Sarah Z. Creates

In this World-Building Wednesday series, I’m doing just that: fleshing out Talah, one of the worlds in The Sundered Realms.

He’d thought he would die among the sands of home.

He had been content with that knowledge — the salt of his body joining again with the salt of his ancestors to hold his people safe, to keep pushing back the echoing, endless cruelty of the Dark One.

But that had not been his truth. Abram had seen that, had recognized the journey the salt of his blood demanded, and had chosen him to join Abram’s quest to demand the First Daughter fulfill her promises.

And he had been content with that, too. To seek out the fabled First Daughter, to see her finally — finally — put an end to the long theft, the endless scream. What man wouldn’t be content with that?

And yet even that, apparently, was not the truth of his blood.

So now he stood upon a salt-stained deck, next to a man who wasn’t really a man, surrounded by water — him, a son of the sands — and he wondered if perhaps his salt had no truth. How else could he have come so far and still feel so empty?