It's the end of the second day after Kasamir found his lost sheep - a young, gangly thing with bright eyes and bounding legs, always the first to step out of the fold to graze, fearless and curious.
He hasn't found his way back.
He ran out of water shortly before he found the sheep.
It's okay. It hasn't been too long. They can't have strayed too far from the tribe.
Kasamir adjusts the lamb's weight in his arms, determined not to let it bound off again. He looks left and right, all around, squinting in the dizziness of the sun as he tries to orient himself. It's no good without the stars, but he does not want to experience the harsh cold of a desert night with only his cloak to shield him.
The shepherd sighs. No tracks, no clues as to the direction of... anything.
He picks a direction and walks, his throat already beginning to feel like sandpaper.
"Come on, troublemaker. We'll find our way home."
It's hard to think through the pain in his head by the time the sun sets, and no sign of the tribe. It seemed to get hotter, until the sun went down. The darkness is a welcome relief to his eyes, but the dizziness remains. His heartbeat feels too harsh in his chest.
The lamb has closed its eyes, gummy with black crust, and not opened them again.
...The desert can grow cold at night, but not normally this cold.
A harsh wind begins to blow, until he can't see the stars for sand.
Fuck, the sand in his eyes—
With frozen fingers he tucks the lamb into his chest, curls up into a tight ball on the ground, and covers them both firmly with his cloak.
His eyes can’t even water.
They are going to die out here Maybe they can wait this out.
It gets very cold. He can't see his breath, though.
His fingers and toes have stopped hurting, and are starting to go numb.
Eventually the sandstorm passes. His skin feels like it's been whipped. His eyelids are burning.
Kasamir manages to unfurl himself, shivering violently.
Anything is better than this. With his frozen hands, like claws, he digs into the sand. Something– something to cover themselves with. This is all they have, fuck, he can barely see–
He tucks the little animal, like ice, into his shirt, trying to warm it up as best as he can – and the wool might do him some good too. They nestle into the small hole in the ground.
There are things in the sand there are things in the sand there are things in the sand
He’ll warm himself up a little, just enough that he can feel his feet again, and get moving. Thinking is like wading through steel– He’ll find water. He’s heard tales of desert oases – there has to be one near.
There has to be. If there isn’t—
There are things in the sand.
Eventually, perhaps after some tortured sleep, perhaps not, the light of the third day dawns.
It's blisteringly hot already.
He can see that it's light, but that's all.
He falls to his knees.
It’s dead.
He breaks the creature’s neck. Tears into its flesh with the knife he uses for wolves. Presses his lips— so dry, so dry— to the wound.
Drinks.
The blood of the lamb pours down the shepherd’s chin, down his chest, staining his shirt, staining the sand. He drinks. He drinks.
And he chews.
He gags. He retches. He sobs without tears.
He keeps it down.
He skins it. Uses the hide for some kind of covering. Takes the bones in case he needs to chew off more meat like an animal.
The creature was dead anyway.
It was dead anyway.
He had no foresight.
With some energy and makeshift protection from the elements, he keeps going. Perhaps if he can make it to the top of a sand dune, the tallest one, over there, he can pinpoint the way home.
He reaches it.
In every direction, sand dunes roll away. Up here, the sun is like a furnace.
There's nothing to distinguish any direction from another.
No.
There has to be a way home. There has to be.
He walks again, he walks, he walks, he stumbles and rises, he finds another dune, taller this time, and begins the exhausting climb.
Dawnfather. Hear me. I am in your heartlands.
Help me.
He climbs until his limbs tremble, and his ears pop, and each breath he takes feels thin.
And then suddenly he emerges, and the dune falls away to reveal something like the desert stretched out before him like a living map.
It's hard to see, with his dry scratched eyes. Like looking through gauze.
Over there, distant, a field of twisted things like huge crumbling knobbly bones, tangled together and flaking death; beyond it a city that lies on the plain like a tumour; over there, a land of bubbling garish vomit-colours, strange vapours and boiling lakes of sulphur; over there, a great black citadel that pains him to look upon; over there, a ravening thing bleeds poison ichor into the great river; an eyeless city older than history broods in the deep desert; uncounted ruins among the sands, of cities each greater than any that survives today; the lost treasures of the old world glinting in blasted valleys; the three Reclaimed Cities he has heard travellers whisper of, gleaming palaces perched atop a gnawing abyss; in the far distance, an island in green where elves play.
And the great city he visited once, briefly, where all men cross paths and he could find his way home. Impossibly distant, days and weeks of a march through the desert.
He shields his face, but it is too late. It is in his lungs, in his throat — in his eyes, and he can’t see.
He loses his footing, his strength, and he falls.
The sand burns. Kasamir lies in the well of the great dune, coughing, coughing, coughing
No energy to call for help. His voice is a dry croak.
He lies there, in the well of the great dune.
His parents are never going to know what happened to him.
Nobody is going to find him, out here. No body to bury. One of countless lost to the desert.
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