In Pursuit of Magic

An infinite sandscape stretches before me.

I stand now on the edge of the world I have always known, on the border of an alien world. Behind me is a flat, grassy plain; mountains are visible in the distance. This scenery is familiar.

Ahead of me, something wholly foreign: dry, sandy ground extends for miles, almost entirely flat. In some places, the ground is hard and cracked; in other places, it is loose and fluid, forming small dunes which tower over the surrounding wasteland.

The line between biomes is not clean-cut. Over the last mile, the grass has become more and more scarce, and the soil dryer and dryer. At some point, the earth around me became entirely bereft of life.

The sun hangs heavily in the sky, beating down on me. I can hear wind, whistling peacefully across the barren land, almost as much as I can feel it as it blows dust into my eyes and mouth.

The first stop of who knows how many on this expedition.

The homeland of the Zebras: Zebrardhi.  As unpleasant as it is, heat and sand and wind notwithstanding, there is a strange, uncanny beauty here, a sort of disbelief that comes from seeing so much nothing in one place. It feels almost…

…magical.