Open Wishful Thinking

In the heart of a wasteland, where caravans vanish, salt winds flay the skin and where nothing should grow and nothing should heal, there lies a place that should not exist. The desert around Alkahra is flat and endless, not of sand but of salt-crusted earth. Pale greenery clings to life, low palms, silverleaf shrubs, and ash-colored reeds that sway in the breeze. Yet visitors venture their way to reach The White Oasis, to atone after climbing too high too fast, to heal from wealth and want, to learn restraint in a world that rewards hunger, to wash blood from their dreams. Most visitors come to shed something, gold they shouldn't have taken or power that ruined them.

To the desperate, it's a mirage. To the greedy, a test.

The witches are not hostesses. They do follow anyone's command. They are priestesses of this Oasis; they guide and witness to those who seek restoration. Before full access to the oasis is granted, guests must agree to three vows:

The temple is built into the bones of the dragon that once died here, its ribs the temple's arched walkways, its alkaline blood corroded the ground into sunken baths, and natural terraces of mineral-rich rock. Thermal pools spill into one another in tiers, their waters milky and turquoise. The air is always warm. Steam coils through the bone-colonnades. Incense is burned: bitter herbs, sand resin, and dried lotus flowers.

Nekhara moved through the white heat, her veils trailing behind her in the still air. She descended the ivory steps slowly. Behind her, the oasis steamed quiet and pale. The ribcage of the dead wyrm loomed over the palms, bones picked clean by time. The traveler stood on cracked earth and Nekhara emerged from the heat shimmer, stopped a blade’s length from the traveler.

“Show me what you brought to lose.”

The southern salt flats stretched endless. They knew what it meant. The long pilgrimage home would take them by the Bonewaters. Fitting given what they did. Who they took. Adem and Amra may have justified it through tradition and sacrifice. Made themselves sound like martyrs. But they were still takers. And all takers ate from the same crooked branch.

„She had no right.“ This voice always came from the ribs. And she of ribs was always angry. So they never argued. Not with that one. „Yira gave me to you like I was hers to give.“ Mbaba had to slow their pace. Shimmer and crunch of the salt were bad enough. Speaking with themselves pushed it entirely too far.

„I've done my duty. Returned to the Song once. I'm not going again.“

They didn't answer. Because what could you say? Bondage bound in apology did not break the chain. Didn't set you free. They wished she would scold them more. But it never came. Because her anger – her hate – was a quiet simmer. And that was worse.

Flats grew tired of cracking the dirt. And cracked the horizon instead. Mist became shape – an off white. Terraces steamed in tiers – and what rose in the distance wasn't a mirage. It was a ribcage. Curved and immense. Bigger beast of a bigger song, back when the world was younger. Each one big enough to hold a shrine, or a face, as they did back home. Between the ribs, steam of pool and smoke of herb wovve a web worthy of Takoumba. What clung to skin, earth and sky wasn't perfumed. It was prepared.

Alkahra.

The place that shouldn't exist. Where flesh turned to gold. Funny then, that there were none so afflicted as they neared the enterance.

„Leave me here. I would rather be gold than Song again.“ And that one stung. Because it was sacrilege. And they would've argued, were there time.

Body kept the rhythm. Noting down every silent complaint. A foot tapped by Amra. Sigh from Sale. Knuckles cracked by the one who hated woodsmoke. Only ribs was quiet. Which meant she was listening.

Mist birthed movement. Creature of a different sort stepped from the shade of the hallowed vertebrae. It was that same mirage that wrapped her, pretending to be cloth. But they were not fooled. Nor by the golden shimmer of her skin. She wore her victims in snakes curling down the forearm.

She came blade-close. And they, overfull, were stunned.

They lowered their gaze. Fear and deference both were reasons enough. But no. They needed to look away. The body, their body, wanted to shift. To touch. And make certain they'd never see Songrest again. But they held...for the moment.

The answer struggled to come out. A voice too many. And each had their own ideas, their own words.

„Not all of them belong to us.“

Tell her I said it. Tell her I want to burn.

Even with lips shut, ribs still rode havoc in their mind.

Near the far pools, a glimmering shape in the salt, just barely the curve of a face, a nose, an eye, half-submerged in chalk and time. Another, a little farther off: a hand, palm up, so weathered it looked like part of the stone. One might walk past them and never know.

