Rider In The Sand # 4 (illustrated by Lukas Ketner)

In Soft Places, Marco Polo, Rustichello, and Fiddler’s Green sit in the desert and tell stories. Marco tells the story of the beginning of his journey while they sit around a fire and drink wine and eat sandwiches.

While they are talking they are visited by a caravan of riders in the sand. The leader explains that they are lost and trying to return to the True World, but have been searching for a very long time without success.

The Rider who seems to be their leader asked Fiddler’s Green what would happen when they found the True World. Would they return to the world on the day they left it and continue living their lies or would they crumble into dust and die of extreme old age.

Fiddler’s Green tells them, honestly, that he does not know what would happen.

At this, the Riders continue their search for a way home.

After they leave Fiddler’s Green tried to explain that they are trapped in one of the Soft Places, where the borders between Dream and reality has eroded or has not been formed, and with that Fiddler’s Green walks into the desert and disappears.

This is one of the Riders in the Sand.

He appears in Sandman # 39, on page 15, in panel 2.

Lukas did a extraordinary job with this portrait. He managed to add definition and details and set him in a time long before that of Marco Polo. He feels like he is a character lost from his own time in history. I really like the design of this character and the details he added to bring this character to life.