Wind after wind crashed. Shrieks of them rolled over.
Sand shifts like the mirage of motion. Still from afar, moving when you look closer.
All of this did not shook the boy's determination to chase a different mirage. One of hope and water.
The very boy's overcoat stood starkly against the backdrop of chrome, a small moving dot of brown from a bird's eye view.
Looking ahead the wanderer whispered, "How much more?" His voice carried his impatience.
Yet it scattered against the shrieks of wind.
Pushing onward with weapons of bone hiding in his fluttering brown overcoat, he rushed to reach the mirage. Every time he took his eyes away from it, the very next moment it seemed to him the mirage had pushed back a bit more than previously.
He could not tell that clearly due to the sandy winds that assaulted him. They were relentless but sparse, coming in and slamming into one of his sides every few steps.
He continued onwards, never shifting from his desired goal.
Wanderer tried whistling a tune to cut his boredom. The wind clashed fiercely. That did not help his prospect.
Covering his head with the flaps of his overcoat, the boy kept straight. Only kept his peripheral clear just enough to spot movement in case a beast wanted to snap him in half came from one of his sides.
He knew he wasn't covering his back. 'Uh, who cares? If something comes from the back I'll just gut them from the inside first.' The thought ran faster than the sound of wind.
He blinked looking at the mirage of a lake and trees, and saw the next moment the same mirage being just a bit further away than it was the previous moment.
Wanderer stopped mid-tracks. He did not believe it.
"No, no. That's just not possible." His whisper suffered under the screams of wind.
His hands dropped.
A shiver ran through his body. Every bit of his skin shivered and gooseflesh rose.
Turning his head to the left and right, the boy frantically searched for anything.
"Something, just something. Something that changed or is different than the previous hour!" His words louder now still suppressed under the wind.
Desperation was caught in his eyes. Staring at every bit of sand in view, he attempted to see from where he came.
He turned.
Then jumped back, and turned in a different direction.
Stepping forward two steps, and doing a full circle. The boy tried finding a shred of change.
His voice cracked, "Nothing."
Wind crashed into him yet again.
He felt he wasn't just lost. He believed he was trapped in a net he could not see.
"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!" cursing himself, he dropped down where he stood. The side of the sand dune below him shifted sliding down.
"Uhh!" He grabbed on his hair.
It was a mess of white and red held in the fine fingers. His reds in hair were lesser significantly than the whites that stood like a canvas made of loose strings. Short and straight, yet with red at different abnormal intervals.
Bringing his hands back down, his hair shone in the expanse of chrome with their own significance. A favored spot in a brown with red accompanying it at times hidden in white as would be seen if someone flew over him.
He had given in to despair. 'Is this what willfall feels like?' A strenuous thought gutted his hopelessness with more dread than he thought he held.
His head spun immediately.
Jumping to his feet, he began running. Not to the mirage, but in a different direction altogether.
One where nothing at once seemed to be any different than anywhere else in this vast never-ending desert.
Yet, he had spotted a movement.
In his peripheral vision, the boy spotted a patch of blue to suddenly move to the right. The patch seemed like the part of the sky.
But the boy did not believe it was part of it.
'No, no it can't be. It has to be a beast with some special skin trick.' He ran as his thoughts formed within to assert his belief.
His desire shifted from the mirage to this elusive beast he had not seen.
"Were it the same as those I saw a few nights ago?", he questioned himself.
Exhaling and inhaling as he sped in its direction.
He jumped over one dune then landed on another. Closing his distance to where he believed the beast wandered to.
Before continuing to close the distance, his hand went into one of his pockets in the brown overcoat. He drew his long rope, and a bone dagger he crafted an hour ago.
Whipping his rope back, he tapped on it down thrice as it reached its full length.
The rope lit itself. The fire seemed a bit confused or hesitant.
But then the boy pulled on the rope, and the fire followed it until the flame left the rope and went straight in the direction of the rope was whipping forward to.
This was another hidden application of actions. He had learned of them before Beret was burned to the ground by Gweren and his royal army.
The fire, earlier embodied the past place where the rope was, now suddenly became a flaming spear of nearly a hundredth of a league.
And it struck true.
This time a shriek resounded but not made by the wind. But of bestial origins.
A large piece of air suddenly rushed forward from where the fire spear had struck at.
"Ah! So there you are!" He echoed his thought out.
Running after the large piece of moving air, he saw how the air suddenly tried transforming. To something that could have hid it from the boy's vision.
Spinning his rope around him in his right hand, and keeping his dagger ready in the left. The boy tapped on the left of the rope's length he grabbed on, again thrice.
And whipped it forward. Striking true, the beast saved itself only by a breadth of hair from a screeching cold ice spear.
The chase had only begun. The wanderer in his brown overcoat sped after the elusive beast. Following it than the mirage he could not reach.