2. You awaken on the shady side of a towering sand dune, near an oasis. Birds with long, brightly-colored tails fly overhead. If you are a native Acha, you recognize this as your homeland. A strange, smooth-sided tower of red stone rises in the distance. Native Acha may or may not recognize it as a landmark.When he woke up, he was expecting the rough bark of roots and trees against his legs and warm, wet air filling his lungs. Instead, he was faced by granule of sand that crept up his legs and sneaked into the crevices created by the fold of his limbs and into the spaces between his scales. He froze when he realized where he must be. He could never forget the feeling of sand, the empty echoless nature of the air, the smell of sand baking in the sun, and the heat that was always present once the sun rose. It would be impossible to forget even though he had never seen this tableau clearly with his golden eyes. All around him was only grey, the darker gray of the shadow that captured him against the side of a dune and the rolling blur of light and dark that signified dunes stretching off into the distance until it hit that line that demarcated the brighter grey that was the sky. If he closed his eyes and reached back far enough, he could conjure a vision of color to lay against the greyscale world he knew.
He breathed deeply and heavily for a long while, unable to stand under the weight of the sudden emotions that suddenly overtook his limbs. He could remember everything so clearly though he had left this sandy, sun-baked land long ago. He had escaped the place that stirred the frenzy of his obsessions to the point where he could barely function beyond the hunt. In the Swamp, the vision of red still overtook his sight when he closed his eyes, but at least he had been able to find moments of peace and quiet that had been so elusive in he Desert. Here, suddenly the thoughts of a perfect arc of red began beating insistently against the inside of his skull, urging him to rise and run and to hunt.
Hunt, hunt, hunt. The sound beat in his head. His vision was stained red even though he knew his eyes could only see grey.
Hunt, hunt, hunt. His heart pounded against his chest even though he was merely resting in the sand.
Hunt, hunt, hunt. Everything screamed at him and he felt the energy tearing up the hollow of his chest, pushing his limbs to move.
He finally rose, but he did not take up running. Indecision gripped his limbs. He knew in some intellectually capacity that he did not need this. He had learned that slowly in the smell of rot and waste and breathing against Omen's neck.
He knew.
Yet he ran.
He ran because that was what he was born to do. He ran instinctively knowing the slope and fall of dunes so that he could close his eyes. He ran, hoping that when he opened his eyes, he would not crave that splash of red.
He ran towards it and away from it, and he ran.
Maybe if he ran fast enough, he would escape it all: the Desert, the desire, the Swamp, the red, the hunt, and, perhaps most importantly, his stolen, borrowed life.