Sand. Buckets of sand. The stuff was falling down, falling up. A wind that didn't seem to start or end anywhere blew it sideways, all ways, into your eyeballs, up your nostrils, through your ears and out the other side.

It was never ending in its assault, each breath I took was more sand than oxygen. I could almost feel it coating my lungs in tiny, rigid granules. I was sure we'd all be suffocated by the stuff. And if that didn't kill us, I was sure the fact that we were wading through three feet of the stuff-- no, wait. Three and a half feet-- and that it was falling quicker than I could describe how it fell, we would be buried alive. A hodgepodge of heavenly and magical corpses preserved forever in their sandy tombs.

Oh, what was the saying? Out of the frying pan and into the fire? Yes, that was exactly where we had landed, a never ending sea of sandy hell. I think I'd prefer the fire.

My father told me to keep moving.

Sure. I'll just trudge through this now four feet of sand while trying to catch my breath as sand clouds my vision and chokes the life out of me.

Crispen took the sand, well, with a grain of sand. He walked with a certain, aggravating nonchalance, over the mounds of sand, his sneakers never getting sucked into the dark depths below. How did he manage to make even this look effortless?

His umbrella was over me, though he hadn't had it during the beetle battle with Gideon, and it too, sank miserably with the weight of all the sand. I saw through the veil of sand Cripsen reaching into his pant pocket.

Don't you dare, Heavensley, I thought. Don't you light up a cigarette like this is just another boring day for you. 

He stopped rustling through his pocket as my thought reached his ears.

"Good," I mumbled; the word was laced with sand as soon as it exited my mouth and fell to the ground, dying before it could reach anyone's ears.

Even my father, whose soles of his boots glowed with the blue of his magic, managed to sail through the sand, barely annoyed by how it pelted his face. Why was no one using their magic to help me sustain a sand-free existence?

"Try to help yourself," Crispen whispered. My eyes immediately rested upon his face, tiny darts lining up their target, aimed, readied, and... fire!

"Really?" I growled as I gave him the best glower I could. For a second, I thought I saw him shudder. "Now's the time you decide to coach me on magic?"

Bits of sand fell into my open mouth--a consequence of being so wordy-- and lodged in between my teeth. They felt awful, the tiny buggers were more annoying than stuck corn kernels. Next time I was forced to come to a layer dripping with sand, I would be sure to bring floss. Mountains of floss.

"You're an owl. You can fly. Fly again," Crispen remarked.

He was a few feet in front of me, his back turned away, the headphones of his walkman placed around his neck. I wanted to give that cord a good pull and watch as the mighty fell.

Cute little cat Chantham meowed in agreement in my arms. I gave him a good rub down, removing the inch of sand that had started to coat his tiny, ivory body. In front of me, I heard my father laugh.

"She flew? Goodness, I bet she almost died," he said, in a playful tone. What was happening? Had madness grabbed the both of them?

The only other person that seemed as bothered by all the sand as I was, was Captain Stormholden. He stood to my left, arms raised above his head, a poor attempt to keep the sand at bay. It coated him like he was nothing more than a dusty bookcase that had been forgotten because of the uninteresting books that graced it's shelves.

But Stormholden wasn't filled with uninteresting books. No, as I looked at him, and the way a light dusting of sand landed on his delicately curled chocolate eyelashes, I knew plenty would find him interesting. I imagined women, young and old, and maybe some men, would find the captain a page turner, each one they'd flip through in hopes of getting closer to his chiseled, naked climax.

"Peneloper (middle name undisclosed) Auttsley! Put your smutty thoughts away!" my father yelled from yards ahead. "I don't know how you've managed to make books and bookshelves naughty, but you have."

I blushed at having my own private thoughts called out to the entire group and returned myself to Stormholden. He turned toward me, his gaze hooking mine, and as he looked me over through squinted eyes, he scoffed, a cloud of sand forcing its way down his windpipe.

He coughed, tiny clouds of flecked air coming from his mouth. Then he spat something under his breath. Did the captain just swear? I couldn't recall making vulgarities a part of his everyday vocabulary.

Where had you gone, captain? What happened to you?

"Gideon found him," Crispen said.

Oh, that's right. When Genesis had up and flown away, so too, had my story. And before Crispen had shattered into shards on my floor, he'd mention something about the magic being similar. Why would Gideon want Stormholden?

"Revenge." It was my dad that spoke this time.

"Why?"

"You wrote over him."

"Really?" I asked, a smile on my face. "Such a petty reason for such actions."

My father stopped and turned around to face me. His piercing blue eyes made me stop dead in my tracks. Looking at him as I did now under the dim purple light of this layer, I counted more creases in his brow then I'd remembered. His hands had felt rougher and darkness seemed to take up residence under his eyes. What had happened to him in the twelve years he'd been dead?

I never bothered to think about what he'd been through. Then again, I thought he was dead and death, at least how I had believed it to be, left no room for continuations. My father was the magical equivalent of Miss Laddie; she wielded her garden shears at a quivering nature to get it to submit and my father waved his blue stained magic at a surprised Death, forcing it to find another taker.

"To be forgotten by someone so dear," my father began, "Someone who made you believe you could become someone you're not, someone who inspired change and action in you, that doesn't sound petty at all."

He spoke with a twinge of sadness. Ah. I had said something thoughtless.

"Keep your face like that, Nep and it'll fall right off," he chided. I smiled.

"Or it could shatter into a million tiny flesh shards and litter your bedroom floor," I remarked, brushing the sand off Chant. He purred under my touch, his fur as fluffy and soft as freshly laundered linens.

This may sound horrible, and it probably is, but a part of me wished Chantham could stay a cat. He was just too cute for words. He must have sensed my wrongful thinking because he raised his head to give me a rather cool glare with his blue eyes, his cat mouth downturned. Felines were surprisingly expressive.

"Okay, okay," I said, patting his head. "We'll return you to your human form. Though I'll be expecting to see your wolf form someday as payment."

Chant sighed, I think, giving me a lazy half-meow, and placed his head back between his paws, closed his eyes and sought out the sandman.

Crispen found me soon after, his slender arm grabbing me above the elbow, a tiny torch of anger burning in his eyes. My commentary had annoyed him. I never knew that tormenting such a pretty face could bring such enjoyment. Maybe I was a rather cruel creature. Crispen sighed.

"You're not a cruel creature," he said. "You're a teenager and not always kind." Turning to me, he added, "And it wasn't a million shards. It was 278."

A flush of embarrassment rose to his cheeks as his shard count escaped his lips. I laughed hard at the specifics and that he'd found them important enough to relay to me. Who was he trying to impress?

"I know my own pieces," he remarked.

Crispen had become a shy little turtle who sought out refuge in his shell. His blush grew deeper as he turned away from me, hands in his pockets, eyes on the horizon. Adorable.

"Over there!" the captain shouted.

He was standing on the crest of a dune, pointing toward where the purple sun was setting in the east. As the rest of us came up to him, little Chant raised his head to see what had captured all our attention. A lone tree-- I think-- was sticking out of the sand, two small, reflective surfaces shining our way.

"What in the--" I started, but my father, who looked giddy and strange, jumped in front of me and started to jog. With his arms flailing in the air as if he were flagging down our rescuer, he called out, "Dex!"

What, in ivory gobbits, is a Dex?