‘The world is music, Minah,’ her mother told her, something that her golden grandmother had passed onto Kalina, and so Kalina tells her daughter the same. ‘You just have to listen.’ And Minah has carried this with her into her adulthood and to the different lands she has traveled to. Ocean waves were steady beating drums. The shifting sands, they were gentle strings of violins. Sunrise and sunset, well, an entire orchestra came out to perform.
She finds the music now, sitting in the land of Loess, the land where she has learned her brother is Champion. At least he is still alive, Minah thinks to herself. He is alive and soon, so very soon, she would see him again. How much had he changed? How much had she changed. There was a reason Orani told her to come here, the stars had told her of great battles and had painted a picture of crimson staining Tarian’s silver coat.
Loess is mountainous and chilled, desperately Minah searches for some sort of reminder of the desert home she had lived in, trying to place her feet of familiar ground and offer herself some sort of reassurance. Brown eyes concentrate on a particular stone near a particular peak and decides it reminds her of a boulder she would often pass on her daily strolls with Valda. It is enough (though just barely) to quiet the hammering in her chest. At least for now.
When she spots him, Minah remembers another thing one of her family members told her as her quiet heart roars back to life as a desperate thundering inside her chest.
Monsters slumber before they rise.
They are never truly gone.
Her heart races when she encounters yet another strange man and Minah cannot help but worry herself—has she woken one of those dreaded monsters from its sleep?
@[Ashhal]