“Not all of them belong to us.”

A flicker in her eyes, not sympathy, it was recognition. Nekhara was not unfamiliar with divided souls, swallowed by voices not their own. Nekhara’s head tilted. Just enough to suggest listening. The fabric around her shifted, layers of gauze and bleached linen, gilded at the hems with dull bronze thread.

“No. They don’t.” That was the smell of it, not greed, not ambition, but burden. A heavy, sour thing. Her voice softened by the heat. The kind of voice that invited you closer even as it warned you off. “The ones who only carry what’s theirs… they never find this place.”

A block of rose-colored marble, smoothed by age, veined with something too pale to be blood. It was sunbleached and dust-fine, but no sand settled on the carved glyphs. No bird shit. No cracks. “If you mean to enter, you must take the vows. All of you..." The glyphs shimmered faintly like embers, like they remembered being spoken.

“Lies die here. Or live in your mouth forever.” She gestured to the top of the stone. A dozen faint fingerprints, barely visible, but present in the right light. The faint memory of those who had touched it and walked away from The White Oasis changed.

"I will not take what is not offered."
And somewhere, the dragon’s bones creaked faintly, like they, too, remembered what it meant to want too much.

"I will offer up one piece of my hunger."
Another gust passed through. Somewhere behind the guest, the faint crumble of salt gave way.

"I will leave lighter than I arrived."

The priestess stepped aside just slightly, revealing the long basalt path behind her, mineral-pooled and bone-lined, flanked by low shrines and withered grey saltgrass. The dragon's ribs arched overhead. Where the pools deepened, strange desert plants grew from white sand and salted ridges. Thick-stalked ferns with leaves like scales. Spined, pink lilies that bled golden sap when touched. Palms that grew in twisted shapes, their bark bone-white, their fruit hollow and humming like flutes in the wind.

Vows lingered like heat. And danced, like the weave of their mind. Mbaba didn't speak. Because words were easy. Census was not. And you could not speak for a house before walking every room. Waking every soul. And they were all gathered inside. Getting them to face one another was a different animal. The body stayed still, each grain of sand just another way to measure failure.

„I will not take what is not offered.“ Hard from the start.
She offered – said one.
Hoped – another.
Assumed. Everyone knew who that was.
He begged – The fourth still hated woodsmoke.

There was a silence in the great hall, as more voices streamed down the way. But silence had a tendency for breaking. Because they took nothing that wasn't given.

Except ourselves. And if they culd break a rib, all of them – they would've. But they didn't. Because the voice wasn't wrong. Just cruel. Angry. Hurt.

But cruelty still got a vote.

„Yes.“ Of Amra.
„Yes.“ Of the boy.
„Yes.“ Scarthigh.
„Yes.“ Balim.
„Yes.“
Breaths and hums. Had to count for nods. Because no one objected.
„Yes.“
„Yes.“
„Yes.“

A vote passed and silence changed. Not gone – no. Merely diffentely seated.

„I will offer up on piece of my hunger.“ Brought unrest. A shift of the inner body. Someone stood. Another walked off. Because it wasn't gold that they hungered for. Or peace. But they were...hungry. For rest and knowing. For names. For all of this to make sense.

I wanted too much – Yira's thoughts were ravenous even in confession.

„Take it.“ Right from the ribs. „That's mine to give.“ There was no cheer. No applause. But the voters got quieter.
„Yes.“
„Yes.“
„Yes.“

„I will leave lighter than I have arrived.“ And no one wanted to cast their voice at first. Someone turned their back. But ribs held. There was someone wanting to voice inability. That it was impossible. Undoable.
„Yes.“ Amra betrayed them. And everyone else followed suit.
„Yes.“
„Yes.“
„Yes.“

Even ribs didn't speak. The truest yes of all.

So they moved. Past the the priestess they knew for a witch. Past any pretense of coming out whole. Untied their sandals with the same hands that braided wrong. Pressed their bare soles into the dust and brushed the top with salt. Not for themselves. But because this was someone else's home. Because that was how you entered a place in Songrest.

And like a demented teabag, they were about to suffuse the waters.

Nekhara watched the last "yes" settle like dust. The vow had passed like a fever through them, and The White Oasis Priestess had seen it before, how it left mortals soft around the eyes, brittle in the mouth. How it carved the truth into their postures without a blade. Her expression was like the quiet desert moon behind a half-veil of sheer linen, unreadable.

