Eclipsing the Dunes

[Tom Marvolo Riddle]

I didn't know what to expect when I exited the gate. Though for that matter I would have thought at least I’d know what the gate travel would be like. All in all it was kind of dull. No maelstrom of power, the conversion of matter into energy, nor melting clocks and other time pieces circling overhead. No just one step in and a few steps out. That simple, mundane even and yet not in this entirely normal.

Practical in a way the Wizarding World would have had trouble accepting. If it didn’t pop, transform, or injure you in some way then it wasn’t safe to travel. The only exception to that was when they appropriated over Muggle transportation and even then there were no guarantees as to the result or what end your head would be attached to afterwards.

The only thing that kept it from being boring was Nealaphh’s condensed and more than little complex explanation of his animagus abilities. Which given proper time and conversion of the numbers I figured I could replicate. Though no doubt I’d have to review the memory later to decipher the full content of what he had said. Though I quietly thought it might have been easier to just throw omnilium at the situation. My musing was however interrupted when the curtain of energy at the other end of the gate parted just ahead of me.

What greeted me didn't match the name either, "Well Nealaphh whoever named this place should give me my money back,” I said with a note of derision, as my eye wandered. Savannah at best, mostly dried vegetation that ranged between pale-brown to nearly white. The shoots of green I could glean seemed to be the kinds of weeds which prize lawn gardeners feared the worst or were more complex things such as shrubs and bushes. In the distance, I spied some sort of herd of quadrupeds that could be passed off as a relation to gazelles. The air itself had a tangy dryness and hint of detritus that went along with climates that had desperately short raining seasons that staunched a drought only just.

To put it bluntly, it looked like postcards one often saw at shops for Africa. The kind you send back to a family when you either want them to believe you’ve been some place or as a joke. Only somehow I was beginning to think that the Omniverse didn’t have a postcard shop. If it did, I really needed to see what other kinds of trinkets there were, might be something worth having and maybe even hint at the design of this place.

As it was, I had yet to even come across a place remotely like that and my observations were left mostly on the drier, more naturalist persuasion.

The temperature though was to say rather warm, warm as I was expecting and then some. Annoying but it was altogether impotent against the charms of a wizard. One in particular would help as I tapped the bridge of my hat, which was busy digesting the dataverse, and cast a simple cooling charm followed by that of an impervious charm for any potential sandstorms.

A blast of chill rushed and filled the first few inches above my skin, like a coastal breeze in the fall, sweetening the air enough that condensation formed on my skin.

Looking to my shoulder I gave a nod to my raised wand, “Cooling and sand protection charms for your troubles?” I left it unsaid that I needed directions; simply asking would be like stating an obvious question that needed to be answered anyways. I may be a genius but I wasn’t yet a god, so omniscient thought of knowing exact locations even before I’d been there was beyond me. Hence an offer of a cooling charm rather than looking helplessly lost or confused.