It was a beautiful day with splendid orange-rufous dunes that stretched about a few dozen miles into the distance. Before that we had passed through a completely flat and level expanse of hard ochre sand that stretched on for around three hundred miles, the ship moves roughly four miles to every half hour so we spen innumerable times there. We were overjoyed to see the second stage of our journey, the orange dunes. We are on a course for the ocean, a vast desert-like expanse of water, the colour of blue. From the tales I’ve heard of it, it will regularly change its hue to suit its temprement, whilst on a startlingly clear day it will turn a bright, pleasant colour but whilst in a frighteningly stormy day it will turn violent and a murky grey colour. I’ve also heard rumour that you can be submerged in it, and whilst submerged you can propellor yourself inside it. I asked the one who told me that rumour how you aren’t suffocated in it, he looked at me with glee that question provoked in him, an opportune chance to boast his knowledge, “You see that you can, my dear sand sailor. But whilst with the softest type of quicksand you can be ensnared in it you can propell yourself upwards, some with ease if they have sufficient aptitude.” I looked at him silently impacted by this statement, my mouth slightly ajar, “Do you imply that this “water” which I though was merely an anagram for blue hued solid matter is in actuality water?” He wrinkled his brow in contemplation, he looked at me questioningly, loosing his air of academic insight, and becoming genuinely intrigued, “How long have you sailed the same desert?” I was taken aback and so visibly startled I slid slightly down the dune, “I have never seen miles of luscious green, we usually forage for the root vedgetables that grow from mineral rich sand or occasionally a sand creature that pokes it’s head out of the sand.” The man was now astonished, restraining himself from releasing a torrent of questions. I look back on that memory with a type of fondness, but it is the strangest exchange I’ve ever partaken in. I’m now sat on the steps of the ship I’m on, we’ve had ten crew that have abandoned us. I’m now thinking of a tale, though the back of my mind tells me it has a relation to the ocean, and the front tells me not. I look back to the our text about the adventurer Ibn and how he saw our land for some strange reason the strangest and most wondrous he ever seen. I’ll transcribe it here:

The great grandson of a Caliph, Ibn was his name. Ventured into our land and saw the sand. He saw our primitive longships and coracles at the time and commented how they rested on the sand and as he described “they glide like a Dhow on open waters” he was amazed and never left. The second thing he was amazed by was the animals in the sand and the roots that grew here. He was a strange man indeed.

This is a short passage about the man and his wonder at this place. But for me it is hospitable and kind, calm and soothing the desert, a kind of mellow yet turbulent landscape that almost replicates the ocean. Or at least the tales I’ve heard of the ocean. For some inexplicable moment my mind can’t understand why I feel like I was born for the ocean, that I was somehow misplaced, that the ocean is my true abode. I’ve heard rumours of endless shrubs and tall, lengthy plants that stretch for miles; occasionally being so think you can’t even wade through them. I’ve heard rumours of long stretches of land used to “graze animals upon” or “sow and reap crops” that are entirely covered with low, edible shrubs or plants that thrive not from the minerals of the sand but from water. I find this idea immensely peculiar. But still my mind is ever drawn towards the ocean, I find it inescapable, yet not enticing, I find it violent, yet not awful. It is a never ending multitude, an abyssal plain on the horizon, a relentless power that can grant produce, such as the “fish and crabs” I’ve heard rumours of, and it can be fatal and drag carcasses down within it. We are heading there, slowly and persistently, surviving on scarce rations yet with one thing overpowering each of our consciousness, “ocean.”