Teardrop

The board was starting to tremble.

Come daybreak, Hūr would walk the streets, he would see the people, so different from his own, yet so similar. The sun would shine, hot, burning, yet these people had the resilience of some very resilient animals. They would not seem fettered by it. He would walk among the common classes, the proletariat. Donkeys swishing their tails slowly, chewing on the meager grass they were provided. People braying, donkeys chewing. Yet. it was strangely human. It brought his heart a certain joy, just as the knowledge of his mission sucked out the light from it.

The board began to hum.

He was getting closer, he could feel it. Hūr Amran was in Pakistan, and he felt an energy coming from this place. He felt alive. Every hair on his skin stood up, prickled. His sweat glands were excreting moisture faster than he had thought he could produce it. His nose caught whiffs of so many different smells, the donkey over there, the pile of dung lying there, the smell of sweat, his eyes had so much to see. The sweaty local clothes of the people, the man taking a piss right there. His ears were inundated with information. People braying, one on top of the other. Cars honking in the distance. This was somewhat of a souk. Yet there were cars and rickshaws and motorcycles and cycles and donkey carts. Everywhere. Everytime. All the time. He felt more alive than he had ever felt in his life. His skin was crawling. Everything was coming alive.

Hūr took a deep breath as he reveled in the feeling and let it slide all over him, he shut his eyes, his ears alerted, more so than usual to any and all sound around him, in the darkness of his mind, colors, spectacles, fireworks began to light up. He could feel something of power nearby. Something strong, something strange.

He opened his eyes.

He did not know how he had acquired this ability. He supposed he always had it. He had likely just triggered it because he had began to believe. And now that he did, nothing was the same. He knew where objects of power were, where things of import were, where he would find what he needed to finish his quest. Well, not yet. But this was how he would find it. There was something out there. There had to be. The forests were destroyed. Both of those sanctuaries. There had to be something else. Or else… or else, he could not deal. He did not want to imagine the alternative. Hūr began to run out of the souk towards the closest firework, he opened his eyes. As he ran under the hot sun, his olive skin glowed, no one paid him any heed. A sparkling teardrop fell behind him on the hot baked ground. It made a small splash unheard by any but the animals within the earth. For them, it was like an earthquake. They began to scurry about, more activity than any of them had seen, more fervor than had been seen in living memory.