Land of the Dunes

4: It's the Second Time We've Almost Died Here!

All around him, light busts through the walls and ceiling at any chance it gets, illuminating the whole area well enough for Kisakyu to see every room in the dormitory.

Scrolling through the hallway, he peeks in a couple of the doors on the chance that something could be inside. With every look, he constantly reminds himself to try to find a way back down but gets distracted again by the time the view of a different room comes in.

Each room was unique to whoever once inhabited it, having different furniture arrangements, posters on the wall, and even some personal belongings left on the ship.

"If I'm not wrong, this place would've stayed as a temporary home for another one or two years after we landed here. With all the sudden attacks from life here, it wouldn't be long until everyone in this ship would either be forced to evacuate or die..."

He feels a sense of sadness looking through these rooms, knowing that some people didn't make it out alive, or that they couldn't get a chance to bring their prized possessions with them.

"Hm?"

For some reason, one room in particular caught his eye. It was a modest room with nothing interesting in particular, except that there laid a small rack containing a plethora of books.

He enters the room to explore it, finding many picture frames completely covered in sand. Dusting them off one by one, he uncovers the owner of this mysterious room standing next to her family. One photo shows them standing in a grassy field beneath the sun, while the other shows them standing in front of a bright cityscape that lights up the night sky.

Kisakyu had already seen what the terrains and biomes of earth looked like, but something about the pictures weirdly struck him. It wasn't really anything special, but the happy tone of the picture really sets a sense of longing and sadness, leading him to look at more and more of these pictures.

From the standing frames on desks to the ones hanging on walls, he eventually dusts off the last of the pictures. Afterward, he decides to look at the books on the small rack, the object that caught his eye in the first place.

Picking the first book out of the rack, he flips it over and reads the synopsis on the back. It seems to be nothing very interesting, just something about a boy and his journey through the wilderness.

Picking book after book and reading their synopses, it becomes evident all the books on the rack belong to the fiction genre.

More specifically, they're novels, ranging from action thrillers to slow romances. Kisakyu has no time to read them, but he does praise the owner of these books for having a broad taste, considering that his book collection only contained books of one genre.

But then, one certain book immediately catches his attention.

"It's a bestiary...?"

He immediately gets hooked, knowing what could be inside. Opening it, the first thing that appears are animals he had never seen before. Birds with alien names, big creatures living in grassy habitats, marine life that varies immensely from the ones he knew.

One by one, he reads the description of each one of them, perplexed but curious about their behaviors, diets, ecosystems, and way of living.

From the fruitful lives of the squirrels to the loyal leadership of the lions, he begins to understand just how unique the world of the past is.

He wonders if the cities built under biome globes could possibly still contain these species of life. With the beauty of it all, he can't imagine no one caring enough to bring these creatures with them.