ATLA - The One Ring

The Si Wong Desert seemed endless.

You got a good view of it as you fell from the sky, spinning rapidly down toward the barren expanse. Waves of sand stretched as far as you could see, rolling dunes glowing faintly under the moonlight. A few jagged rocks jutted out like lonely sentinels, and shadows shifted as the wind carried the sand in every direction.

You wished you could just fall straight down, let gravity take you, but since you were a ring, all you could do was twist and turn through the air. Your mind raced, fear filling the empty space where your heart should have been. The wind rushed through your center—an unsettling, strange feeling.

You slammed into the sand, bouncing hard, but there was no pain. Bounce, bounce, bounce, until you finally came to a stop. Silence followed, broken only by the distant howl of the wind.

The world spun as you adjusted to your surroundings. Looking down at yourself, you saw a glinting golden ring half-buried in the sand.

All around was an expanse of dry, shifting dunes—no signs of life, no landmarks. You tried to move, but having no physical body made it impossible to go anywhere.

You were a ghost, thoughts suspended in the air, and moving more than a few feet away from the ring was impossible.

Then, the wind picked up, and sand began to gather, slowly burying you. You stared up as the grains passed through where your face should be.

This was not how you thought you'd spend your time—turned into a ring and abandoned in a wasteland. You wanted to scream or run, but you couldn't.

You could touch nothing, feel nothing. The sand continued to rise, piling over your ring until it almost disappeared beneath the shifting dunes.

Was this bad?

The idea of being trapped in this lifeless desert until the sand buried you entirely made you think that, yes, this was an inconvenient situation. Still, you couldn't help but find it amusing. Of all places, dumped in the middle of some random wasteland?

It was almost funny. If ROB thought they were going to get some entertainment out of this, you figured they'd have to do better than watching you sit around doing nothing.

So, you decided to wait and see if anything interesting would happen, closing your eyes to block out the rush of wind and the feeling of grit building up around you.

You tried to push at the ring, swipe at it, anything to move it, but nothing happened. You ran as hard as you could away from the ring, even knowing it was pointless, and—yeah—nothing happened. You shouted until you ran out of ghostly breath, the words whisked away by the desert wind. Still, nothing.

The ring was almost covered now, sand drifting around and over it like the ocean swallowing a stone, when you decided to give it another shot. You called out, your voice echoing strangely in the emptiness of the desert. The pulse came, faint and fleeting.

You stared down at the ring, feeling a flicker of curiosity. That was new. You called again, and this time, the pulse came weaker, fizzling out like a spark in a storm. Something felt like it broke apart, like water hitting a boulder.

As you stared up at the night sky, you spotted movement—a shadow circling high above. A crow, wings spread wide, circled overhead, its caw echoing across the dunes. It looked out of place, almost like it was searching for something, or maybe… for you.

It could be your chance. Or maybe you could wait, let the sands pile over you, and see what else this desert had in store.

[] Call again for the crow (Possible Host gained)

[] Wait it out, even buried, we can do better than this. (Ignore host, time skip)

[] Write in comments