Oceans Apart || desertgourd + cagedbirdnomore
@cagedbirdnomore
There was nothing quite like feeling the very floor shift beneath your feet as if it might give way at any second. Nothing like training a hawk’s eye on the wind and clouds, aware that even the smallest miscalculation could send them miles off course or into the eye of a storm, and straight to their doom. Nothing like a seasickness that no amount of herbal remedies could abate.
Gaara despised the ocean.
The crew he had hired - foreign, but allies; few from the Land of Wind had seen bodies of water larger than the wells from which they drew it, much less navigate a ship on one - busied themselves day and night to maintain proper course. Most voyages did not require such strict calculations, he had been told. Most voyages identified their destination by way of a popular land mark: A dock, a bustling trading port, even some unexplored cove mapped out by nothing but an ‘x’ on a map and a crude, forgotten flag stuck in the sand. Most voyages ended with all crew members still alive.
For two days they sailed. Gaara spent most of this time peering into the distance from the deck, although he did not know what it was they sought; none of them knew more than rumours. Early dawn found him bow-side, eyes stuck on the horizon. He had wrapped his shawl tight around him. The stale desert air to which he was so accustomed in no way compared to the salty winds scoring his cheeks as red as his hair, and sending a chill straight through his robes to his bones.
Two days and change, the captain had said, but the skies had been clear and the waves had been good to them. The sun had not yet risen fully when a shout came from mid-deck.
Gaara gripped the railing and braced his knees against the ship jolting to a halt. Below, the island’s sand shimmered silver-white against the early sun (At high noon, I hear ye’ can see right through it, he heard one crew mutter to his mate, though ye’d be lucky to find yer way back). The entire landmass was not much smaller than the ship itself, but its flat, barren expanse devoid of trees, wildlife, and all but a few springs to the west created a stretching, distorted effect. The lord was keenly reminded of the way swaths of open desert appeared identical to the untrained eye, leading to infinity; an optical illusion rendering maps useless and responsible for the death of many lost souls.
But land was land. The grains crunched finely beneath his sandals like any other. Two men, each the size of a horse with expressions about as welcoming, flanked his sides. The breeze had been swift on the boat but here, as if the isle existed on a plane of its own, the earth was still.
Gaara nodded at the man to his left, who drew from a pouch by his waist a mottled conch shell. The man pressed it to his lips; a low note pierced the air.
Their part was over.
