She could barely tell that she and the turtle were moving but when she looked down, she saw her friends following along beside it at a brisk pace. They wouldn’t be able to keep that going forever, and wind was still picking up. Velvet’s face itched as sand brushed against it.

The giant flipper she stood on was firm. She knelt and pressed her hand against it. It was definitely warm and alive, but the creases in the tough skin, which had the texture of a rubber tire, were filled with sand and rocks. The sand turtle was the color of the desert it swam in, rich oranges and yellows and reds. She felt the powerful strength of the animal as its muscles worked to propel it through the shifting earth below.

As Velvet raced up the flipper, she thought that racing up a gargantuan turtle swimming in the desert had to be the most exciting thing she had ever done. Her speed carried her to the lip of the turtle’s shell. She grabbed it, turned herself around, and then flipped her legs up and over so she was standing on the edge.

The obsidian shell was worn down here, almost glasslike. She was maybe forty feet up now, still on the edge of where sandstorms would have blasted it smooth. The dim sun glinted off it, and Velvet saw her image reflected in the surface, warped like in a fun house mirror, so she appeared shorter and wider—a cartoonish version of herself.

It was slippery, so she had to jump to catch a handhold; higher up, the shell was pockmarked and pitted, the black-and-gray coloration around faded by exposure to the sun. Then there were natural ridges and joints that made it straightforward but arduous work to climb.

Slow and steady now, she thought. Falling would not only likely injure her but also delay her progress, and they were nearly out of time.

She was above the storm line now, and the air felt lighter and fresher than it did below. The full heat of the sun returned, and the sky was once again blue. She glanced down as she moved upward and couldn’t see the ground through the thick soup of hot wind and sand swirling below her.

And then she crested the shell and sprawled on her back for a moment, catching her breath. She sat up and looked out at the desert. On one side, the thick, cauliflower clouds of sand were almost upon them. Below her, the ground was still obscured in a dismal layer of sand and dust. She hoped her friends and the townspeople were okay.

And farther out, the desert looked as it usually did, untouched and unbothered by anything happening here and now. The desert was old and it would outlast all of them, all of the people Velvet knew or would ever know. It wasn’t uncaring; it was indifferent. Everything that they held dear and struggled for, the battles with Grimm, with other kingdoms, with Cinder Fall and the White Fang and their mysterious allies—none of that mattered to Vacuo, the desert or the creatures who roamed it.

Velvet found the thought sobering. It gave her some perspective on what had happened at Beacon and ever since. No matter what she did, whether she lived or died, the desert would always abide.

- RWBY: After the Fall, Chapter 12