(This solo is backdated to occur immediately after the events of [this RP])

The wind that Basiluzzo had left when he, well, left was nothing compared to the wind that greeted him when he arrived at his destination. It whipped his hair back away from his face immediately, and he had to squint and shield his eyes against the sand that the wind kicked up with it. He looked around, realizing he hadn’t had any actual idea of where he was going, just that he was going.

But wherever he–this–was felt familiar to him on a deep visceral level, and it was hard to be too alarmed about it. The adrenaline of the argument was starting to leach out of him, and Basiluzzo felt his shoulders and back relax, loosen. He turned slowly in place, trying to get his bearings while also knowing how pointless that would be. He had never been there before.

No, he had been there before.

But not for a very long time.

He took a deep breath that ended in coughing as he took in a mouthful of sand. He had to figure something out, something that would get him out of the sand, because Basiluzzo was not terribly keen to breathe more sand, be slowly buried, or have his skin sandblasted off of his bones. But that meant he had to figure out where he was enough to figure out where he had to go.

All he could see in every direction was sand.

A lot of sand.

Not that he could see very far, what with the wind carrying all of the sand.

There was so much sand.

So much sand– The wind was arguably the biggest problem, however, with the way it drove the sand and howled in his ears. His skin was already getting red and raw from the wind blowing sand against him, sand that lodged itself in every nook and corner of his person that it could find.

He cursed mentally, not wanting to open his mouth for another sand snack.

Wait, how was he breathing in the first place?

Nevermind that. He still had to find his way out of the sandstorm. There had to be something. Something told him as much. But he turned in place again, more than a bit at a loss as to what, where, or how that something would happen. As he turned, a glint caught his eye in the sand. He almost didn’t pay it any attention.

But something tugged and pulled at him, so he turned back around and crouched to get a better look at it.

A ring?

How the hell was a ring just hanging out in the sand? How wasn’t it buried? Basiluzzo reached for it, wondering if he was making a mistake and feeling that he wasn’t.

But his feelings had not apparently helped him much in the past–

He pushed the bitter, wounded thoughts aside and grasped the ring, picking it up out of the sand and not expecting the resistance he felt, or the click heard over the wind when it snapped free from something it had apparently been mounted in. Basiluzzo also wasn’t expecting the wind to blow anew, to almost blast itself away from where he’d picked the ring up. WIth a shout, he covered his face with his arms and waited for the shrieking to die down.

That turned to frantic scrambling as the sand began to blow away under his feet.

Swearing profusely and loudly behind gritted teeth, Basiluzzo turned his focus to two things: don’t lose his footing and don’t drop the ring. For the purpose of not having to worry about the latter and having the ability to worry about the former, he slid the ring automatically onto one of his fingers. It helped marginally, as he was now free to windmill his arms frantically to keep upright.

Well, his arm, singular, as the instinct to windmill his broken arm resulted in a sharp reminder that he should very much not be doing that. Unfortunately, this threw him off balance, and he did end up with another mouthful of sand. This time, Basiluzzo opted to stay where he was, clenching shut his eyes and covering his head with his good arm. He felt the sand erode under him but managed with great difficulty to resist the urge to scramble away.

Then, suddenly, it stopped, and he chanced one eye open.

The podium was larger, now. Taller. It glittered as a column of glass, the curve of it deflecting the wind rather than outright resisting.

He got slowly to his feet, brushing himself off and taking a moment to look at the ring that had caused all of this–a silvery metal of some variety, with a sigil he almost recognized etched into the top of it. Basiluzzo had instinctively slipped it onto his left ring finger, nestled beside his wedding ring. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he looked back to the podium.

‘Oh, so this is where you’re from!’ Basiluzzo turned quickly at the voice, at that voice, almost thought he saw someone standing there, someone covered in little stars, then nothing. No one was there. Why did his heart jump into his throat at the sound of the voice, a voice so sweet to his ears that he had to blink back tears? A voice he hadn’t realised he had desperately wanted to hear?

He pushed that away, looking back to the podium. It was very pretty, the glass catching whatever light it could and throwing brief rainbows into the air and onto the fine dust around him. Basiluzzo couldn’t resist the urge to reach out toward it, to let his fingers trace the gentle curves. It was warm, smooth, and he wasn’t sure then if it was really glass. Wouldn’t glass be scratched up?

As he mused, the ring he’d found tapped against the column. It slid against it as his hand did, and a singing tone reverberated up his arm. It startled him into pulling his hand away with a shout, but a moment later–in a flash of inspiration–Basiluzzo reached out and intentionally skimmed his new ring against the podium this time. The singing tone came again, clear and bright over the sound of the wind.

A hum he felt throughout his body, resonating with the singing tone, started low and then grew until another blast of wind blew yet more sand away–this time in another direction and not directly on top of him. Even still, he flinched away out of instinct.

This time, there were stairs directly ahead of him, leading down to a door. He hesitated, but only for a moment. Basiluzzo cradled his cast against his chest as he stepped forward first slowly, and then more quickly. The door at the bottom of the stairs looked much taller up close, something he realized after making very quick time down those stairs and miraculously not slipping on the sand remaining on them.

A wordless, reverent whisper left his lips as he extended his good arm to trace the etchings on the door, not to mention the inlays that matched the glass, crystal, something, of the podium upstairs. He glanced over his shoulder, then back to the door. There was purpose in his movement of the ring against the curves of the glass. It sang again.

First, for a moment, nothing.

Then the door swung open, revealing a great hall. Basiluzzo stared, wide-eyed. But he was pulled forward, compelled to enter the hall by something calling to him deep in his chest.

The doors swung shut, causing Basiluzzo to jump and whirl, heart pounding. But he could hear the whine of the wind again and realized that the doors had done him a favour no matter how uneasy the movement made him. He turned back toward the hall, marveling at the size of it. It was dark, but enough light was being reflected from somewhere–the stairs, he realized, were translucent–to keep it from being dangerous for him to proceed. His footfalls echoed, and there was a sadness in the sound of it coming back off of the walls.

Empty.

It looked very… empty.
He wandered the hall and the connecting passageways–not too deep lest he get lost–for so long that it wasn’t until Basiluzzo felt the ache in his feet that he realized how much time had passed. That was to say nothing of the tiredness that still dogged him. He yawned despite himself, realizing that he had a choice to make. He knew instinctively how to get back home, but he wasn’t sure if he was actually ready to do so quite yet.

Another lump in his throat was swallowed down, and Basiluzzo sighed quietly as he pushed on yet another door. They were all in remarkably good shape for what he’d expect of a buried… house? Very large house? But there was so little left. He could see where decorations had once sat in alcoves, but those alcoves now sat empty. That also made his heart ache for a reason he couldn’t quite identify. That ache was pushed aside with the others, especially when a door he pushed open lead into what was unmistakably a bedroom.

The sight of the bed, dusty and without any linens, reminded him of the ache in his feet and the weariness in his body. Something felt strange about sitting on it, like he should know who had slept there. The cushioning threatened to burst to powder under him if he moved too abruptly, so Basiluzzo stopped to consider if he should be doing what he was very tempted to do.

He could just go home. There was a perfectly good bed there, with a perfectly good–

Basiluzzo grit his teeth and laid down, trying to ignore the raspy, creaky texture under him. It was better than nothing, right?

Right.

It wasn’t ideal, but he… He just needed a nap. He’d go home after he had a chance to actually sleep, though this wasn’t really any better than a hospital bed–