Luna stormed toward the horizon with a scowl, ignoring Galvanizing Height’s horrendous orchestra that promised her death and failure. The rocky pastures gave way to golden sands, everchanging to the softly dancing winds of the Great Brazen Dunescapes.
A few steps into the sand and Luna stopped, taking a deep breath and calming herself down. The air was crisp and hot as it entered her nostrils, burning her throat and biting her lungs. As she let it out, she felt her nasal cavity chilled and moistened by her own breath, clouds of welcome cold traveling far from her muzzle before disappearing.
She stepped forward and hummed a lengthy note, greeting the deathly silent desert and announcing a new soul arriving after almost never. The sands greeted her back slowly and lifelessly, the notes stretched thin across the flat expanse and lazily drifting about the dry and inhospitable wasteland. Her breath trailed a cloud of comfort as she went, inviting bugs and little critters to cool down along the footprints she left behind.
A couple, a dozen, a hundred, then a thousand dunes later, Luna lay down on the only other thing in the desert except dunes: a dune. A particularly steep dune, with the wind blowing from the other side and protecting her from the sands that stung against her eyes and coat and face and everything. Looking back at the trail she left behind, Luna smiled as she heard a few critters chorusing a thank you for the little comfort that she brought to the dying biome.
Luna took a deep breath, coughing as she accidentally inhaled an amount of airborne sand. The cloud she breathed out was shorter now, barely reaching the ground before dissipating to the greedy heat of the desert. She could feel the sands beneath her sucking out the cold from her body, eagerly gorging on her lifeforce.
In the middle of her rest, she heard a soft jingle of a ballad in the distance. Standing up, she climbed the dune she was lying next to and saw, in the distance, a band of carpets flying low to the ground, carrying with them tall cloaked figures with overly long scarfs and the wares they were selling.
Luna sang a call, and the ballad stopped. The traders turned their heads toward Luna, and she waved a hoof. When she climbed down the dune, one of the traders hopped off their carpet and walked toward her with a bipedal gait.
They met halfway, Luna singing them a friendly greeting while the trader sang her a curious one. Luna asked them what they were selling, by which the trader urged her to come and see herself.
Closer to the band now, Luna noticed the golden trim and embroidery from their bright red carpets and clothing glowing softly and alluringly under the dim sunlit sky. Their carpets and clothes lazily drifted about a nonexistent breeze, sluggishly returning to their position when Luna touched them as if suspended on an invisible viscous liquid. The trader who guided her remarked that her mane acted the same, albeit on a faster rhythm.
The traders eventually gathered around her, unfurling their carpets and showing her a myriad of herbs and spices, many of which she didn’t recognize and looking like something out of a dream.
One herb in particular caught her eye, its oblong greyish leaves reminding her of the ancient medicine for chest congestion and wounds. Luna asked how much they were asking to part with all their sage leaves.
A trader was about to explain that they were going on a trade journey to a land far beyond, that they needed to still have some sage to sell when they arrived but thought better of it when Luna took off her crown. They began considering it when Luna took off her necklace. Their eyes bulged as Luna took off her shoes.
And so the traders sang an agreement, taking her full regalia and handing over two gigantic bundles of sage and a full-body robe complete with a tagelmust.
Luna quirked an eyebrow at the robe and said, “The clothes were not part of the agreement.”
“No, it’s not,” the traders chorused back. “But a necessity; you’ve paid more than enough for both.”
And so the traders continued their journey atop the flying carpets, leaving Luna behind with an abundance of sage and protection against the elements.
As soon as the traders disappeared over the dunes, Luna unveiled her muzzle and ate a sprig of sage. Letting out a long breath, she watched in amazement as her cloud traveled further than it had ever been, scorpions and snakes and desert rats and desert foxes coming into existence and scampering close, enjoying the chill without their usual instinct to feed on each other.
Luna smiled and sang over the desert, dutifully marching and leaving trails of optimism along the way. She ignored the sands blowing against her eyes, only occasionally shaking off the sand collecting in the folds of her headscarf. She felt her exhaustion and tiredness completely forgotten as she danced across the desert, spreading the mist of steadfastness and life along the path she took and awakening hope to the dying desert.
And so the desert awakened, slowly blinking, and the dim sunlit sky of countless stars flickered as it felt its ecosystem regaining form and life from uncountable eons of death and misery. It felt the dancing form of Luna, heard her beautiful voice and followed the misty trail she left in her wake.
Luna felt the desert’s attention toward her and sang to it, raising her voice to awaken the soul within.
The Great Brazen Dunescapes chorused a thank you, shooting a tremendous flurry of wind that carved a straight path for Luna to safely travel through.
Luna blushed and giggled, biting into another sprig of sage and blowing out another mist, this time condensing into a large body of water between the larger dunes. As the remaining cloud lingered, it soaked into the sand and from it sprouted date palms and ferns and other greeneries. Critters long forgotten and new alike woke up from the ground, taking forms Luna had never seen before. Thin, cloth-like birds drifted slowly across the New Oasis, watched from the sidelines by mini stone golems and from under the water by similar rug-like fishes.
Luna unstrapped and cut the remaining sage she had, depositing it on the side of the oasis and floating it over the new creatures to eat. Slowly they ate, and soon the oasis grew in size and water seeped into the sands and turned them to dirt, sprouting countless more lifeforms and, as the desert realized with a shock, healing the wasteland from its acute illness known as death.
Luna heard a rumble underneath, quirking an eyebrow, and was about to sing a question when she fell. The ground beneath her opened up to an endless wind tunnel, mercilessly dragging her away from her efforts and out of the guilty, happy, giddy, angry, joyous, wrathful desert. She was helpless as the Great Brazen Dunescapes itself took her out of it through the wind tunnels stretching from end-to-end, from countless boundaries to countless other biomes and countless other worlds that the biomes connected.
The winds eventually ended at Great Brazen’s border, depositing her harshly against the gravelly beach of Lachrymose Fjord. Luna’s disheveled form skidded to a halt just before the shoreline, her robe shredded to pieces and her tagelmust suffering a huge tear.
Luna quickly stood up and ran back toward Great Brazen, screaming, “I was trying to help!”
Great Brazen knew, it sang. It’d take care of the life she had given it out of selflessness and make sure that anything passing by would know it had been her doing.
“You deserved it!” she screamed as she stopped by the border. “Don’t hear whatever anyone’s telling you, you deserve kindness!”
Great Brazen rumbled.
Luna scowled and shook her hoof high. “You’re being stupid,” she said through clenched teeth. “Stop being stupid.”
Great Brazen howled, the ground letting out a horrendous screech as it split right at the border.
“Wait! No, stop!”
The ground opened up to an endless abyss, the crack showing her a clear view of the Great Void of The Nonexistence, a fall to a certain cessation of existence outside the lands that made up the Worldsbridges.
“Please, stop!” she cried, jumping and spreading her wings.
Great Brazen blew a powerful explosion of wind, sending her crashing back to Lachrymose Fjord.
Luna desperately rightened herself, galloping in vain to the cliffside and watching Great Brazen’s focus shifting away from her and the golden sandy pastures drifting away over the horizon, out of her field of view.
Luna hopelessly reached out from where she could still stand, calling out the Great Brazen Dunescape with tears streaming down and out of the worlds-between.
Luna eventually gave up, slumping against the side of the chasm and sobbing quietly to the endless void.