was nearly blown off. The wind had gotten much stronger than it had been that morning. Unsteadily, I climbed out of the cart, attempting to avoid a brutal confrontation with the ground. I had been on the ground less than a second before Elrish pushed me to the side so that he could focus on removing all the jars and cases from his cart. I landed rather hard in the sand, Elrish hadn't shoved me that hard but the wind made it impossible to regain your balance once you lost it. Once everything was in a large pile, Elrish once again shoved me, this time right into the pile of goods. I really am a sack of potatoes I thought to myself. He lifted his cart with his back hooves and flipped it onto it's side, slightly blocking the wind. He all but dove into the pile of goods and retrieved the jar of water. Reaching in he removed a neatly-folded white package that he unraveled until he had a large, white, dripping cloth around the size of a bed sheet. He tucked it under the side of the cart and rapidly moved behind the cart, out of view.

"Ball! Become Ball!" I heard Elrish call, approximately one nanosecond before he shoved the cart, making it fall towards me.

I became ball. I became ball the hardest I ever had in my life. The cart came down with a crash above me, dumping small amounts of sand that had been wedged into the cracks onto me. There was a second thud following the cart's landing, which I would only realize later was Elrish throwing his body onto the cart to keep it from getting blown in the wrong direction after he knocked it over. All that could be heard under the cart was the wailing of the storm outside. It surprised me to listen to the wind that had reached us. It was unlike anything I had ever heard. It wasn't like the wind had been the other days, hollow and whistling as it skated and buffeted over you, this storm was packed with violent force, sending the wind in waves to smash against anything in it's way. It felt angry. Again and again I felt the cart shudder against me. I was stupefied, everything had begun happening so fast and I was hopeless to understand any of it. I knew of dust storms and the like, I had encountered a few in my travels already, but this storm was unlike any of the others. The storm seemed to be equally furious at the landscape and anything that traveled upon it. The cart rattled as sand and stone was whipped against it. It was like the storm was standing just outside the cart, screaming at anyone attempting to hide to get swallowed up and getting angrier every second that they didn't. I was sure the cart was breaking when the edge started to rise but Elrish quickly ducked under the hole, dragging his sheet behind him.

He slammed the edge of the cart down and tucked the sheet underneath him before gesturing for me to do the same. I have no idea when Elrish had placed the other end of the sheet under my side of the cart but nevertheless, there it was, ready to be sat upon by me. After I had secured the fabric safely under my own body weight, Elrish let out a large sigh. "Storm." He muttered, sliding into a more relaxed position that allowed him to comfortably extend his generous midsection while also taking roughly seventy-percent of the remaining cart space for himself.

"Storm." I agreed, attempting to find a position of at least mild comfort between the sheet, the various jars and cases, and the pudgy, sweaty camel I had as my cart-mate. Elrish looked a little rough, but on the whole hardly looking like he had come out of a sand storm. His heavy, hairy lips were all but immune to chapping and the storm, despite all it's efforts, had failed to overcome the mighty eyelashes of the camel. Not even a hint of red could be seen in Elrish's eyes.

There is a common belief amongst ponies, not that we will ever admit it as a whole, that non-magical races must have it so hard. Sure, a skilled unicorn could shield itself from the storm for a time, but no spell is guaranteed to work without fail forever. All it takes is one mistake, one late cast, and the storm would have you blinded and choked-up so badly that concentrating on magic would be all but impossible. That same life-or-death struggle for the unicorn would be almost humorous for a grown camel.

There is a reason you will find almost no pegasi living in the eastern settlements, and it is the dust. Pegasi live and breathe flying, even the most grounded of pegasi are as attached to their wings as unicorns are to their horns, but the dusty air of the east challenges this instinct to soar. Dust permeates the sky, invisible to the naked eye, and pegasi not outfitted with appropriate eyewear can quickly find a short flight turned into a terrifying experience. Sudden loss of eyesight, combined with the uneven ground and buried stone, leads to many pegasi losing either their use of their wings or their lives. I believe the risk to the wings has had a much larger impact on pegasi immigration than the risk of life ever could.

And what of earth ponies? Earth ponies are pretty sturdy, but once we fall we're just as vulnerable to the wind as anyone else. Even when exposed to extreme winds, a camel can simply lay down and render themselves all but unmovable. About the only real risk to a camel in a desert storm is flying debris. However deeply Elrish thought about his natural gifts I will never know, mostly because I only speak Equestrian.

Elrish fished a water skin which was clearly not cow hide out of the pile of goods and took a drink of what was clearly not water. Most ponies wouldn't be caught dead with such suspicious items on their person but I had the strong feeling that Elrish wouldn't particularly mind the whispers even if they were in a language he understood. I had been outside Equestria enough to know that hide work wasn't that uncommon in other countries. Regardless of the container. Elrish seemed extremely content with his skin despite the storm. I gestured toward his skin and he raised an eyebrow.

"Not water." He said aloofly, maintaining eye-contact. I nodded and he chuckled slightly. He held out the skin, but not far enough for me to reach. "Twenty bits and no less."

The longest string of words I had heard him say and it was to rip me off on a drink, figures. "Actually, I have water." I responded, retracting my hoof.

He laughed again. "Not water." He drank deeply and laid content, ignoring the wind outside.

"What is it?"

"Elrish." He said it like he was stating a copyright. "Storm, Elrish."

"Ten bits." It was still a rip, but I wasn't paying five times the value of whatever he had.

"Eighteen bits."

"Twelve bits."

"Twenty bits."

Elrish had been totally pleasant since I had met him but I felt I was in more dangerous territory bartering with him than being alone in the storm outside.

I was quiet for a while, the only noise was the wind and sand outside striking the cart. "Eighteen bits."

Elrish laughed. He laughed hard. He laughed so much that he started splashing some of his drink which quickly stained the sand below us red. He lifted the skin. "Seventeen."

I tossed him the money and he tossed me the skin. I smelled the liquid and realized doing so was a mistake. I sipped some and nearly spat it out. It tasted like spiced herb. Not spice and herbs. Literal leaves that had been encased in spice. It wasn't alcohol, that much I could tell by smelling it, more like a tonic. I was amazed that Elrish had been inhaling the stuff until it started hitting me. Everything went a bit more quiet and all my limbs felt a little less hard. "What is this, Elrish?" I asked again.

He laughed again. I had a sneaking suspicion that Elrish only ever laughed to laugh at others for not being him. "Not water."

I didn't plan to drink much, with something of such high potency testing my limits seemed like an inadvisable idea. I took small sips and waited until the effect stopped before I continued (although I admit that may have been harder to judge by the end). Despite my best attempts at temperance, I quickly found myself out of whatever it was I had been drinking. I presented the skin back to Elrish but found him asleep, sprawled in what I can still safely assume was the single most crude sleeping position possible for the camel anatomy. It was almost like art, really. I felt like I could hang a picture of it in the royal gallery and convince the masses that there was really no meaning in words like "beauty" or "purity" when describing this cruel world. All I could do was lay my head down and try to sleep, all the while attempting to burn the image I had just seen from my memory.

~~ Ink Blot