Arrow and Eye trudged in the bleached sand. The desert sand was peculiar. It sucked you under. It breathed you down a giant nostril or vent. It had no hard bottom to push against like beach sand. It was dried like tiny century-old bone chips. Arrow wondered of what the stuff really was made. She imagined worn-out people.
After trudging for hours past darkness, Arrow assembled a small camp in the middle of nowhere and the two collapsed in overdue slumber.
Later in the darkness, a cold howl and hissing woke them. A frigid night wind storm was dissecting their camp and equipment. Precious water jugs shattered. Sand was gulping spilled life-preserving fluid with savage parched thirst.
“Eye, be battle ready now!” hollered Arrow.
“Silence. I’m meditating,” he calmly responded.
Surprised, Arrow watched and waited. Eye was pulling an Anchor trick, but this was by far one of the finest. Arrow continued packing and dressing in haste.
“This is it, Eye. If you’re a survivor, prepare yourself.”
“Damn. Damn. Damn. Nobody believes in magic anymore,” Eye howled, springing to life.
Crackling overhead in the whistling sky, heat lightening was splintering jagged white spikes earthward. In the wide desert, the two sand sweethearts were obvious prime electrical targets. Eye dressed, mumbling incantations of sorts, or possible cursing.
“I’m never coming back here. You know why? It’s too dry and you always, always, always get sand in your boots,” mumbled Eye.
Arrow turned to the grumbling Eye.
“You won’t come back to the desert because you are going to rest here and dry rot! What are our chances of survival in the open desert with Shiloh so far away?” Arrow’s words crashed down heavy as iron on steel capturing Eye’s attention.
“Sorry. You are so pithy. I understood the nature of our situation a long time ago,” said Eye, “Yet, we’ve a serious mission. Somehow, it’ll come to pass. We have to wait this storm out.”
“Waiting for what?” asked Arrow.
“For a miracle, I called a big fat one via her Mother Ocean.”
“Is this miracle natural or supernatural?”
“Both. I think.”
“Both?” squeaked Arrow, in open-mouthed wonder, “Eye, you’ve gone mad. Get a grip on yourself. We aren’t being saved by Anchor here. We are on our own. For all we know, Anchor is long dead.”
“O, ye of little faith,” responded Eye grumpily.
The blasting grit was building to a roar. The soaring sand prohibited communication without a lot of hand waving and shouting. They were standing in an ever growing crater of dune. Eye in his usual forward-scout-style scurried to the top of the cascading sand to observe. Their was nothing to see but blur for distances. He turned and rolled to the bottom of the sandy incline.
“Oh, man! Now I’ve done it royal!” cried Eye. Both his thighs were skewered together by a sharp piece of plastisteel tent rod. Anchor grabbed the rod with both hands and twisted it free. She then jabbed the metal through her left bicep with a grimace.
“What are you doing?” asked Eye, “Why did you wound yourself?”
“Because. You obviously are staying here wounded while I get help. If I experience hallucinations, this festering wound pain will remind me you are still back here dying from blood poisoning in the sand.”
“Oh, then you still love me even when I keep awkwardly falling off of high places?” asked Eye.
“Yes, you clumsy camel clod.”
With that terse good-bye, she gathered provisions and bound into the biting sand storm.
Even with compass and chart Arrow wandered for forty-eight hours before returning to the destroyed camp. Eye’s prayer was answered. A SCARAB convoy passed by and picked him up. The track traces were heading in the direction of Shiloh.
A tattered note fluttered stabbed on the end of the bloody plastisteel rod. Arrow didn’t need to read the note. She knew what it said. It contained the lyrics to a familiar old love song she couldn’t get out of her head. She began following the tracks toward Shiloh plodding through the roasting sand.