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1
LORELAI
“Where the fuck am I?”
All I can see are sand dunes.
I watch as the dunes become alive. I watch as they grab and clutch at the horizon. I watch as Yadat’s horizon drowns beneath the sand.
The heat of the sun doesn’t help this little vision I’m having. The sunlight is just as alive as the sand dunes, and right now, the two are at war with one another.
You need to eat something before you tear your clothes off and walk into the city center because that is exactly where these thoughts are heading.
I haven’t eaten for two days. I ran out of my last preserves of boiled and salted dripir meat exactly two days ago.
I’ve been nursing a sprained ankle from my last hunting trip for about a week, and when all you can do is sit around and stare at the walls, eating your last supplies of food sounds like a good idea.
“Not that there were many supplies to start with,” I mutter to myself.
Earlier in the day my ankle felt well enough for me to walk on it, but I wrapped it so tightly that the circulation was cut off before I ventured into the forests to hunt.
Now, I sit at the very top of the most ancient tiphe tree in this forest, and it gives me a view of the entirety of Yadat. This includes the desert that seems to grow and spill sharply from the edges of the forest.
Not much grows in the desert that rings the outskirts of Yadat except for what the humans on the farms struggle to grow for themselves.
Looking out at the desert, there is not one tiphe tree to be seen. It is as if some old god drew the boundary made out of magic and cursed a part of Yadat so that nothing would ever grow.
I wouldn’t put it past the naga gods. They’re as cruel as the creatures they created.
Something rustles beneath me. I cannot help but smile as the group of wild dripir that I have been tracking since dawn comes barreling through the forest’s undergrowth. They’re all overgrown, almost obese from eating all the root vegetables that the forest has to offer. I really only need one of them.
But I’ll settle for two. I don’t want to be out here again any time soon.
The arrow is already loaded in my bow, and I exhale slowly before I let it loose. I’ve already loaded another arrow into the bow and let it loose into the skull of another dripir as the first one falls.
They are both dead instantaneously. They fall heavily, surrounded by deafening, frantic shrieks and squeals as the rest of the herd runs for their lives.
I drop from the top of the tree and land with a soft thump in an overgrown bush before I roll off it and stand.
“At least I’m not limping anymore,” I grumble as I tie the dripir’s feet with twine and then begin to drag them through the forest.
I am not far from home, and I know that it only seems like a long way because the dripir are so fucking heavy.
“But,” I huff as I reach my bunker. I start to skin and cut up the animals right away. “At least I won’t have to hunt for a few weeks.”
I salt and store the meat in the little shed that is mostly below ground. The only part of the shed that can be seen from the forest is the little triangular roof, although I keep it covered with tree branches and large leaves most of the time.
Then I head to my bunker, which is also underground.
It took me months to build this place. Luckily, there was a hollow in the ground already, so I didn’t have to dig too much.
“That would have taken forever,” I mutter to myself as I strip my clothes. “And at least Mama taught me how to use my magic properly.”
I cannot help but go still for a minute when thinking about my mother. I always do.
She is gone now, along with my father, and I am alone. I have been alone for so long. When I think about either of my parents, my body just goes quiet.
Sometimes I get tired of being alone. Sometimes I grow tired of taking care of myself all the time. Sometimes I am tired of how quiet the world is in my little bunker in the forest, with no company but the brutal sunlight and the brittle sand that blows in from the desert when the winds grow too rough.
