Against the Wind

10.1 || Amina

The pictures Amina had painted in her head of this night were far more interesting than reality. So far, despite the unceasing stare she had trained on the grey horizon, she hadn't managed to will them into existence, no matter how hard her imagination fought.

It had sounded so impressive in her head: taking her watch amid the natural elements, standing vigil, alone with only the wind and the dust and quiet prayer to accompany her. Zephyrine's ecstatic agreement had only bolstered the grandiose idea. She was a legend, and it was only right that a legend should spend the most important night of her life up high, close to the star-cast sky, where divine whispers of her god's many voices might beckon at her ears. It would grant her luck. It would bestow her with many blessings.

Yet it was also cold and gloomy, and the winds were annoyingly quiet. The hours dragged on and left her alone.

She huffed out a long, bored sigh and sagged against the railing. The sleek metallic curve of it was like reflective ice, biting into her bare forearms, but she'd long since condemned herself to slowly freezing into a coma. Her fingers were numb and barely moved at her command. Still she watched on, gaze piercing the unchanged mounds of sand, lungs fragile and spiky as they were shredded by every tentative breath. Her complaints bunched up at the back of her mind, heavier weights when she had no-one to speak them to.

It's a vigil, she could hear Isra saying in response, arms folded, words scathing and unsympathetic. It's a sacrificial endeavour built on faith. It's not supposed to be enjoyable.

She didn't know what Zephyrine would say. Her new mentor was much harder to predict.

She drew in a painful breath and filled the stale silence with her own words instead. "It'll be worth it," she murmured, wrapping the promise around herself like a ribbon, a binding thread, a cloak out of which to eke some small amount of phantom warmth from. "Soon." It'll all be worth it.

'Soon' felt like a lie given how marathonically endless the night ahead seemed, but she clung to it all the same. When morning came, so would her trial, and then everything would change.

The tremble in her knees doubled, layering on top of the cold's nipping shivers. With a sharp shake of her head that sent her gold headpiece rattling and clinking against itself, she pushed off the railing and took a few weak steps across the length of the watchtower's platform, pacing to the side which faced back at the monochrome city she guarded. This day was one she'd been awaiting all her life. She couldn't remember wanting anything else nearly as much; it was a hungry, rumbling desire that had only grown as she did, fingers like claws that scratched at her and slathered her throat with a syrupy craving—though for what, she'd never quite put her finger on. Power? Protection? Validation? All at once? Whatever it was, she knew she deserved it. She could see no other future. If she wasn't worthy, why would the dust sing to her as loudly as it did?

She'd waited so long that she should be ready. She was ready. She couldn't afford to be afraid, but the feeling curled around her neck with the same heavy weight as her white apprentice cloak. She picked at the hem of her dress as if that would loosen the imagined clasp.

Tehazihbith's skyline was all smoke, faint-edged shadows layered thinly over a hazy midnight sky. Without the sun's kiss, it looked strangely bleak, hollow sadness sinking in the places where tangles of bodies should've busied it. She didn't like it. An ache built in the cave of her chest where pride usually swelled.

She was thinking too hard.

Her fingers rapped against the rail and then shoved again, sending her slanted skirts swaying as she turned on her heels. Dwelling on all this was pointless. The night's unfamiliarity was simply eating at her confidence. She'd be fine.