Chapter 91: The Lessons of the Sand
After several uninterrupted days of walking, the desert had slowly changed its face. The overwhelming heat, that burning breath biting at our bones with every step, had lessened, as if the world itself had finally agreed to loosen its grip. The temperature, without fuss, had gently slid into an almost unusual mildness, a temperate, bearable climate, where the skin no longer seared at every moment, where breath no longer burned the lungs.
The air had changed.
It was no longer saturated with ashes or anger. It now flowed with a calmed slowness, a discreet caress gliding over the skin without violence. A light breeze would occasionally lift the edges of our clothes, as if apologizing for its former excesses. There was something washed out in the atmosphere, something purer, as if the days of effort, of blood and dust, were behind us — even if we knew, deep down, that they were never far away.
And the creatures too, as if by tacit agreement, had vanished.
Nothing. Not a shape. Not a threat. For hours, no hostile presence, no gaze in the shadows, no rumble beneath the sand. The silence didn’t weigh — it soothed. A healthy silence, almost welcome, like a reprieve granted by a world tired of struggling.
And we, in the heart of this strange calm, continued to move forward. Less tense. Less armed. But always vigilant.
At times, around a dune’s curve, when the wind grew more discreet and the slanted light softened the landscape’s contours, we still glimpsed a few solitary, twisted plant silhouettes, like remnants forgotten by the rest of the world. Immobile shapes, rooted in the dust, vestiges of obstinate life. Among them, some drew our gaze more than others — not for their beauty, but for their strangeness.
The Scream-Thorns.
The name alone, discovered during my research on the region, had struck me. It evoked a muffled cry, an ancient pain frozen in vegetal form. And when I saw them for the first time, I understood why the name had imposed itself.
They looked like cacti — but of a dark, almost charred variety, with thick, squat stems that seemed sculpted from frozen ash. Their tops, flared, opened into an oversized mouth, bristling with twisted thorns like the fangs of a beast fossilized mid-agony. A vegetal mouth. Gaping. Grotesque. Frozen in a silent scream.
But despite that terrifying, almost caricatured appearance, they were not dangerous. Or rather — only to those who were dangerous themselves. The Scream-Thorns possessed a rudimentary consciousness, a strange sensitivity to intent. They only stirred, screamed, or pierced those who embodied a threat: predators, raiders, bearers of aggression.