Mixtape Ghost NThe suns never set, here. It span around the sky, brushing against the horizon every so often, like it was taunting the people down below in their little tents with the promise of sleep. Janus tried not to let it bother him, as he folded his arms behind his head and lay down on the sand, waiting for sleep to take him. The wind was always quiet here. It spun lazily, chasing it's own tail like a thing the Elder had once talked about in one of his mad rants before the drink and the juice had claimed him away in the night. He took a moment to think back to those days, when the grains of sand had seemed so much more bigger, and the men so much taller. He smiled fondly, awash in childhood nostalgia.
Well, he certainly wasn't going to get any sleep, soon. Not with this perpetual sunlight. He sat up, and took stock of his surroundings. Just like every day on Vindaugr, the horizon was the same. Sand. Great piles of the stuff, sculpted and molded into slow waves, some dunes unfathomable metres in height, casting the closest thing this area ever received to night with their bulk. This place was nothing but that. Oh, and Janus. And his project.
The project lay in a comparatively flat part of sand. It was only a couple of centimetres high, but the thing took up a large amount of horizontal space. It lay across a dune, splitting it in half. Perhaps from above one might be able to see some pattern, but from ground level, all that could be seen was a thin pane of glass. And, at one corner, a piece of newly-forged anneleation crackled and smoked at the sand below it as it solidified. It fused with the rest of the piece, the liquid glass fusing with each successive layer of craftwork. If you put your ear to it, you could almost hear the material squealing, happy to be whole again. But you'd also set your hair on fire.
It was Janus' masterpiece. It'd taken him months to smelt the kilns, to use the secrets of glass and dust in this way, to set up the design and enact it out. No where else on this continent did one find anything close to this quality, nothing that even resembling it. Nothing even close. He'd done it alone, since he didn't trust anyone else to do his work for him. But it was almost complete. All it needed was the last final touch.
Janus took his time while admiring the thing, the way it glinted in the light. He remembered when he'd had the idea, in a dream during a sandstorm. He'd done his best to remember it, to write it down and to somehow immortalize it, but when the only thing you have next to you is sand and tarp, it'd been a wonder he'd managed to draw anything at all. Or that it hadn't blown away. Or a million and one other things had happened since, that hadn't shuffled him into doing this almost directly after his dream. The shamen called it a divine vision and had more or less shoved him out here, where his mad idea wouldn't hurt anyone else, and for good reason.
Janus stood, at the far end of the glass rectangle, and bent down, grasping at the thing with both hands. He heaved. The thing shook, groaned a hideous moan of stress and pain, but lifted up, agonizingly slowly, remnants of sand pouring off of it. He went under the thing, and brought it further and further up. The stained glass of a thousand layers creaking, slowly rising further and further up, until it touched the sky. The sun shone through the thing, leaving the coloured shadows all over the dunes. It was a figure, all in gold, and for a moment, it shone.
Janus pushed on.
The thing collapsed the other way, accelerating all the way down. It impacted on the sand and shattered quickly, the shards of a thousand pieces of glass making a noise almost like rain as, one by one, they embedded themselves into the desert. Soon the wind would rub them down to grain, and then there would be nothing left to ever show that anything but sand had ever been here. He grinned, and stretched his hands up in the air. Then he gathered up his things and went home. He took the long way.
Well, he certainly wasn't going to get any sleep, soon. Not with this perpetual sunlight. He sat up, and took stock of his surroundings. Just like every day on Vindaugr, the horizon was the same. Sand. Great piles of the stuff, sculpted and molded into slow waves, some dunes unfathomable metres in height, casting the closest thing this area ever received to night with their bulk. This place was nothing but that. Oh, and Janus. And his project.
The project lay in a comparatively flat part of sand. It was only a couple of centimetres high, but the thing took up a large amount of horizontal space. It lay across a dune, splitting it in half. Perhaps from above one might be able to see some pattern, but from ground level, all that could be seen was a thin pane of glass. And, at one corner, a piece of newly-forged anneleation crackled and smoked at the sand below it as it solidified. It fused with the rest of the piece, the liquid glass fusing with each successive layer of craftwork. If you put your ear to it, you could almost hear the material squealing, happy to be whole again. But you'd also set your hair on fire.
It was Janus' masterpiece. It'd taken him months to smelt the kilns, to use the secrets of glass and dust in this way, to set up the design and enact it out. No where else on this continent did one find anything close to this quality, nothing that even resembling it. Nothing even close. He'd done it alone, since he didn't trust anyone else to do his work for him. But it was almost complete. All it needed was the last final touch.
Janus took his time while admiring the thing, the way it glinted in the light. He remembered when he'd had the idea, in a dream during a sandstorm. He'd done his best to remember it, to write it down and to somehow immortalize it, but when the only thing you have next to you is sand and tarp, it'd been a wonder he'd managed to draw anything at all. Or that it hadn't blown away. Or a million and one other things had happened since, that hadn't shuffled him into doing this almost directly after his dream. The shamen called it a divine vision and had more or less shoved him out here, where his mad idea wouldn't hurt anyone else, and for good reason.
Janus stood, at the far end of the glass rectangle, and bent down, grasping at the thing with both hands. He heaved. The thing shook, groaned a hideous moan of stress and pain, but lifted up, agonizingly slowly, remnants of sand pouring off of it. He went under the thing, and brought it further and further up. The stained glass of a thousand layers creaking, slowly rising further and further up, until it touched the sky. The sun shone through the thing, leaving the coloured shadows all over the dunes. It was a figure, all in gold, and for a moment, it shone.
Janus pushed on.
The thing collapsed the other way, accelerating all the way down. It impacted on the sand and shattered quickly, the shards of a thousand pieces of glass making a noise almost like rain as, one by one, they embedded themselves into the desert. Soon the wind would rub them down to grain, and then there would be nothing left to ever show that anything but sand had ever been here. He grinned, and stretched his hands up in the air. Then he gathered up his things and went home. He took the long way.
