The landscape is familiar, stretching out forever around you: an endless sea of sand, stained red by a fading sunset. The unclear shape of a person stretches out long legs on a skeletal log by a crackling campfire. It's silent. No birds, no insects. No screaming people.

Sparks pop. They flicker, glittering, into the sky, joining a few early stars glimmering there. The air is stiflingly still. The shape sips the warm beverage in a warm tin cup, clutched in a hand that, when you look at it, fizzes into static. That's alright. You feel content out here with the popping wood and your own breath.

Something buzzes in your teeth. The liquid in the cup sloshes into perfect, even rings. A sandstone pebble by your feet jumps once, twice. The logs in the fire shift restlessly, exposing their charred bellies as the fire slumps to one side.
The shape sits up suddenly, attention pricked.

Out on the horizon, a town explodes.

You can barely see it from way out here but it still looks beautiful the way destruction always does. Buildings go up in flames like matchboxes, barely more than flickering horizon lights. If you listen closely, you can just hear the screams when they start.

The straining shape, somehow laughing, lets the cup drop, spilling dark liquid onto the sand as it leans forward to press its fingers into the desert's shaking skin.