"Come," she said. “You’ve spoken with your mouths. Now speak with your skin.” Her voice, like silk pulled across lips. She turned, and the soft chime of her ankle bells faded into the hush of mineral-rich winds. They followed her through the temple’s pathways, where columns of dragonbone ribs rose around them, bleached and smooth, etched with scripture in a language no one living had ever spoken truthfully. All around them, statues gleamed between the ungenerous greenery, some sunken to the waist in mineral-rich water, others cradled by roots, or bowed beneath the fronds of ash-colored palms. Gold-leafed bodies twisted in longing, or held their own faces in their hands. Their expressions varied: bliss, despair, shame. All of them still.

Between the bones, the buildings had grown, limestone and mosaics set directly into ancient marrow, soft with age, hot with sun. The hut she led them to was half-sunken into the slope, its domed roof cradled between two vertebrae. A curtain of beads, shaped like the claws and fangs of the dead dragon, silver and smoky quartz, clacked softly as she brushed through it.

Inside: cool shadow, and the scent of oil and limeflowers. Small bowls of powdered obsidian and white clay sat waiting. “You will leave your weapons here,” Nekhara said, not asking. Her eyes slid over them, lazy and hot. Hooks had been carved from fossilized fangs. Upon them hung cloths dyed in desert rose and deep rust, worn soft with use. “You’ve brought so much,” she said. She sank to her knees before them.

She bowed her head. Slowly. Not in supplication, but invocation. This was a ritual, not a seduction, though many visitors failed to see the difference. Her hands reached for the clasps of their coat. VIsitors came burdened, many came with hunger, with regret, with ambition dressed as need. And when Nekhara knelt before them, when her fingers slid over the buckles and bindings, few saw the priestess in her.

They saw only the woman.
And mistook reverence for invitation.
And mistook mercy for permission.

And chiseled into they were. Right at the hanging rib. Whoever said loss felt like a hole or a gap had some more losing to do. Because it didn't feel like less – it was more, perhaps more than they could handle. But they couldn't allow it to fester, the golden taker was watching. And between the two of them, she was the creature that took more.

They followed the word, as one might a command. You don't disrespect a witch in her own home. Such was not the proper way. Each one of her movements played to the music of danger, and it rang true within Mbaba. The most dangerous predators were truly stealthy. So when presented with silk for voice and bells for steps, they knew the shape of her. Just another carnivorous plant of the oasis – one wrong move and you were done. Gold if you were lucky. Thoughts didn't want to guess what it meant for the unlucky.

Inscriptions upon the bone caused something to stir inside.
Do no read that – Came from a pain in their thigh.
Not like we could – Woodsmoke scoffed.
Don't cause a fuss – In more voice than one.

But there were no thoughts left for scripture when all the oncesongs came into view. They wondered how many of their own had been lost to the gold and leaf, and the secrets it hid. Perhaps this was best lost songs could hope for – to be a garden fixture for witches that would one day eat them like the golden fruit they were.

The heat of the desert was replaced by the cool of wrong, one wave of colorful beads. They looked to their side and remembered having a knife. Perhaps that too was from the life before. And that too had been given to the sand like the journal before it. Perhaps they should get new ones. The sands weren't forgiving. But they didn't want to forgiven. Only quiet. Not enough vacancy in their head for a thought uninterrupted.

She sank to their own height proper. To deny any temptation would've been a lie. Had they been men alone, it was but a touch till gold. Even some of the other voices couldn't remain completely cool. Because the what if of it hung in the air like invitation. But they weren't men or women, or anything really. They were but a small chorus seeking harmony. And what tore them apart in different times held them firm now. Because they knew this story. Hummed it to themselves as bindings of cloth fell off. They wouldn't take what was not offered.

„What do you want of our flesh, witch?“

Her hands paused at the last fastening. She did not look up. Nekahara did not flinch at the word, but something shifted.

“Do not call me that.” Her voice was still soft. The word itself did not wound her, only saddened. “There are names that twist the shape of a thing.” Witch was one of them. “Call a gate a trap, and you’ll walk into it afraid.” Her fingers resumed their work, slow, reverent, unraveling of their garb.

