Against the Wind

19.1 || Amina

Amina couldn't remember the last time she'd cried. It wasn't fair for her body to betray her now, squeezing her throat and stinging her lips with the taste of salt, anything but helpful. An icky trail dripped from her nose, dirtying her sleeve when she wiped it. She was glad and she wasn't when the tears dried, leaving her eyes sore and her insides bitter and hollow without release.

If she hugged her legs tight enough to her chest, she could hide the way they shook. She buried her head in her knees when soft footsteps tapped behind.

"Amina." Rayanah's voice, hitching at the end, ever pathetic.

Amina refused to move. She barely wanted to listen.

"Amina, look at the stars."

The stars. Her teeth grated against one another, jaw wound so tight it ached. Her emotions chafed underneath her skin, turning wispier when they scraped against the hollow parts until she could only shake. "Go away," she mumbled.

She felt only a trickle of relief when she heard Rayanah comply. Stupidly, she stole a glance over her shoulder to check anyway, though it only earned her an unclear view of Rayanah's darkened retreating back against the night's grey haze. Her cloak swayed, its motion all that detached it from the darkness. The beast she trudged towards was little more than a smudge. Fighting a shudder, Amina looked away.

The dim horizon she faced wasn't much better. So far from the city—far from everything, really—blackness ruled the sky, rich in shade and utterly endless. The stars had multiplied. Their glow was all she had to see by, not that there was much to see. The desert here was just sand and more sand. Nothing breathed. No voices whispered, no people stirred.

The quiet folded over her ears, stifling. It hurt. She swore she could hear every creak in her bones, and every sniffle had a bristled echo. Little sounds were achingly loud, but if she screamed, no-one would hear her.

Were they searching? Would her mother fret and worry? Would Zephyrine dare let anyone venture out this far? Even if they did, this place of empty nothingness was vast. How could they find her?

She would have to get herself out of this. She would find a way back.

Easy, she thought, if only I knew where I was.

Part of her wanted to take off sprinting anyway, to run and run until Rayanah and her massive beastly friend were lost entirely to the darkness, but her limbs were laden with exhaustion. A sliver of sense reminded her that she'd only be more lost that way, and then she really would have nothing to listen to but herself.

She pictured Rayanah astride the beast, sand flying in great chunks as the two of them pursued her tiny, fleeing form. They pounced. Huge feet trampled the vision, burying it under swathes of suffocating darkness, and she jolted back to herself with a chill coiled in the pit of her stomach. No amount of hugging her chest and fixing the horrid, nothing horizon with a glare would make the fear dissipate.

She wasn't afraid of beasts. What she couldn't stop seeing was the other mage's cold expression. Her dark, evasive gaze. Her empty apology. Amina could fight beasts and beastfolk without having to think, but she didn't know what to do with a foe that took the shape of a girl.

Time blurred and the stars wheeled, weaving dotted, unfamiliar patterns, but Rayanah didn't approach again. The later it became, the more it all began to look like some alien world. This was a nightmare in muted colour. Even when Amina finally unfurled enough to lie down on the sand, eyes scrunched shut to block it out as she strained to grasp the sleep her heavy head longed for, all the worst details remained. She covered her ears, but that didn't stop the thump of her heart ribboned through the quiet. The sand scratched her legs and pressed against her bunched shoulder. The air nipped her nose, wielding claws bent on stripping the skin from her fingers. She tossed and turned and shivered and buried her face in the crook of her arm, but there was no comfortable position, no escape from the hard press of reality. If her vigil had been an annoyance, this was utter torture.