I woke up to the sensation of stillness.
A stillness so absolute it felt wrong.
For what felt like an eternity, my world had been nothing but motion—the constant rolling of waves, the creaking of wood, the never-ending pull of a voyage without a destination. But now, there was nothing. No water. No wind. No hum of the tides beneath me.
Just sand.
A vast, endless stretch of it, burning under the strange sky, shifting like a restless beast beneath my fingers.
I didn't know where I was. I didn't even know why I was awake. Had I fallen asleep? Had I drowned? Had I simply… stopped existing for a moment?
I sat up, brushing the dry grains from my skin, and stared across the horizon.
A desert.
A land of nothingness.
That was funny, in a way. I had spent so long drifting across an infinite sea, only to end up in a place that was the complete opposite. It was almost poetic.
