sandstorm

 Pieces flying. The nature of the universe all at its end. The nightmare continued, swirling about limbs and transforming a life of memory and love and fun and beauty into no more than dust. With it, the storm grew in strength.
 Time ended and began. It whirled, and he felt it on his face and in his nose and he choked until he realized with horror that he might be in mid-air.

 He felt like he was drunk — except at a certain point he didn't know what drunk was. Suddenly he was wiped from existence, unceremoniously dumped upon the sands of the future or the past or the bottom of the sea where none could return.
 Poseidon found himself dazed and confused on lands that were hotter than he'd ever felt before in his life. He blinked. He looked around. He frowned.

...
“...
Shit.”

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Theodora hadn’t had an awakening. She hadn’t been thrown across dimensions or dragged away in a dream; she hadn’t been pulled through the time-space continuum and dropped down by one malevolent demiurge. Rather, she’d simply awoken somewhere different from where she remembered falling asleep, then went about her day deciding it was but a small inconvenience.

Her red-stained paws were digging incessantly at a rounded mound of desert clay when Theo found herself distracted by a distant whirring. Confused, she turned her head and blinked, that split-second darkness just enough for a stranger to appear in thin air. Immediately, she began moving to close the distance.

The tiny woman stopped several yards away to do a thorough examination. Her subject whispered something under its breath — Shit. — unfortunately confirming that he was still alive. “You weren’t here before”, Theodora commented, tilting her head while awaiting confirmation, “How’d you do that?”
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 You weren't here before.
 “Uuuuh,” he answered, and looked at the newcomer. She was a stop-dead-in-your-tracks kind of blonde, the little kind that you could just put in your mouth and slurp right up. Face full of sand, Poseidon looked at her and a wide, goofy, stupid grin stretched across his cheeks. “Magic, sweetcakes,” he answered plainly, standing up, like he had travelled here in a sandstorm on purpose, just to see her.
 “That's just how I do.” He was utterly filthy. Sand covered his dark fur, shoved well and deep into places he didn't know he had. Poseidon shook himself out, throwing smatterings of sand grains all around him, including at her. “How's it hangin' sweetcakes?” Poseidon selected the most charming smile he could find and wore it well, leaning in toward her as though nothing weird had happened and he knew exactly where he was. (he had no idea where he was where the shit was he?)

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This stranger seemed funny, if nothing else. Theodora listened half-heartedly to his attempts at flirtation while silently judging his disheveled appearance. He explained that it was magic which brought him to this strange desert; she raised a skeptical brow and quirked her flat expression into a slight grin. 

She opened her mouth to respond — “You’re- oh!” — but was caught by a smaller storm of dust sourced from this stranger’s pelt. Theo sighed, retaining her gentle smile. “You’re dirty. Why didn’t you use magic to clean yourself, then?” She thought herself quite clever for thinking of such a response.

“My name is Theodora. I think I just got here, too.” Low-lidded eyes peered around to scan each surrounding bush, or lack thereof. “I don’t think I like the desert very much.”
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 “Well that would ruin the fun of being dirty,” Poseidon answered swiftly, tail wagging as sand continued to fall from his thick fur. The heat was already starting to get to him, to the point where he knew he wouldn't last very long in this strange world of dry death. He took a moment to enjoy her little smile — it was a welcome reprieve after being thrown around in the wind for reasons he didn't really understand.
 Poseidon took a moment to look around. It looked the way the sea did when it dried all the way up, and then sat for thousands of years. Maybe he'd time travelled to the future. Maybe the time travel had made him forget all the things? He vaguely remembered being in the water before this had happened, and pretty much nothing else.
 “Poseidon. Can I call you Dora? I'm gonna call you Dora,” he asked, then immediately confirmed before she could get a word in. This saucy little cupcake wanted out of here. When a lady asked, Poseidon would deliver. “We're gonna get you out of here, then. This sunlight can't be good for your gorgeous complexion,” he answered, and took a bold step forward to guide her way.
 Crash.
 Apparently, he'd also forgotten how to walk on four legs. He spit out more sand, having fallen after his front foot had slid out from beneath him. “Which way?” He asked, looking up at her, hoping she knew where the hell they were going.

