Lonesome as she’s been, Mirage has been learning all she can about the Salem. About the lands. About the desert as it lived and breathed around her. It was harder and harder to keep track of boundaries among the shifting sands, but maybe that was part of the fun. Hell, maybe she’d get to meet someone interesting along the way. Interesting company? That was a thought. That was a really… really valid idea. Maybe. Not that Mirage would even go looking for it. No, there was something else. There was something else she needed, and there was no way that she’d find it out here. No matter. None of it… none of it really mattered. But that was fine. It didn’t have to matter. Maybe the exploration could be meaningless too. She didn’t need it, but she… she needed something.
What Mirage really needed was to confront some of those not so pleasant thoughts, but today wouldn’t be that day. No, it wouldn’t be that day at all.
Summer had melted into fall, not that you could really tell. Not in this absolute wasteland, at least. Mirage maintained her love-hate-love relationship with the Salem accordingly. For as inhospitable as it was, maybe she really did love the place. It was all so strange, all so wonderful… all so terrible, depending on the day. Today it was decidedly terrible, though. The dust storm had come out of what felt like nowhere. What seemed like nowhere. What seemed like nothing. In that way, she could only align herself with it further. Maybe that was why she pressed on. Maybe that was why she didn’t turn tail and run.
It would have been smarter for her to make her way back in the direction she’d come, but well… could she even tell what direction that was? For now, all the sable mare could do was press forward. The visibility around her was growing worse. Forward was her only option. The scrape of sand blowing across her skin was enough to make her feel more alive than she had in… ages. Weeks? Months? Who knew. All Mirage knew was that she needed to press forward.
we’re dressed in black from head to toe
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