The shortage of water and the limited quantity and diversity of life in a desert, with surfaces devoid of vegetation, should have meant forsakenness, stillnesss, desertion. And yet... The family that called itself the Dragon's Throat managed to adapt to live. Even under the driest of circumstances possible inside the Helovian borders they had still prevailed until now.

The tiger mare had been working on the temple-site since morning, now the afternoon was slowly beginning to be fogged up by the stretching of shadows. Orangemoon was full and fledged — and perhaps even almost over. The gift of the metal-crafters that the God of the Sun had given them had almost passed the peak of the season, but she would use it in time. Use it good, as well. To cover the top of the Temple’s circular tower she had planned a helmet of metal to roof the upper landing. The top of it needed to be able to house a flame that would, like the Holy Flames of the Diviner’s Fire, burn into the evermore. Everyone would be to see what their Patron’s gifts had been able to bear, handsomely, brightly. Maren plucked at the metal she had gathered from the deep veins within the earth. Oh, how fresh it felt in her tug, how magical in its heated pull. Like that she started dragging it into a shape. Once it was done it could be raised up where it belonged by capable pegasi.

Few metal temples existed inside hot, dry aeolian environments. This one was special. This one did. Its smooth metallic curves shimmered, stood unshifted next to the deep marine-blue backdrop of the ocean as it stood on the everchanging dunes. Maren looked from the temple over to the sandy beaches, its dust wrapped around periglacial sand flats. Dusty... Maren caught the wind-blown microscopic grains with the hairs framing the insides of her nostrils. She breathed, or rather; snorted a puff of thick fog to loosen up the fungus inside her nose. At least she was able to be content with the breeze that this continent brought, even if that came along with its sometimes nagging morphology. She sighed, though kept pushing and pulling the metals. Her mane jumped and spun along within the circulating air as she did, drifting on complementary warmth and cold as she felt winter was coming closer — Not yet, almost.

Sweat dripped in glimmering droplets down her cheek, her coat had gotten a bit wet despite the refreshing breeze. She paused her work to look up at the building they had already realized. Besides the shimmering in the sunlight, the temple was barely an irregularity. It was almost as if it was a mere turbulence in the wind, the child of saltation, an aeolian ripple in the sand; perpendicular to the air they breathed in as the family of the Dragon’s Throat. Who would ever think of it as organogenic? Through these seasons that it had needed to create itself it had already become something more.

Or, well... To her at least.


Totally tried to study aeolian environments while also doing helovia, but who am I kidding

I hate to break it to you baby, but you're simply lost