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Theodora felt her enthusiasm dwindle with each passing phrase of their conversation. It wasn’t entirely Poseidon’s fault; she was easily bored by all things, a flirtatious stranger being the least of them.

Still, she kept her stance polite, breathing a soft sigh as she watched him fall forward. “Are you okay?” she asked, then remembering something else, “Don’t call me Dora. You can call me Theo, if you’d like.” Dora was an ugly name and being called Dora was truly one of the few things that could anger the sprite.

She would let him go, just this once.

Poseidon’s compliment didn’t go unacknowledged, even as he rest splayed against the red dirt. “Well...”, Theodora mused, “We can always go straight. If we go right or left, we might make a circle.”
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 “K, Theo,” he answered, still on the ground. Personally, Poseidon thought Dora was a name that matched her a-Dora-ble nature, but women were always quite particular about what they wanted to be called. Names affected perception of character, of course; that was certainly something he understood.
 Straight, right. Focus Poseidon. You can do this. You were launched into a sandstorm across time and space and landed in front of an incredibly beautiful nymph that would put Aphrodite to shame. Who's Aphrodite? Haden't his brother said something similar once? Ugh. What is going on.
 “Straight it is!” Poseidon declared, crawling up from his mess of embarrassment so that he might follow alongside her. Once he found his footing and got his pace going, he offered some friendly chatter. “So, Theo,” he smacked his lips. “Do you uh... remember anything?” If she remembered something, maybe he would remember something.

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They were walking toward.. away, which Theodora supposed was better than staying still even if they didn’t know exactly where “away” was. She looked up to acknowledge Poseidon while he asked his question (noticing then their difference in size) and shrugged her shoulders.

“What do you mean?” Theo replied, “I remember that my name is Theodora, and that your name is Poseidon. Do you remember anything?” Again, she hadn’t been warped into this reality in the same way he had. Her transition had been subtle, barely noticeable if you asked her, which meant that she truly had no idea what it might have been like for the others to arrive. 

A moment passed for him to respond. “Where do you hope we end up?” she asked. Theodora thought that she might like to visit the sea, if ever possible.
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 Did he? “Maybe?” Poseidon scrunched his face and thought about it, wiggling some of the sand from his fur again. It was hard to think entirely straight so shortly after appearing in a sandstorm of time. He didn't really fully understand what was going on. “I have this feeling like I have brothers, and they're important.” Poseidon had no idea what their names are, where they were, or what they looked like.
 He could just... feel it. It was weird.
 “At a siiiick party!” He bleated, grinning as they moved. “You know the kind with like, tons of food, tons of people, everything jacked up to 200%. I don't care what time I'm in or how I got here — that's always gonna be the heartbeat of the universe.” He nodded firmly as they went, convinced that this indeed was the best destination to "end up." “What about you?”

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Theodora silently thought about his comment then shrugged her shoulders to respond. “Maybe they’ll use magic to find you”, she teased. Some part of her felt like she might have had a family at some point, too, but because that feeling was so vague, she figured that they mustn’t have been important enough to bother remembering.

“No, I don’t know.” In a past life, Theo might have understood, but she couldn’t recall having ever been to something like Poseidon had described. “It sounds fun. We could have a party between the two of us, if you’d like.”

