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The ancient sand road that laid before them didn't betray sign or omen that anyone else had trodded its burning visage—a surface that would melt your palm to the touch and absorb into nothingness the sweat and tears and blood of the pilgrims which that land whispered to: your toil is over.

This is it old friend. You look at me as if you don't know that some day you'll die. Today. That day is today. If you can't cry anymore I don't blame you. But know this—my tears will water your countenance. That is the only token of gratitude I can give you now.

The wind sang a weeping tune as if an entire world was dying in place of that most beautiful creature. The handsomest, strongest, liveliest, most vigorous being that had graced those powdered stones was swallowed by Nature and Time. Vitality withdrawing from those corded muscles, the last agonized breaths escaping from shattered lungs, and silenced adrenal medullae to never seep their life-sap again into flowering exuberance. Nature and Time appeared to whisper once more: your toil is over. Rest.

The last hope I have, old friend, is that once the dreaded eschaton swallows Nature and Time, and the Beloved of all, man and creature, speaks his voice into this world and its numbered days, you will be among the chorus of those raised and restored to antediluvian incorruptness, and will sing in aeveternity to the One you and I belong.

"Alas, my old friend, you who have followed me though every trial and tribulation now find yourself relying on me, a man who was entirely reliant on you since you were young. How we two brothers found ourselves in this dire situation I do not know, but Allah has created a reason for it."
The horse neighs and slobbers.
"You see my old friend there is a rhyme and reason for everything, an eternal logos which shapes all. The universe is rational and can be understood as something that follows certain rules and even though it might be hard to identify sometimes, there is a logic behind it all. The logos decides all, even our fate."
He leaned down and kissed the dying horse.
"Long have we traveled together and for all the blessings Allah gave to us he also prepared a cruel fate for us humble mortals, his slaves. The water is limited and I have a long walk ahead of me. No matter how much I want to however I will not simply leave you, you matter too much. Once you have passed away I will move on."
He gazed behind himself. The landscape was filled with mountains of brown and yellow stone which jutted out of the ground and came to resemble ruins and constructions of man.
"Even these strange rocks my old friend, they look made with purpose, a logic of some sort directed them. The rock takes on a certain concrete formation that is replicated on several of its points, a logic directs them, and I think it directs me as well."
He held the horse tightly and he felt its breathing almost disappear as all movement came to a complete stop. Life left it. The soul departed and only the husk of flesh remained.
"Rest my friend, after so many years and so much labor you have earned it more than anyone else. I will remember you and I hope your kind is able to remember humans and that you thought of me in your last moments."
He stood up as an oncoming wind shook his clothes which fluttered in the sandy wind.
"The companions we make along the way are fascinating. They are like a phantom of our perception. One moment they form a permanent fixture of our life and the next like ash blown away by the wind they disappear into nothing. We were so friendly, and none of it seemed to mean much in the end. Hopefully to the one above it meant something. I'm not sure what to think anymore.
He started to walk into the vast outstretched desert which seemed to pass far beyond the horizon. All the equipment remained with his friend as he walked into uncertainty.

"Babe, stop, stop..."
"Neigh."
"Babe, that was so good. Your lips felt unbelievable..."
"Neigh."
"Babe, lemme fuck you in the pussy next..."
"Neigh."

