Golden Wine
Who: Jasper Where: the desert When: throughout the day and most of the night (it spills a bit into day four just for the sake of making sense) Rating: G
Noon of Day 3 Jasper was hot, and tired. She used a hand to scrub a little grit from her face, and she glared out into the sun scorched, sandy land. At this point she was moving from stand of cacti to stand of cacti just to stay hydrated and keep looking for Arlo - whom she lost the tracks of in the middle of the night when a sandstorm blew up. Jasper had found shelter with some rocks. She didn't know if Arlo had found anything, and for all she knew he could be a slowly mummifying corpse in the hot, dry sand now. That wasn't news she wanted to bring back to camp.
She used a flat, sharp stone to split open a cactus and started drinking the disgustingly warm, sweet, nearly liquid down. After that, she found some shade that would last the entire rest of the day, and bedded down. Insects didn't bother her, and she could travel easier by night.
Early Night of Day 3 The temperature dropped sharply, like it always did, and the sky turned a brilliant ruby with bands of amber in it as the sun went just over halfway over the horizon. Jasper started gulping down as much of the cactus as she could, that little narrow band of uncomfortably stuffed and almost vomitting that she was going to have to use while she went onto the next cactus stand. If she didn't find sign of Arlo, she promised herself, she was going to start heading back. She couldn't do this on her own, and if she couldn't - well, maybe Arlo would get lucky. Maybe he left the desert entirely - one could always hope.
Spying the next stand, she started a long, loping stride towards it. Listening for those eeriely silent stretches of time when there would be arcing shapes in the distance. Huge arcing shapes. She didn't know what they were, just that they were there one minute, gone the next, and everything went dead silent while they were above ground. Jasper wasn't sure she wanted to know either. But she froze, just like the rest of the desert, when they appeared. Still, it was with a soft sigh of relief when she got to the cactus stand and she didn't see anything, or hear anything, that was out of place. But she suspected that there was less sand now, and more rock. It seemed more stable under her feet.
In the distance, there was a rock wall.
Drinking to excess again, she headed that way.
Late Night of Day 3/Very Early Day 4 The rock wall framed a canyon, almost. A split through a huge rock wall that was at least three quarters of a mile long - from the other side she suspected it would look like a giant sand due in Eygpt. And she was right. Over here, in the shadow of this great thing, it was almost all cold rock that had released all its solar energy. She tried to see inside it, but it was too dark right now. But in the far distance, she could see the stars going down, which meant the sun was going to start up false dawn soon, a pink oozing over the sand like stained glass in a church over wooden pews. There wasn't enough time to get back to the cactus stand before that hot thing started dogging her footsteps.
The stars in the desert were something else. There wasn't a moon - she'd never seen one here - but there were starts. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands, stretching into infinity. There wasn't any light pollution to pale them, and no trees to hide them. Out there the clouds were thin, when they existed at all, a silk haze that was swept away by the breeze that sent swirling eddies of sand around her ankles. There was an exultation there. Like a temple made out of night and sand and star. It was times like this that Jasper didn't just believe in God, but could feel Him breathing.
Well, there was only one thing to do. She stepped into the canyon.