Shimmering Sands let me be your killer king

@Skellige — sorry I rambled so much! You can skip to the last three indented segments if you want. :P He's getting rammed by a hungry old ram, or something.

So far, the emptiness had reached the last five families he had come across, and none of them had been willing to take him in. It was alright. They gave him what they could spare, sometimes, and it was a kindness he was unaccustomed to. Perhaps that was why he had fled before the gifts could be utilized? The wanderer did not dwell upon it—he simply moved on. Kept on moving, and marching, until the grass turned to dirt and then to sand, and he was met by the edge of the world.

He followed the sand bar until it became something more substantial, at which point the grizzled boy moved his lethargic self towards the interior. He barely made it more than a day's hike inland before the path pulled him outward again, towards the sea, and upon a rocky plateau. There was nothing here. No signs of life (wolf or otherwise); the heat was pleasant and quite bearable, and the sun had bleached the fresh shoots of grass to a pale yellow already. As he dipped his head towards a patch of tiny buds, sniffing and reaching with little regard for what was around him.

He was briefly stunned as a creature he had not forseen, nor ever before witnessed, came upon him quite suddenly. It was a great surprise when the ragged creature came barrelling across the plateau towards him, and surely he should have seen it coming, but he had not. It had the biggest, thickest limbs; a fact that shot through his weary mind for a split second as it came charging over. It was at least the size of a bear—maybe bigger—it seemed bigger—and the boy would think back to this moment, this split-second before its great head and strange crown dipped to meet his body, about how satisfying the sound of its head made as it connected to his body.

That singular hit, aided perhaps by the curve of his body and the immediate nature of being caught unawares, sent the silvered boy off of the pleateau altogether.

As he fell, he waited for the grinding halt of the world against his chin. He was at a crossroads. Floating as he did from the top of the sandy hilltop and down, waiting for the connect, for the crunch, and wondering if he would be alone for the rest of his life; the assailant was forgotten, but likely remained poised somewhere upon that sandy hill, gloating, gleaming in the sun. The grit shifted beneath him and as his shadow extended across the hot dark sand, he glimpsed the shining sea. The horizon in the distance — and as he landed the darkness took him.

He did wake, eventually. The pain in his ribs was matched by the throbbing in his shoulder, and a decidedly tender section of his jaw. Where the boy's mandible connected to his throat was sore indeed, as if he had been hit by a swift uppercut. Whatever had perpetrated this spontaneous crime had departed, and Tetsubo would remain ignorant as to whom the culprit was—as well as their motives. It mattered little. Mayhaps it was just fate's answer to his wandering? A way of forcing him in one direction instead of another. He had felt maddeningly lonesome and without cause; and while he was still alone, now the brooding beast wondered if fate had more in store for him.

That, and his head was filled to the brim with quite the concussion.