When Forever Ends (Part 1: A Game of Chess)

V

~{§}~

F i v e

The glare of the desert sun greeted my eyes when I pried them open. I blinked away the sleep and sat forward.

I was the first to wake, so I roused my friends by gently shaking their shoulders.

Maya sat up and yawned, her outstretched arm almost whacking Will in the face

"Watch it!" he pushed her arm away.

"Sorry," she replied.

I stood and looked around. Then I blinked and looked again.

Crisscrossing the hollow were giant paw prints about thirty centimeters wide. On closer inspection, they appeared to be left by some sort of huge cat. The tracks came over the ridge from the same direction that we had come. From there, they went up to the pool where there was a large wet spot as if the cat had taken a drink. Then they came over to our tree and circled it several times. There were no tracks leading away.

"Where did it go?" I wondered aloud.

My friends looked up from the pool where they were taking another drink and noticed the tracks too.

"Whoa," Sofie sounded as surprised as the rest of us. "Apparently we have other things to fear besides dehydration, sunburn, the heat, and hunger," she counted them off on her fingers. "That thing could have eaten us in our sleep! So why didn't it?"

"My thoughts exactly," I answered. "But we have other problems that need to be addressed. We need food, and we're still stuck in this desert. Oh, and by the way, I filled our canteens last night and stuck them in the pool to keep them cold."

"Thanks," Maya said. "Oh yeah, how are you feeling?"

"Feeling?" I asked.

"Yeah, you know..."

I didn't know so I shook my head.

"You hit a tree and passed out," she stated bluntly.

"Oh, that," I said. "My head hurts a little, but other than that I feel fine. Thanks for caring."

"You're welcome."

"Hey!" Will shouted from the ridge. "Let's get a move on, people!"

"Sure!" I shouted back. I took another drink from the pool, grabbed the canteens, and tossed them in the sack. "Lead on!"

━━━

About five hours later, we could see nothing other than the extensive plain of tan colored sand and each other.

"Come on!" Sofie yelled to the slight breeze. "Why does this desert have to be so freaking big?!"

This was followed shortly by an, "Oof!" and a Whump!

"What is it now?" I turned around. Sofie was flat on her back in the sand. Maya and Will had stopped walking by now and came over to see what had happened.

"The sky just hit me!"

"Excuse me?" I asked.

"You heard me. The sky," she gestured vaguely up into the air, "hit me!" she pointed to herself.

I had no time to respond because at that moment I was forced to my knees by a solid block of air that hit my head so hard I saw spots.

"Ryan?" Maya looked at me with concern. This couldn't be healthy, getting hit in the head, twice in less than a day. Not to mention the crowbar at the library.

"Oof!"

"Oof!"

She and Will both fell, the pain showing on their faces.

Suddenly the sand around us was alive as more solid air hit in rapid succession, sending sand flying. It was as if we were being attacked by invisible water that wasn't wet.

"It must be some kind of air storm!" I yelled to be heard over the pounding of air hitting sand and a blast of sand and air slammed into my face. I spat out the grit and made a mental note to not open my mouth anymore with the sand filling the air.

A huge dust cloud was rising and now it would have been a little easier to see the falling air as it shoved the dust out of the way, if not for the fact that that dust was making it painful to hold my eyes open.

I struggled to my feet and staggered around, trying to escape the sky's raging attack. I couldn't see anything so I blindly shoved my way through the air and hoped that my friends were doing the same.

I took another step and was unprepared for the lack of sand beneath my foot. I stumbled and fell flat on my face in a small crater.

Once again, I spat sand. I rose to my feet, only to be hit with another projectile: a shoe.

I barely had time to recognize that it was Will's shoe and grip it tight before a heavy, solid object slammed into my back and sent me flying, getting battered by sand and the fierce onslaught of the air as I went.

Now my vision was filled with a tan haze and I could feel sand beginning to build up on my eyelids. I was beginning to worry that the wind would never set me down when I flew out of the storm into the plain, boring desert.

After a couple of milliseconds, I realized that the air was no longer holding me aloft and I promptly fell flat on my face again.

Then the heavy object landed on me and all of the air was forced from my lungs, blowing more sand into my face. It fell off of me and I found myself staring into Sofie's eyes.

"Gah!" I started in surprise and flopped over to look at my other side just in time for Will to land heavily on the ground in front of me. "Gah!" I said again, then felt a gritty texture lodged in my throat. I pushed myself off of the ground and opened my mouth. I started coughing uncontrollably and sand cascaded from my throat.

I fumbled for the canvas sack (it was a miracle I hadn't lost it in the storm) and took a swig of water to rinse out the gritty taste.

Apparently my friends had had the sense to keep their mouths tightly shut, so they only had to suffer the discomfort of sand up the nose.

"Oh," I pulled the shoe from my pocket and tossed it to Will. "Don't lose this."

"Thanks," he replied, slipping it on.

I looked up and saw Maya standing before us waiting impatiently for us to get to our feet.

I stood and looked behind us.

"Whoa," was all I could say.

Sofie and Will got up to see, too.

"Whoa," Will said.

"That pretty much sums it up," Sofie added.

The storm stretched so high it blocked out the sun and so wide we couldn't see the edges. It was a roiling mass of tan sand so thick that it was hard to believe that we had been in that and survived, let alone made it out.

"Wow. If we make it out of this desert alive, we have got to record this phenomenon somewhere," I said.

"If you guys have finished gawking, maybe we should move on," Maya interjected.

"Mm-hm," I mumbled. I took another sip of water, then stowed the canteen back in the sack, slung it over my shoulder, and marched off, away from the storm.