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His voice, usually reserved for the somber appreciation of art, was infused with an exuberance that I had never heard before.
He was to get married.
And he was never coming back.
A pang of loneliness shot through me.
My friendship with Ruara had been one of silent understanding, a companionship born from shared passions, and to lose that felt like losing a part of myself.
But that was not why I was here.
No, I was here for a far less celebratory reason.
My mind flitted back to the cryptic message I had received from home, the one that had spurred me on this journey.
My thoughts were interrupted as a sudden chill spread through the air.
I looked up, squinting through my goggles at the rapidly changing landscape.
A fog was rolling in, thick and blinding, like a shroud descending on the world.
It caught the dimming twilight, casting an eerie glow on the sand.
The Hiika whinnied nervously, its skin contracting under my touch.
I reached out and stroked its neck, murmuring soothing words, my fingers feeling the dampness of its sweat underneath the rough texture.
Its heartbeat echoed in my ears, a rapid thud-thud that was strangely comforting amidst the unexpected fog.
The air was cooler, carrying the tang of unfamiliar flora.
I inhaled deeply, trying to decipher the alien scents around me, their sweet notes a sharp counterpoint to the Hiika’s musk and the underlying metallic scent of the desert sands.
I pulled my cloak tighter around me, shivering as the cold seeped into my bones.
The hush that descended felt eerily silent after the endless sound of wind and sand, broken only by the occasional soft hoot from a distant creature, its sound muffled by the fog.
Straining my eyes against the fog, Ruara’s house was now just an ambiguous shadow in the distance.
“Change of plans, Lorik,” Aznai said, mounting his Hiika once again.
He used the name we had agreed to call in — yet another layer of protection.
He tugged on the reins, directing it back in the direction we came from. “We have to turn back.”
“Turn back?” I said, perplexed. “We’re almost there! Look!”
And I pointed a finger at the house that was already growing dimmer as the fog came in.
Aznai shook his head. “The house will disappear in the fog before we reach it. If we turn back now, we can retrace our Hiikas’ footsteps in the sand.”
I looked back over my shoulder, and the intimidating distance our Hiikas’ tracks covered.
Endless rolling sand dunes.
“I’m not going back,” I said resolutely. “We press on.”
“Lorik,” Aznai said so effortlessly you would have believed it was my real name from birth. “These are not the fogs we’re used to on Aguvvel. These fogs are known to be misleading and dangerous. Even deadly. I must insist—”
