Desert Curses

Day of Sun

Authors note: how is it so far? I know it's later than promised I'm sorry. This week the weather has caused me to be called in to work more. So less time to write.

Music : la Serenissima Lorena mckennitt

The blinding rays of the sun beat down upon her side as she lay curled up in the sand. Her pale green eyes were open and studying the sand as it was blown this way and that. She was in the process of summoning the energy to get up and dress her wounds. Then it was a matter of reining in her unmanageable camel.

Ali baba as she affectionately called him stood lazily under a palm tree a few meters away. Staring at his human with perplexed curiosity at why she was in the hot sun at the hottest time of day. So much for humans being smart he seemed to snort. If she could have seen him she could possibly have summoned some kind of fleeting smile.

Today wasn't one of those days for her. As the noon slipped into the cooler hours the camel came to her and nudged her repeatedly. Eventually she groaned and turned staring up at her friend.

"I don't want to get up. It will just be another failure. Like most everything in my life has been. " she sighed patting Ali's nose.

'Get up human you are pathetic ' he seems to say while rising his head and neck pridefully.

She closed her eyes weather from passing out or blood loss she couldn't say. Evelyn and Jonathan's faces flashed through her mind. The Cairo museum where Evey was legendary as making messes. And the drinking places where Jonathan's life and reputation lay in shreds.

'Her family. Her life' that was her motto. Family was life for with out it life wasn't worth living.

Beautiful crystalline eyes opened and she grabbed Ali's lead rope. She clicked to him and he aided her in standing. She cried out grasping blindly to him as they pain made her almost delirious. She held onto him as she hobbled to the tent and saw it ransacked. Stifling her distress she simply grabbed up the half spilled medical kit and brought it toward the flat rock near her tent.

Dizziness and lack of energy. Check. Lack of focus and concentration. Check. Large gaping wound where blood came from. Check. She was suffering from blood loss. The bullet had passed trough her shoulder.

Slowly and meticulously she cleaned and bandaged the wound. Then Set about taking only the needed things from her tent. It was almost night fall before she was done. Her injury making her body slow and cumbersome.

When everything was ready she wrapped her scarf about her head and sat upon her camels knelt body. She was off into the desolate desert. It was here in the emptiness you could examine your soul. Everything was laid bare.

Halfway through the night when her body was exhausted but her mind was racing it came to her. The despair at the failed dig was for naught. It wasn't an absolute failure. Perhaps instead a chance to begin again. To start it off better than before. She smiled the first true smile all day.

She would find her family and then her employees and see about beginning again. She sighed heavily realizing that it would take a few days to get through the desert and that would have to be done first. And she had a long way to go through the he blistering heat and bitting cold.