The Sand That Breathes
You press on by instinct, and the desert rewards you with wrongness. The dunes ahead ripple without wind, breathing in slow, deliberate swells. You dismount. The sand beneath your boots hums — a low chord that climbs your bones and settles behind your teeth.
It is a language. Older than Aythari tongues, older than the salt cities. And somewhere beneath you, vast and patient, something turns in its sleep.