***
"Leo, what the bloody hell is this?" Leo's ears perked up in mild interest at the shout that signified that his mate, Arran, had finally taken note of the many pamphlets displayed on the lacquered, wooden end table. Leo waited exasperatedly as his flatmate took yet another moment to finally realize the implications set in place by the brochures neatly presented to him in a manner that was much too meticulous to be coincidental.
"You've gone off your rocker, mate." Arran shook his head in apparent disapproval, yet Leo simply brushed off his apprehension with a nonchalant flick of his boney wrist.
"I don't see any issues whatsoever. It even seems like I could get quite the thrill out of it. Besides, I would be with trained professionals. What could possibly go wrong?" At that moment, he wouldn't have been able to even fathom the dire repercussions that that statement could and would possess.
***
His fate was finalized, however, in that one prophetic moment where his whole world turned upside down, and he became encompassed by a parallel universe that consisted entirely of his dreadful, disintegrating downfall.
***
"Listen here, child, all that you have to do is stay aboard this here camel, and you shall be good to go." The man, Alistair, spoke with an accent so foreign to Leo's ears that had been conditioned solely to the Queen's English, that it was a difficult task to hear what he was saying through the swaying cadence of his voice.
The man boarded his respective camel and began listing off the do's and dont's of desert travel yet even as he strained his ears against the presently cacophonous winds, Leo was still not able to make out what the tour guide was saying. Either way, before he even had so much as an opportunity to interject, the man that adorned a silky headdress waved his aged, tanned arm onward and off they went, camel hooves flopping down on the sandy vista.
Two hours into the journey, Leo was swamped in his own perspiration. The brochures certainly had not specified just how intense the heat would be and how, in all honesty, it had the capability to take away from the overall experience. Leo knew, though, that he was from England, where the temperatures that are sustained throughout the year were simply variations of cool, cooler, and cold. Therefore, his body would have been accustomed to cooler temperatures and this extent of heat would have understandably taken a toll on him.
He had just stolen a swig of water from the canteen slung around his neck by a worn leather strap, when the ground seemingly awoke from its slumber and uproariously revealed itself. All at once, the native men began shouting out orders in some foreign language that Leo could not decipher, the camels stirred warningly, and the wind gusts rose in reoccurrence and force. It was as if the gates of hell had been dismantled by the forces similar to those responsible for the years of misfortune Leo was accustomed to. The result was this utter chaos that befuddled the minds of all involved.
Leo clutched onto his camel as it rose onto its hind legs, causing a cascade of supplies to drop to the sandy terrain below. He gripped onto the nape of the animal's neck, yet he was still not able to maintain an effective grip, and he tumbled onto the rough sand underfoot.
An uncontainable typhoon of sand whisked itself up and into the air, reducing the surrounding visibility dramatically. It could be argued, that the abstract idea of sight, when placed in an environment of perpetual golden sand molded into monstrous monuments which blended with each other so well that it was virtually impossible to discern between such sculptures, was nearly impossible to perceive accurately. So in reality, visibility was not so much of a critical tool, rather one's perception of direction and distance were the necessary instruments of survival during desert travel.
Nevertheless, all three of these notions were ripped from Leo's theoretical grasp as his body tumbled about on the treacherous terrain of grains that encompassed his whole being. The malicious granules marched across the poor boy's body, leaving their ugly, scarring marks every time they made contact with the fragile skin covering Leo's body. He was whipped up and down, left and right, and let it be known that he did put up a fight, struggling whole-heartedly to maintain an aura of stability, yet the gusts that day were unforgiving in every sense of the word. His body contorted in a disturbing dance of flings and snaps, his arms flailing around him viciously, and his legs buckling capriciously.
The beads of sand continued their assault, leaving red, irritated skin in their wake along with a fiery sensation trickling across Leo's flesh. He was nearly ready to abandon any and all hope for his possible relinquishment from this airborne torture, when the forceful flurries receded into their original, innocent meanderings.
He was left struck with burning skin and a blinding feeling that he was irrevocably adrift in this never-ending sea of sand. To make matters worse, it was clear that, with the winds that had nearly suffocated him, came a change in his environment that supplied an even more precarious situation. The mounds of sand that Leo had barely recognized to begin with we're now even more foreign due to the sandstorms ability to misshape even the biggest dunes in the desert.
In essence, he was stranded with no idea how to even fabricate a route for escape. Still though, he took off with not even a sliver of a plan as to how he would find an escape. He picked himself up and off the ground, waited for the last few gusts of unearthly winds, and began his trek onward. With a glance cast around him, he noticed that there were still a few supplies laying about around him that had survived the wreckage that the sandstorm had brought on. He bent down and got a firm grasp of the water canteen that was previously slung around his neck, the journal for record keeping that he hadn't touched once throughout the whole journey, and the little satchel with unknown contents that had been resting peacefully on one of the other camels humps.
He figured he would sort through the entirety of the small bag after he had at least covered some ground. It was very plausible to assume that it was just a couple of small trinkets and a few scraps of food that the desert travelers had brought along with them on their journey. But out of sight, out of mind, was the best option for him to choose at the moment, though there were really only a few other options at the moment. If he didn't see the meager food supples, he most likely wouldn't be driven to consume the sparse rations he had left.
Hopefully, if he traveled along the path carved by the paroxysmal winds, he would be able to track down some of the other supplies. And so he took off, traipsing down the dune he was perched upon.
