City in a Sandstorm

Jake Wreckred’s camel wandered through the desert dunes as he rode on it, constantly looking up and down from his map.

They stopped. They had made it.

But there was nothing there.

“Darn it!” Jake cried out, punching the air.

He got off his camel. It was too far back to safety without a stop. He decided to set up his tent.

Halfway through his sleep, he was woken by the sound of a roar.

He stood up, seeing sands rip around him, and before he could wonder any more, he saw his tent, then the camel, caught in the surrounding sandstorm in the air.

“I’ll mourn for you later,” he said.

He wondered why he too wasn’t caught in the rush, then he remembered the shining stone the wise woman had given him in the village before they had set off. It was a reward for healing her sick son. He would have done it for nothing. He thought the stone was one step away from nothing.

“I was wrong,” he said and rubbed his eyes.

He wandered deeper into the storm, into its eye.

And then he saw it.

The City that the Dunes Dreamt.

“Why, I be…”

It lay ahead of him, what he had come all this way for. Lost so much for.

“Well here goes,” he said and went forward to a new adventure.

Several adventures were thundered through, and Jake Wreckred left the city, letting it be swallowed up by a final sandstorm.

“Right,” he said, looking at the desert wastes that stretched before him, “I really should have borrowed another camel.”