The Shifting Face of the Sand King

[The Old Ye Bard]

The Shifting Face of the Sand King

By Emily Rosvinte

His eyes were never shut, but they never gazed into mine, or atleast not that I could tell.

He was a strange creature, Daedric or otherwise, prehaps maybe a beast that remained after a Bosmeri Wild Hunt? I would never say for certain, for his very nature was ellusive, his face and body were that of living sand, moving like liquid, yet with features that were as solid as you or I.
I first met the Sand King in a Journey into the Northern Badlands, he approached me first in a mirage, in a dream like fashion though it seemed so real. He beconned me to travel with him back to his forgotten realm beneath the sands, I never hesitated, either out of curiosity, or some sort of reassurance that he meant me know harm.

He never acted like a monster, and felt more like a lost soul banished from where ever he once came from; I have never seen any others of his kind.

When we reached his underworld beneath, I looked around and saw it was an ancient city, once grand, yet swallowed through time like everything else once great in Elsweyr. He spoke through whispery sands on the air that he had not built this place, but found it when he was roaming the wastes centuries ago; the people had long since died, or fled the ruined city, but he liked being alone anyway.
I watched as he manipulated the sands that gathered around the ruin in a spectacle of light, as it glanced off the grains, and made artworks in the air.
When I asked him of his past he told me that he did not know where he had come from, though he had heard spoken on the tounges of outlanders about other creatures such as he, like a being called City-Face, and others of a similar divine nature, but he had heard they often fell to demise at the hands of heros and demi-gods claiming righteousness, so he dwelt alone hoping that doing so would allow him to live a life without the violence that this world contained and thrived upon.

I came to him every day from then on, listening to the stories that he heard from travelers during his secret wanderings in the desert, and I in return told him of the knowledge I knew of, and brought him literature and taught him of the wider world. I befriended this being, and gradually spoke only my secrets to him, till he became my companion and I his.

I thought that our life together would go on forever, little did I know he was not an immortal being, thinking I would fall to the curtain close before he. Sadly, he went out in a sandstorm one day, and his essence was ripped apart, the sand that had held his physical body together had become seperated entirely, blown across all of Elsweyr as far as I knew.

Prehaps one day he will reform, his many pieces finding each other again, but prehaps not, and even so I am old and frail now and don't have enough time as I would wish for, let alone another lifetime to spend with the Sand King.