Clear, as still water before the truth disturbs it. “You are being prepared.” Not undressed or seduced. “I do this so you may approach the waters as you are meant to." This could be a sanctuary. But only if they let it be.

Her fingers moved to the next fastener, slow as scripture. “The pools do not take you clothed. They will not receive what you pretend to be. And so...” she slipped the last piece of cloth loose. “...you are laid bare.” Fabric fell with a hush.

She got up on her feet and grabbed one of the cloths from the hooks. The fabric was frayed at the edges and damp with ceremonial oil. Without speaking, she reached for them and wrapped it about their loins with the practiced grace of one who had done this for many who came broken. The knot she tied was old and tight. “There is nothing I want of your flesh.” she said, and her eyes lifted to meet theirs.

Nekhara cupped the white clay in both of her hands, as it were sacred milk drawn from the marrow of the earth. No word left her lips, only breath. The silence itself was a vessel. Starting at their brow, she pressed the cool paste across their skin with flattened fingers. Over cheek and jaw, throat and collar. Across the planes of the chest, the span of their shoulders. Slow, unwavering strokes. The clay dulled the warmth of their flesh, paled them into something between a living being and a statue.

Only when the body was covered did she reach for the obsidian powder. A thumb dipped into the black. She swept it gently across the brow in a crescent. Then to the sternum, where her fingers scribed a broken spiral, the glyph of unwinding. Another mark behind the ear, fragment of silence. The glyphs she drew were curved in ways no human hand should trace. They echoed in silence, like things trying to remember themselves.

She dipped her fingers again, trailing them down their collarbone where the white clay had already cooled and cracked like a dry riverbed.

“What do you want of your flesh, wanderer?”

They didn't flinch yet. But denying the fear wasn't really possible. Too many voters had written their feeling into the hair on their arms – upright. Their eyes, growing wider.

„But we are afraid of you.“ Spoken in more voice than one. There were few things on which a choir could agree – yet here they were in harmony. This foreign witch, or however she wished to be called, blazed bright. And just like one couldn't blame fruit for how sweet it was, its color could still betray poison.

Even as they were... prepared, as she'd put it – no rest came. Nice words used. Hands full of ritual and ceremony. Of care. Breath held at each touch, like it might be their last. Because it wasn't really her touching or them receiving. It was the song of old laws – shroud woven of songs and loopholes. The types of verses that always said too much by saying too little. They didn't wish to learn those songs today.

If she truly had no designs on their flesh... perhaps there was yet hope to remain ungolden.

Do not give way to hope. – Thigh wasn't wrong.

It felt wrong to obscure the binding line. In a way, it had been like forgiveness, washing away their sin. Another only saw it sink deeper into flesh. Haunted by memory. And by the many voices who wouldn't let them forget.

„We want...“ On this, voices could not agree. There were too many of them. Too many wants.
„I...“ But who was even talking?
„It just needs to hold til we can get everyone home.“ Felt Amra nod at that. Perhaps the body did too.

Their covered skin felt isolated from the wind. Was this how it felt to be gold?

„Why do you stay here, she who wouldn't be a witch?“

She listened to their layered confession, we are afraid of you, without surprise, without offense. Her gaze moved slowly over them. The clay she had smoothed onto their skin was beginning to dry in cracked white lines, flaking slightly at the joints. She stood, rising with the grace of falling sand. A slow, measured motion. Her silhouette cast long shadows across the floor of bone. Nekhara walked a slow circle around them, not predatory, but meditative. As if measuring.

“I can make the vessel strong enough.” Her palm hovered above the final glyph, a locked door waiting for a key.
“Strong enough to carry what must be carried.”

When they asked why she stayed in this bleached oasis of dragon-bone and mineral water, Nekhara turned her head to face them, the beads of her veil glinting as they caught the daylight crawling through the beaded curtain covering the doorway. Her eyes, rimmed in black kohl and touched with gold leaf, seemed deeper than they should be.

“Why do you stay here, she who wouldn’t be a witch?”

“Because the world is afraid of me.” She turned her head slightly, gaze drifting beyond the bone walls to the shifting heat on the salt horizon. Nekhara’s hands, still dark with obsidian dust and pale clay, fell to her sides.

“Beyond this Oasis roam the tribes who wear rust for crowns and ride beasts stitched with wire and magic. Tribes who worship fury and speed." Her hand reached toward them... to guide. She passed through the vertebra hut and beneath the curtain. Outside the light shifted as if filtered through water, bluer, from a time before the sky took shape. They passed through ribs formed into an arch, glyphs etched in deep relief across its inner curves.

