Sandstorm_429
Legacy Name: Sandstorm_429

There is nothing.
As far as the eye can see, there is nothing. An ephemeral horizon divides the sapphire sky, like an ocean of diamonds above a desert wasteland. There is nothing to behold here but scattered sands, grains of time and precious history as mere ripples in the wind. White jewels embed the crusted earth, ancient relics of bone and life long passed. To the unobservant and the wise, grief and sorrow are all that lay in these ruins, just cruel nothings of a bygone era.
But if you look closely, when the sky is at its brightest and the sun threatens to boil the very ground and the bones of our ancestors glow like strange pearls in your fading vision, you will find a man. A man cloaked with the wind, body engulfed by a scarf of shifting patterns, amber beads dangling upon his face. He has the most unsettling blue eyes. They are eyes that have seen across centuries, watched civilizations rise and fall, witnessed the births and deaths of many a great man, and yet they are still clear as the day is blue. You will see nothing beyond them, for they tell lies just as they speak truths, and he is nothing to you but a hallucination of the dying mind, an unseemly savior too far away. In that moment, there will be a panic and try as you might, the burning sands beckon with an instinctive call in your bones, and the world will crumble with the drop of a pin.
Fear not the night,
A whisper resounds, a voice as harsh and gentle as the dried oasis. A passing name perhaps, or a buried memory. Things that we prefer not to remember, yet are seared forever in our minds. They will flood the still waters and come a crashing down, and the man will watch with his timeless eyes as an ocean drowns your golden sands and blankets them with despair.
When you come to, you will find another world. The ground will quake with unsteady waters and the sky will be aflame with rage. The dawn brings clouds of relentless rains, pouring over your head in a caustic torrent, ever fierce and ever painful, and your fear leaves little else but fury aching in your bones. He watches you, as you curse your life and tear at your skin, clawing through muscle and bone to the very core of this sinful mess. You shed your own blood, led by no leash or chained by none other, yet you lay a path of destruction within yourself, and you let these dark, stifling waters drown out the light.
He watches you with a curiosity, a morbid attraction as you bare your skin and bones to the elements, pour your mind into empty sheets of paper, and carve beautiful scars into your skin. He never lifts a finger, yet whispers sweet nothings into your ear, like an angry breeze murmuring in the back of your mind, and you find a strange stillness amidst that terrible storm, and once again you find yourself in that desert upon the flames.
But how strange, there is something here. The sky is blue again, as are the waves you find beyond those sands. There is peace, far as the eye can see, a beautiful calm in an empty world. The desert has ended, and gone with it that strange man. He was a nameless nobody in an ocean of faces. He was the dear old lady that smiled at you this morning on the sidewalk, the child that waved at you as you passed the playgrounds, the shop clerk that gave you an extra gift with your purchase, and the beautiful day that kissed your skin good morning. And suddenly, you remember why you are alive.
Upon the horizon a sandstorm has passed.