She let his question brew for a moment, wind thick with debris blowing across their path. Theo shrugged again. “I don’t know that either”, she finally responded, “Anywhere but here, I think.” Looking up at Poseidon with a doleful curiosity, she asked, “Where is the best place to have a party?”
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 He liked this girl. She had a heart on her butt. He was grinning from ear to ear as she offered that his brothers might use magic to locate him. Maybe it was true? Maybe he had used magic to get here, but forgot how as soon as he landed. Maybe they would follow right along with him. Poseidon flipped his gaze back to where he had come from, but there was nobody there. Already the area was fading into the distance as the pair walked on to better pastures.
 “Mm, that sounds... fun,” he cooed as she suggested a two-person party, having very different things on his mind than balloons and fanfare. He eyed her for a moment with a telling smile.
 But what was the best place to have a party? Really?
 “I mean, I would prefer an island resort with an all-you-can-eat buffet serving oysters and sea bass but, hey, beggers can't be choosers.” He shrugged. More seriously, he offered, “First off we gotta find somewhere with trees, like actual trees,” he surmised, staring out into the distance, but unable to see anything beyond the wriggled of heat upon the horizon.

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Letting you guide the pace of their little journey :)

---

Theodora didn’t not have a similarly suggestive imagination, but she enjoyed keeping her deceptively coy guise and was much more reluctant to mimic Poseidon’s knowing grin. Instead, she kept her eyes forward, pretending the invitation had never been made at all.

His idea of a grand meal sparked her curiosity. “You’ve been to the sea?” Theo asked, her gaze wide with wonder. “I’d love to see it. One day, I will.” She’d learned that speaking directly to the universe instead of asking open-ended questions was a much more effective way of getting exactly what she wanted.

“Like a forest?” she asked, “I’ve never seen one of those in a desert.” It was a slight jab meant in jest, a kind-hearted attack on his intelligence. Theo found herself attracted to Poseidon’s presence, primarily in a platonic way, and so guessed that he wouldn’t mind some friendly fire.
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 Poseidon struggled to remember any of what he knew as she asked him about the sea. “I think so?” He offered, trotting ahead, not bothering to elaborate as he pieced together what things had even looked like before... whatever the sandstorm was. All he remembered was the smell of sea salt, the sound of waves crashing on the shoreline, and the touch of a woman. He couldn't remember who, and to be honest it didn't really matter. It was pleasant nonetheless, so he carried it forward. The rest would come as they walked, he figured.
 You mean one day I'll take you, he thought, wondering what she might look like in... precarious positions on the beach.
 As she poked him with words, he sideglanced to her and rolled his eyes in an obvious, over-exaggerated movement.
 Poseidon picked a direction. He didn't know why, it just felt right. She seemed happy enough to move along beside him, and honestly he was thankful for the company of a slightly-prickly, heart-butt hottie. As they went on though, it became more apparent to him with the sand under his feet that he had no idea where they were going.

 But that's what pretending is for. “I figure once we get past this dry patch, there will be some rocks and some moisture, and maybe a... plant. Like a real plant,” he figured, assuming all of these things from literally nothing. “Do you..know anything about plants?” Maybe it would be relevant to confirming their direction?

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Theodora thought, then replied: “No.” She knew basic things, like plants needing water to grow, but she was greatly limited otherwise. “Do you?” she asked. Poseidon didn’t seem like a forest dweller, based on his apparent fascination with seaside living, but he did seem full of surprises.

She stopped for a moment to shake some sand from her pelt. “I think I’ve met someone named Poseidon before”, Theo mused, “or heard the name somewhere.” She didn’t know where else to draw the conversation but this seemed safe.
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 Shit. “N..No.” What was there to know? Plants were plants. They grew with water and sunlight, one of which this dismal place was lacking. Avoid the spiky and sticky plants, and don't eat the ones that smell bitter.
 “Well there's only one of the Great Poseidon,” declared the Great Poseidon, lifting his head as they walked on. She was right of course, that there were certainly others of the same name.
 They walked on through the desert. The heat of the day dissipated with the sandstorm. The journey felt longer than it needed to, but eventually as evening approached, they were able to spot mountains in the distance. From there, they followed the friendly jagged line of the horizon, finding their way out beyond the sandy shithole into a much better land.
 Much more waited for them beyond the sands of time.

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