“They would rather trap me in a prison of stone and god-words than allow me to be. Here, I am not hunted. I am not claimed.”

Then they reached the terraces and beneath their feet, the ground shifted from salt-rich sand to smooth limestone veined with soft pink and dull green. The pools stretched outward in layers, natural stone basins carved by the dragon’s death, shaped by the alchemy of time. Water steamed faintly from their surfaces, shimmering with unnatural color, some blue, some milky-white, others opaline. The sound was gentle but constant: the steady trickle of water moving through calcified channels.

Golden forms scattered farther among the terraces. A man knelt forever, mouth half-open in apology. A woman mid-embrace, her arms now brittle arcs of polished gold. Another with his hand between his legs, where the flesh had begun to melt even before the gold took. His mouth was stretched too wide, caught somewhere between ecstasy and horror.

She gestured faintly to the basin before them.
“You may enter.”

„The vessel wishes to be strong.“ Nod of an agreement. Because songs rarely wanted to be lost.

But her next words came as a surprise. Because they weren't the words of a creature they were taught to fear. They were fear and weakness. And no one knew how to feel, except Woodsmoke:

„So you cage yourself in dragonbone to avoid one made of stone and words?“ Had to look up to show her proper contempt. Eyes no longer the meek things of Adem. „And what good is not being hunted, when you just get to be haunted instead?“

Don't – Balim and Adem echoed. Others knew better.

But they didn't understand, because they'd never been taken prisoner. They had no power here. No say. Surprised that the body listened to him still, Woodsmoke continued:

„You are right. You aren't a witch. You're just afraid.“ Better a prisoner to an enemy than yourself.

„And if they still grab for you, then they aren't afraid enough.“ Remembered a weapon too long for the body that carried them „They'll only stop when so many are gold that the word itself loses value.“

Looked down in a fear his own. Because welcome or not, Woodsmoke didn't know how to swim. Water was never his friend.

The words spilled, sharp, accusing, desperate. A howl dressed in contempt. And when he finished, when the last of the venom curled into the sand, her voice came low. A hum beneath language. Gentle and pitiless. Didn’t bristle. Didn’t snarl.

“You think I would not know fear?” She just looked at him, head slightly bowed, eyes shadowed under the lacquered gold line drawn from lid to cheekbone.“I scraped it from my mother’s mouth after they left her hanging with her hair braided as noose.” The pool behind her steamed. Her mother had the most beautiful, long, black hair that Nekhara had ever seen. Black as oil.

“I watched them turn my sister into a gilded charm. They hanged her around a priest-king’s neck.”

A dry breath and the sandblasted truth of her.

“I’ve been branded so many times, they ran out of names to call me. Witch. Whore. Gold-Cunt. Thief of sons. She-Who-Melts-Folk. Cursebait. Gilded Bitch...” All her names could be turned into a psalm. Her fingers twitched. A faint glimmer of gold ran through them, slipping as liquid between her knuckles, spilling down on the white ground.

“So yes,” her voice sang of sorrow. “I built my home inside bones. But I have fought and burned and bled to be here."

She straightened, shoulders back, and stepped down into the pool. The milky water rose to the middle of her thighs, warm against her skin, seeping through the sheer linens and tracing the line of her legs. She held out a hand to him, steady and certain.

“It is not deep,” she said, offering both reassurance and challenge. “Step in.” The gold on her fingers caught the light, droplets of molten metal sliding down from her skin into the pool.

A less angry soul would've felt shame by this point. But such was not his way. He didn't die fighting to bend to words and fears.

„They yet live.“ Not as certain now. „There'll come a day when another noose is braided. And another daughter hides.“ Because you've not killed enough of them. That last bit of poison he kept to himself.

Could've sworn he smelled fucking woodsmoke again.

Accepted the offered hand and stepped into the shallow pool. Water came closer than comfort. Warm and treacherous. Much more enveloping in this body than the one he'd died in.

He'd heard what they called her. But he didn't know her name. Just like the others called him Woodsmoke – a name given was not the same as a name owned.

„What is your name?“

What was a puddle in life proved to be a well of concern as it reached the chest. Curse Adem and their short legs.