The sandstorm was slowly subsiding. For a
couple of hours, every grain of sand in the desert had been lifted and sent
several kilometers further from where it had been for months. Storms were not
uncommon as the desert had them very often, especially in the summer month when
the weather there got even worse. It was
a dangerous and unforgiving place, but it could also be beautiful and peaceful.
There was a small oasis, containing a rather
large pond, which had resisted to the wind and the forces of nature. To any
traveller, it surely seemed like an illusion because it wasn’t very common to
see all that water in the middle of the desert. A flock of orange birds arrived
just as the sand settled, sitting on the palm trees and, from time to time,
flying low over the pond to get their feathers wet in order to clean them.
It was a small paradise. Some hours later,
another creature came close to the oasis. It was a human and it was wearing a
full mask over the face but, whoever it was, also had uncovered arms and tight
pants that were smeared with mud and sand dust. The human was riding a camel,
which was barely walking. As resistant as they were, it was clear this one had
gone through a lot and really needed to get rest. Just a few meters away from
reaching the pond, the came collapsed and the human hit the ground hard.
For a long time, maybe a couple of hours, the
person stayed there, with the face on the sand and the legs crossed in a very
weird angle. The camel had stopped breathing the moment it collapsed. Whoever
that person was, there was no ride that could take him or her back to
civilization. Now, the desert had become even larger with the death of the
camel. But nature and the orange birds ignored this. To them, it was all the
same.
When the human woke up, it ran to the water,
fast, as if something was very wrong. It moved a lot in the water. Apparently,
removing the mask was much harder that envisioned. After a few minutes of
struggle, a shorthaired woman came out of the water and sat on the edge of the
pond. She had to cut through the mask with her nails and she had hurt herself a
bit by doing so as the material had become difficult to breath in because of
the sand.
She looked around, watching the orange birds
and her dead ride, as well as some small twister far in the distance. The storm
had not entirely died out. But that wasn’t really the problem. The real problem
was being in the middle of nowhere with no way to survive. She looked at her
reflection on the water and saw the small cuts she had given herself with her
fingernails. She also realized how tired she looked and how her arms were
burned by the very hot desert sun.
Unwilling to stay put, she decided to dig with
her own hands a grave for the camel. It was not only out of respect, but also
because she didn’t want certain animals to come there looking for a meal.
Burying her camel was hard, as it had been a gift from a person that had saved
her some days ago and now that gift had left her stranded in the middle of
nowhere. She actually had no idea who that person was because, as she was, the
person also had a covered face. But the woman felt it had been another female
prisoner back in that place.
All kinds of memories were rushing back to her
head and dug the grave: she had been a long time on a prison right there in the
desert. It was run by legionnaires, men that were dedicated to the preservation
of those colonies, places where they had no place to be in but there they were.
Besides, she knew they hated woman because female prisoners always had worse
punishments if they did something wrong. For stealing a loaf of bread for
example, a woman would be flogged in the yard twenty times. A man would only
get one punch in the stomach and that was it.
But one night, something had happened. Apparently
the prison had been attacked by desert dwellers and it the chaos, the woman
that had given her the camel had appeared and liberated her from her chains.
She helped her getting some clothes too and the mask in order to survive the
harsh conditions of the desert.
The shorthaired woman dragged the camel
centimeter by centimeter, being a very heavy creature. She knew it was a waste
to bury it and not eat it but she had no knife or a way to make fire. She
couldn’t keep the creature’s milk and grease anywhere so there was no point in
letting the camel there for the scavengers to eat. It took her several hours to
get the animal in the hole she had done and some more time putting sand all
over it. Finally, she rested on top of the mound she had created, shocked by
the fact that she was hopeless.
She really tried to remember her name,
something that was so essential and obvious but she had no idea what it was.
She had no idea either of how she had arrived to that prison. It was possible
that the woman had been a thief or some sort of criminal but she really had no
recollection of anything before the prison. The only image she had very clear
on her mind was the one of the whole compound burning as the night became
darker and she rode of on the camel. For a moment, she had wanted to go back
and pick up the person that had saved her but, whoever it was, had disappeared
in a matter of seconds. She wanted to thank that person, do it with her voice
because she hadn’t spoken a word. But it was too late.
Looking at the water again, she decided to
take off her clothes and have another swim, this time to really clean herself
up and feel like a human being again. Not that she remembered how to feel like
one, but maybe she could have a revelation while in the middle of the pond. She
left the tight and brown clothes near the camel mound to dry and then walked
the few steps that separated her from the water. As her feet got wet again, she
felt better than in any other moment in the past few months. When her whole
body was in, she felt new.
The woman sunk her head in the water and
stayed there for a few seconds, realizing how great it felt to have the sun on
her skin and her body all wet at the same time. She felt like a person, very
different from what she had felt like in prison. She tried not to think about
that, not to remember the atrocities she had lived through but it was
impossible. It was the only life that she knew: the mistreatment, the dark
cells, the lack of food and water, the laughs of the guards and the feeling
that she was never going to see anything else than that awful place.
A howl was heard on the wind. All thought of
the prison vanished. She stood still in the water, waiting to confirm if what
she had heard was real or if she had imagined it. No, there it was again. She
got out of the water fast and realized it would take a while to get dry.
Besides, she had no ride so she couldn’t go far. Another howl made her
desperate, looking all over the place for an answer that didn’t seem to be
coming fast enough. What should she do?
The howling creature was a man, the leader of
the guards in the prison. He rode a stallion, as well as the two other men that
came with him. He arrived at the oasis at very high speed, which scared the
orange birds from the palm trees. The three men descended from their horses and
let them have a drink of water as they had a drink from the bottle they had on
their waist. They also had a gun each on their belts and one of them used it to
shoot a bird that had not flown. The little body dropped into the water, almost
silently.
The three men walked around the oasis and took
random shots at the ground and the water. Then, their leader howled again, as
they came full circle around the pond and reached their horses again. They left
in a huff, the orange birds arriving shortly after.
It was then when the woman stood up from the
sand, having been breathing through a small whole which the men had ignored.
They were obviously looking for escaped prisoners, which meant she wasn’t far
enough from them. She unearthed her clothes from the ground, put them on and
started walking. Maybe she had no chance but she couldn’t stare there forever.
Paradise was not safe.