I do not know what I am looking for. Here lies the land I have always known, now a territory mapped by a stranger. I am lost in my own familiar landscape, for it has been rewritten. My endurance is being tested. This long outward journey is unavoidable, inevitable. The sun branded the skin with a white mark, and the air entered the lungs like powdered glass. The Frenchman had arrived with his noble ideals of civilization. Under his rule, I had no place in the model he envisioned, for I sought not to don his linen suit and his cross on my neck, thus, I was exiled. The air was oppressive. Humid. It offered neither coolness, nor ease, nor mercy. It was simply there, scraping the throat with every breath like the edge of a blade. This visceral experience enveloped me from all vantage points. My horse lay on its side in the gravel, its ribs heaving more slowly, its grand brown body panted against the earth that was claiming it. I knelt in my white clothes and placed both hands on its neck, where the pulse still beat. The heart was beleaguered, exasperated, but not depleted in entirety. The saddle had slipped beneath the animal. In the distance, the mountains rose up, the mountains that those before me heeded, without a single moving shadow upon them. I looked there to heed a call. It was life calling to me. Allah's grace. The long, deserted roads between wells. The arid nights when the stars weighed heavy, cold and close, crescendos of the daytime heat. "Why do you walk endlessly?" the Frenchman asked, his eyes watering behind his glasses. I told him Imam Ali had said "This world is a place of passage, not a place of permanence". He did not understand. His world was made of iron and smoke, of immediacy, mine, of reflection, of mediation. The nomad road still pulled, even now the answer would remain walk on or die, walk until the legs give and the body joins the horse in the great indifference. The mountains watched. The blue above them did not blink. I rose, gathered what little was left, and started walking, following the call where it takes me.

>>25410026
Superb

bump

I like how all three pieces have the presence of the divine in common and yet also something distinct they emphasized—>>25409646 focused more on the dying horse
>>25409733
More on the thoughts of the man
>>25410026
More on an old and familiar world being replaced by a foreign one

14 hours left.

>>25407191
horse pussy...

3 hours left.

*SNAP*
Looking up from the stallion depleted flat on his lap, the crestfallen courier accosts me: "Charge?"
My sling bag swallows my sand-scraped DSLR; the dirtbike that I'm on gets kicked into gear.
He's after me now: "Charge? Charge f-for photograph! Please, sir, CHARGE! CHAAAAR…"
Wind rushing over my body, the horizon slowly peels forwards.
I turn on my tunes…
Three o'clock, with six clicks till al-Miska—that SOL Sunni must've been aiming to just beat the cargo cut-off.
But that's what happens when you leave yourself zero room for error, when you treat a task like a robot would.
One reverie of red-dust desolation later, I've come up with a concise caption for what I've captured: CHARGE!
"CHAAARGE!" I yell into the Arabian air, which only continues its hot hiss over me.
Suddenly, slicing through the sensation of sibilance on wristskin, my smartwatch sizzles with cicadasong.
The music then yields to: "MOBILE EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM MESSAGE: MISSILES INCOMING—SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER."
I slide-brake my bike sideways, dismount, then yank out my camera and quickly config for long-range.
Stepping backwards in circles, searching all over the sky, I finally find them up there: Clawmarks on a blue chalkboard.
*SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP*
And they begin to meet their inevitable interceptors, each one popcorning their prey's payload to a halt midair.
*SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP*
To come all this way just to make for my pretty photos…
With the transport schedule now definitely delayed, Mr. Dead Battery back there might actually drop off his delivery on time.
I check the map.
Eh, I'm far enough away for what I came out here to do.
I un-bungee cord a container labeled "RADIOACTIVE" from the tail and plop it down on the ground.
• • •
The metal panels drowsily rattle upwards; my girl opens the garage-to-house door to greet me as I totter-walk my ride inside.
"Hey, babe."
"Yo! How's your day been?"
We make a kiss. I come inside and she follows me to the shower.
"Can't complain. Basically followed your initiative and cleaned out the junk."
"I saw, from all that you brought out to the curb."
"Illegal dumping & spring cleaning: No better way to spend a holiday—I'm sure it's swarmed out there."
Undressed of my regolith'd clothes, I reach for the cold water.
"Oh yeah, I swooped by the shore on my way back—absolute Sardineville."
She picks up the bag with my camera in it—"Anything new?"
"Caught a DoorDasher who had forgotten to charge their e-horse, plus the IPBMs getting intercepted. Wanna see?"
"Yes," she says, clicking through the images. "Oh…poor guy."
"He was on the phone before the photo. Whatever he had probably even got cleared for launch."
"…"
"Babe?"
I peek my head out of the shower: She's hunched over and still.
All that tidying up must have really tuckered her out.
Shower done, I lead her to the den and lay her on the couch to charge.
Already getting started without her, I whisper into her ear, "Happy Elon Day…"
God, I love being a Martian.

