Look how quick we are XD Another chappie!! ^^

Chapter 5

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Airen

-

Damn… Why do we have to go to that place… I sure won’t be able to sleep peacefully any time soon… The sun is painfully hot today… I hold my hands above my eye and shield it from the cruel rays.

Suddenly I see Gealdon walking towards me. I wonder what he wants…He reaches me and begins to talk; still walking towards our destination:

“Are you sure we can trust that girl?”

I nod, slightly surprised at his question. I quickly glance at his face and he just looks forward, his reliable face unreadable.

“Yeah, we can trust her, I mean, what harm can she do? You trust me, right?”

He nods subtly, not changing his expression. I smile.

“Then you can trust her too, even if something happens, she’ll be my responsibility, I’ll take care of her, okay?”

Gealdon blinks at stares at me, his unreadable mask broken. There is something, I don’t know what, an emotion I can’t decipher in his eyes. His expression changes back as quickly as if appeared and he nods, accepting my answer. He quickens his pace and walks in front of us all once again, leading the way.

Suddenly Carmina pops up behind me and I grin automatically at her.

“Heya miss tomboy!”

She grins and sticks her tongue out at me.

“Hello mister sweetcheeks, I’m surprised ya aint complaining about our delay…”

I shrug.

“Gealdon already explained to me, Shaya can be moody when she’s uncomfortable…”

Carmina frowns, her cheerful baby-face scrunched in a thoughtful expression. She asks me, a serious expression uncharacteristically trailing her features:

“What did he tell you?”

I blink, surprised at her sudden change in demeanor. Carmina rarely becomes serious… even when she does, she keeps her calm and stays cheerful… Why the sudden change?

“He told me Shaya got a rock in her hoof… Isn’t that the reason of the delay?”

Carmina sighs and shakes her head. She softly reveals the truth to me, her words and their meaning knocking me out and leaving me helpless.

“Atinyane begged us to let you sleep some more, she even gave up her share of the water for it.”

--

Atinyane

-

The heat only grew more intense as the day wore on. Every now and then I’d turn my head to see Gealdon watching me out of the corner of his eye, and straighten myself out of the exhausted hunch I’d adopted. My steps, though, were slow and dragging. I drank from the water-skins swinging from the camels’ loads, conscious of how much and how often I did so. I knew it was too often, and that I was now more likely than ever to run out of water before we reached the next city, but I couldn’t help it; my mouth felt like the desert itself. I sweated profusely, my clothes clinging to me like a disgusting second skin, my hair matted and my eyes stinging from the salt water.

I only began to worry when I found I had stopped sweating: my clothes had dried stiff to my body, and my skin felt dry as a bone baked in the heat of a bonfire. I leaned against the camel, disgusting as the stench was, because of the waves of dizziness that came at me with each step I took.

“Deliw,” I rasped as she walked past me on her way to speak with Gealdon, who was at the front of the line with Dyad. She looked up and her eyes widened as she took in my appearance. Funny; I must have looked worse than I thought.

“Are you all right?” she whispered urgently, coming up beside me a putting a hand on my forehead.

“I’m fine,” I tried to say, but my mouth was so dry I could only manage a hoarse, unintelligible sound. I cleared my throat and tried again. I needed to ask her something. “How much water is there in all?” I asked, my voice still gravelly. I felt like an idiot for not having asked earlier—had I already gone over my limit and deprived someone else of precious water?

She glanced at the water skins, looking like she might refuse to answer and force me to drink, but finally she relented. “The journey to the city should take about until noon tomorrow. We have maybe six gallons of water for each person…” She hesitated again. “With the time we lost, that’s almost two gallons less for you.”

I did a quick mental calculation and got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach: I’d already drunk over two and a half gallons of water today alone. That left less than one and a half.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

She looked at me for a long moment, a great deal of concern filling her eyes. “We’re about to stop for midday—we’ll set the tents up for an hour or two,” she told me. “Make sure you get some rest.”

I nodded mutely, not trusting my voice to remain intelligible.

I hovered as the others tethered the camels to long stakes in the sand and began to set up the tents, wanting to help but unsure what to do. By the time I finally was about to ask Gealdon if I could be of assistance I realised that everything had already been done; the others were ducking inside the welcome shade of the tents.

I found an empty one and collapsed once safely inside, not bothering to lay down a blanket. The sand was grainy on my salt-sticky skin. I let myself drift, swirling in and out of a heat-hazed state of semi-consciousness, trusting that the others would wake me up when it was time to leave and not just take the tent away and leave me lying in the desert sun.

I began to wonder, my thoughts blurred and mixed, whether I would make it to the city and water.

Would they really let me die?

Death seemed at once very close—in my parched, baked, sun-burnt skin, the dried sweat, my matted hair—and very far away—like a mirage on the horizon, hazy and unreal.

I wonder…

I heard the tent flap open, and felt a square or sunlight fall across me. It was hot… my forehead wrinkled in annoyance, but before I could get any farther than that I heard the flap close and felt myself in the shade of the tent once again.

“Atinyane.”

I sat bolt upright. “Airen! Wh—what are you doing here?” My eyes were still adjusting to the darkness of the tent, and I squinted at him, trying to see his expression.

He paused. “Carmina told me.”

He didn’t have to say what about—I knew, and groaned softly, too muddled with heat to concoct a lie or even act very indignant about it.

He sat down beside me, and now I could see his eyes—eye—it was a dark pool even in the shadows of the tent, but I still couldn’t gauge his expression. A long moment passed, and I wondered what to say.

Finally he sighed. “You’re not going to die, in case you were wondering. If you run out of water, I’ll give you mine.” He looked angry, then, but not at me. “It’s not fair,” he muttered, “your first time in the desert. I think Gealdon was testing you, to see how you’d react.”

I remembered how I’d seen Gealdon watching me those few times, but I didn’t understand. “Why would he do that?”

Airen had been resting his chin on his palm, his expression moody, but now he grinned at me from behind his fingers. “Why, too see whether or not you’d act like a princess, Princess.” I scowled at him; he laughed, and continued, “If you were the kind of person who demanded that they give up their water for you when the heat got to be too much, he probably would have dumped you at the city limits and thought no more on the matter.”

“Oh. I see.” I didn’t know whether to be reassured or worried by this.

Airen leaned forward slightly, looking me full in the eyes. “What I don’t understand,” he said slowly, “is why you did it in the first place.”

I shrugged uncomfortably. “You needed the rest.”

He seemed to mull that over, and then finally, soberly, said, “Atinyane… Was that the first selfless thing you’d ever done?”

The words bit—but his dark eyes were searching, not judging. I glanced fitfully around the tent, avoiding his gaze, but when I found myself ready to answer him it was me this time that was looking him full in the eyes.

“Yes.”

He stared at me, looking almost staggered despite the fact that that had to have been the answer he was expecting, and for a moment something passed between us. There was an uncertain light in his gaze, a glow that was trying to make something vastly confusing become comprehensible. He reached out and stroked my cheek—his skin dry and warm and comfortable even in the unpleasant hotness of the tent—and then stood suddenly and went out, the tent flap fluttering behind him.