Eden

Thirteen

We start walking again, and Lexi goes back to complaining. About the dust and warmth, and that she's tired. Mostly, I keep on just quietly listening as she does, the way I was before, and don't join in. I'm thinking that she probably isn't as used to heat as I am, if she's from Russia, and so walking in the sun might be worse for her. It might be more tiring, or whatever. So I don't mind her whinging, not really.

As we walk, though, I start to think a bit more about the heat. It's a warm day, warm but not hot. Or at least, not hot for me. It feels like late afternoon after a sunny day, but with a very dry kind of heat, which I'm used to from home, and which isn't really very exhausting.

I am getting thirsty, though, as we walk. I'm still quite hungry, too, like I have been since I woke up, but now I'm getting thirsty as well. I think about that, wondering whether we'll find something to drink soon, and I start to brood about the possibility that we won't. I'm idly thinking that thirst might actually be a problem, I suppose. I mean, food will be too, eventually, but mostly I'm thinking about thirst. And how silly it would be to end up here, resurrected from death, and then to just die again because we'd gone wandering around on our own, on a warm day, and hadn't bothered finding anything to drink.

I think about that for a moment. For a moment, but not very long. I think, and then I realize that actually dying of thirst is really quite unlikely. There are fields beside us, with plants growing in them, which means there must be water somewhere right there. Even from the road I can see there are ditches in the fields, which implies there is some kind of irrigation going on. Or wells. Or rain. One or the other of those, anyway. It might not be nice water, but it will be water.

And I'm already dead. So it probably won't matter if I drink it and get sick.

I hope.

Anyway, I worry, but then stop worrying again fairly quickly. And I don't actually go and look for water, either. I decide I will soon, that I'll go off into the fields and look for water if we don't find any nearer the road, but that for the time being it might be best to stay out of the fields, since we don't know whose fields they are, and how the local people feel about trespassing.

We're fairly close to the bridge, now, anyway. That makes me stop worrying too. The bridge and the city weren't really very far away. Not nearly far enough for us to die of thirst getting there.