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The meal would be ready soon.

Baked to perfection, a veritable feast on four legs.

Holding his snout, the rider spoke tenderly. "Jidril, may your soul rest easy. We shall meet again."

"Do not weep, Ardeth. You have been my heart's grass and I would choose no other fate so long as you were by my side."

It was almost enough to ruin my appetite.

The human scowled at me, cursing my species and threatening to wring my neck.

"Excuse my friend," Jidril panted. "The heat has dried up his manners."

"No offense taken."

We lapsed into silence. Ardeth weeping and praying, Jidril contemplating the last moments of his mortality, and myself patiently waiting.

"Do you aim to make a dessert of out him?"

I saw no reason to lie to a dying stallion. "If he chooses to become it by staying."

"He could live then?"

"If he leaves now, the city is not so far. He might make it if he has enough water."

Jidril nickered and Ardeth must have understood.

Gathering his things, he left, kissing Jidril farewell. His figure receded into the dunes.

"Please, if he does not make it. Would you spare his remains? His family might yet find him."

"You'll fill my belly nicely, but I cannot speak for my brethren."

Can- Can you stay with me?"

I hopped onto Jidril body and placed a wing on his head.

His breathing slowed, then stopped. I wondered at their life together. What friendship the two must have shared for decades.

Suddenly I had lost my appetite.

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Alright, voting time—share your process and critique others!
I’ll give my own placements when the poll closes on Friday.

~Competition~

>Anonymous — “The ancient sand road that laid before them”
>>25409646

>Anonymous — “Alas, my old friend”
>>25409733

>Anonymous — “I do not know what I am looking for”
>>25410026

>ineptia !!/7cMIiSCHvi — “*SNAP*”
>>25413476

>Anonymous — “The meal would be ready soon”
>>25413572

~Voting~

https://strawpoll.com/XOgOVwLXQn3

>[countdown to voting deadline]
https://countingdownto.com/?c=7262296

>>25413476
Love how you turn nouns into adjectives—"regolith'd", very McCarthy-esque. Is there any reason why regolith'd instead of regolithed? Also loved how the sibilance line produces actual sibilance. Really funny ending, well done.

File: regolithed book instance.png (439 KB, 1784x1606)

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>>25413884
>Is there any reason why regolith'd instead of regolithed?
It’s mainly a courtesy to the reader, since “regolithed” doesn’t appear in dictionaries and I don’t want to confuse anyone with exotic-looking words (which, when they seem like typos, could just be given up on).
Sure, “cicadasong” isn’t included in Merriam-Webster or Wiktionary (the latter being my lodestar), but that’s an easy one to figure out—everyone knows “birdsong” or “whalesong”—same with “wristskin.”
But I didn’t know what “regolith” was until today, so I thought it best to make its modification from noun to adjective (technically perfect passive participle) as conspicuous as possible.
I guess I also abhorred the idea of it being read, even initially, as “reg-oh-lith-ED” when in my head I heard, and want y’all to hear, “reg-oh-lithd.”
And shout-out to this astronomy abstract from 1997 which Google Books returned as the only instance of “regolithed.”
>very McCarthy-esque
Like, let me flip it back at you and ask why put a dash before the “esque” suffix?
>Also loved how the sibilance line produces actual sibilance. Really funny ending, well done.
I’m so glad you enjoyed it.

>>25413710
I'm the anon who wrote "Alas, My Old Friend". Can I vote for myself?

Also hurray I'm winning!

>>25414988
No there's none. Why is it changing randomly every time i refresh?

>>25415050
Also I just voted for some random anon I think.

I'm too retarded for technology.