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*~*~**~*~*
Darkness.
Absolute darkness, and roaring, tumultuous silence.
Hot sand was burning my face. And my hands. And other places. Around me, devils were dancing in the wind, spitting fire, laughing at me. Faint images danced in front of my inner eye. Water, shimmering in the distance. A maul with great fangs, opening, ready to swallow me up.
Memories? Visions?
I had no idea. Right then and there, I didn’t care.
‘Mr Ambrose!’
That voice… that face. I might not be too sure about everything else, but that face was no figment of my exhausted imagination. Never in my life would I dream up a female this tenacious, stubborn, and… beautiful.
Wait a minute - what did you just think there?
It had to be the dehydration. I was starting to lose my mind.
‘Mr Ambrose!’
Even as a hallucination, she was darn persistent. I could have sworn her voice was coming closer…
The next moment, the figure of a muffled Arab appeared next to me. What the-
It took me a moment to realize that the face behind the white cloth was not the dark-skinned face of an Arab. Oh no.
‘Mr Ambrose, Sir! Are you alive?’
‘Go away,’ he growled.
What were the chances of her actually doing what I told her, for once in her life?
‘Why on earth should I?’ she demanded.
As I thought. Zero.
Memories were slowly started to come back. She wasn’t a hallucination. She had followed me into the storm - against my express orders, of course. And then… the rising winds, the fall from the camel… and then, blackness.
‘It’s not safe wandering around in this kind of tempest!’ I growled up at her.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, you’ve only just figured that out, have you?’
‘I told you to stay where you were!’
‘And I didn’t listen. Now come, get over here.’
This was intolerable!
‘Didn’t you hear what I said? Go!’ I tried to push myself up, tried to push her away from here, back where it would be safe - but my body seemed to have different ideas. It sank back down, sending a bolt of pain through me. An indistinct noise escaped the back of my throat. ‘Go, I said! My lungs are being shredded! You have a camel; maybe you can make it out of here alive. Leave me to die in peace!’
Emphasis on in peace.
‘Not a chance in hell! If you’re going to die, I’m going to make sure your last minutes on this earth are as miserable as possible!’
‘How very kind of you!’
Something tugged at me. Apparently, my dear semi-wife had decided that there was a better stretch of sand for dying on than the one I was currently occupying. I looked up at her - for the first time really looked and, underneath the stubborn mask, saw the fear flickering in her eyes. Fear for me. I tried to reach out to her - in vain. My hand wouldn’t move. ‘No! Leave me! Save yourself!’
