The day is sweltering, and a burning crucible of sand stretches beneath her. Lost in this desert, the sands crushing against her, she attempts to call out in desperation. The blistering wind tosses sand against her tongue, and all that is heard from her mouth is the sizzle of her voice and the hot sand melting into a painful lava. Still, she staggers forward, her hair whipping against her fevered cheeks. She cries out once more, in futility, to the knight she once believed in, with no response. She poises her feet, step by step, into the deep dunes, and clarity begins to come to her. That hero on horse will never come, but she can make her way across this forsaken place, even if she must crawl. She will save herself. The sand filters the sun out to a place where it cannot help her, and she knows she must trust her own sense of how a simple line runs to make it out. For even though the desert may envelope her entirely before she sees the land beyond this veil, she has faith that she can push herself in a true enough line. And push she does, and before long she realizes she has wobbled her line, and must straighten. Again the line veers though, and she cries out in frustrated anguish, hoping beyond any sense that the hero will still come. The third time it veers, she makes the pretense of calling for him, though she knows that in her deepest heart that he is not there. And with acceptance, a stillness comes over the desert. Heat still sears her scarred palms as she crawls along but now she is numb to this pain. With this realization, she brings herself upright, the sand swirling around her now, not into her, and as she does, the coldness strikes.
It is not a snowy coldness, not a wet, seeping chill, but rather a brittle, snapping freeze, that petrifies around her soft features, shaping them into a steely mask of utter absence, a body of protection from the sun's fury. And with this comes a renewed strength to cross this terrible desert. Her path will not be straighter or shorter, but now she is armored against the wind and heat, numb inside her suit of steel. She will complete her journey, and arrive beyond the tumultuous sands. The only question now lies as a dull pounding in her far too-calm heart:
When she has liberated herself from the desert, will she find her way out of the numbness that has encircled her? Or will the chill become a new dangerous habitat?