Author: Tobias Hope Young

There are moments when the sand looks sturdy. When it isn’t rising and falling, when it’s just completely motionless. It’s in those moments that you might think it’s solid but don’t be fooled. That sand may look firm but if you step on it you will sink like a stone until you’ve reached the core of this planet.
God help you if you try to land a starship on it. I tried a long long time ago. Way way before you were born, son.
Starship is a powerful vehicle but it sinks like everything else. All that sand gets into the engine, it risks sealing you inside that airtight cockpit. The only smart move is to abandon ship and leave your old life and everything you ever knew behind.
Dangerous place this planet, but there are still people living here somehow. People who know not to walk the desert but to sail it.
There are only two types of people here; dead people and sailors, so I decided to become a sailor.
I teamed up with a crazy woman, crazy enough to take me on as an apprentice, crazy enough to go searching for downed starships in uncharted territories, and crazy enough to marry me when I asked.
She taught me everything I know about sailing, the same way she taught you but I didn’t learn what it meant to be a sailor until… well until moments like this.
You see it over there, that cloud on the horizon? It’s called a sandstorm. It’s coming for us and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.
But it’s moments like this that teach us what it means to be a sand sailor. Being a sailor isn’t about scavenging or even about sailing. Being a sailor is about being small. It’s about being the smallest thing there is, being at the mercy of the wind and the weather, and making peace with it.
This is going to be your story, the type of story you can tell your own kids one day because if you get through it you won’t be a kid anymore. You’ll be like me and your mother. You’ll be a sand sailor.
So stay alert. Stay strong. Stay aboard. And whatever you do don’t tell your mother I called her crazy. It’s dangerous enough out here as it is.