the Story
I. Ember in the Sand
The desert night is so still you can hear the sand breathe. A lone wanderer—ashen-robed, mind humming with unspoken questions—finds a circle of stones glowing like half-buried coals. Masked figures crouch around the ring. Their masks are carved from beetle shells, painted obsidian-black, eyes wide with ancestral wisdom. They do not speak; instead, they lean back and let their bone-flute exhales mingle with the crackle of ember sparks.
The wanderer steps into the circle. A palm-sized bowl is offered: scarlet powder of crushed Twilight Mushrooms mixed with cool river clay. One breath—sharp as lightning—and the world ripples outward like fabric tugged in slow motion. The masked tribe tilt their heads in unison; the dunes themselves tilt with them, revealing hidden glyphs of silver fire beneath the sand’s skin. Time loosens. The journey begins.
II. Spiral of the Fungal Guardians
Sand dissolves into living loam, and colossal mushrooms sprout in a helix that climbs the sky. Their fleshy stems pulse an inner bioluminescence—each throb syncing to the wanderer’s heartbeat, steady as a drum. Spores drift like incandescent snowflakes; inhale, and taste galaxies.
The spiral walkway is narrow, slick with dew. Every few paces, the wanderer passes a Guardian: human-tall but spore-grown, heads crowned by wide caps, arms braided with mycelium braids that glow indigo. They do not move, yet their presence radiates instructions in pure feeling—keep ascending, keep breathing, keep trusting the pulse.
Halfway up the helix the air fractures into shards of kaleidoscope glass. Within each shard is a glimpse of a possible self: a thousand variants of the wanderer, dancing, weeping, conquering, surrendering. The path narrows further, needles of doubt pricking at trembling feet, but the drum-heartbeat never falters. With one final step, the wanderer bursts through the mushroom canopy and onto a platform of crystalline petal-stone.
III. Obsidian River of Mirrors
Below the platform flows a river that looks forged from smoking mirror-glass—black as lunar shadow, bright as sunlit steel. A raft glides silently to the platform’s edge, carved from petrified kelp, oars etched with serpentine runes. The Guardian helix bows; the wanderer boards.
Rowing is effortless; the river carries memory fragments on its surface: a child’s laugh, a forgotten promise, a city’s skyline at dawn. Each reflection tries to hook the wanderer’s gaze and reel them beneath the surface. But the masked tribe now stand upon distant banks, chanting silently—mouths still, hearts loud. Their rhythm grounds the raft like an anchor.
Mid-current, the river thins to a single glowing filament. The raft becomes weightless and flips upside-down yet somehow remains upright. Gravity is a rumor. The wanderer floats in empty twilight, the river now a ribbon spiraling upward into a mouth that appears in the sky: a colossal obsidian serpent.
IV. Serpent of Liquid Lights
The serpent swallows river, raft, and rider in a single whisper. Inside its glassy throat, reality re-textures itself as rolling fractal corridors. Colors undreamed—ultraviolet rust, infrared honey—drip from walls that feel like velvet thunder. Each pulse of the serpent’s interior squeezes new visions into existence: a labyrinth of vines that loop into infinity, a cathedral built entirely of vibrating feathers, a city where every citizen shares one mind.
DMT storms crack open overhead, fractal lightning revealing maps of other worlds. Licks of liquid light slither along the wanderer’s skin, writing scripts that only the subconscious can decode. The traveler realizes: these marks are directions for returning, a language of exit wounds from the belly of cosmic beasts.
With a final convulsion the serpent’s body turns transparent—showing a night sky full of spiraling constellations—and ejects the wanderer through a ring of phosphorescent saliva into the open void.
V. Nebula-Ash Dunes
The landing is gentle: soft, starlit dunes composed of glimmering ash. Each step leaves sparks that drift upward, forming new constellations even as the old ones fade. The masked tribe wait ahead, masks removed now to reveal faces both ancient and impossibly young—time loops back on itself in their eyes.
They welcome the wanderer with silent smiles, handing over a single shard of obsidian mirror still wet from river vapors. In its surface glows the entire journey—helix, river, serpent—compressed into a flickering sigil the size of a heartbeat. “Carry this,” says their collective gaze, “for every eye that peers into darkness deserves a map.”
Behind them, a new swirl of ember-stones already outline another circle. The flames listen for the next pilgrim’s footsteps—because the desert is loud once you know how to hear it, and the saga never ends, it only loops: nothing but a visualizer of souls in transit, dream after dream after dream.
End of Part e2 – the Caravan waits, embers crackle, and the dune winds hum another pulse.
the Gallery
