Tales From a Thousand Worlds

Wisdom From The Ashes

Part Six – Not Until Journey’s End

The coming night cast its darkening shadows across the land, the once blazing brilliance of the day giving way to the dappled deep purples that shrouded the hills. A small camp fire snapped and sparked away in a sheltered bowl in the hills. Over it a scrawny rabbit cooked, one that Lakach had brought down. After a day spent hunting, it had been the only game he had seen.

Nhaqosa stared into the fire as the others tended their small camp, his gaze blankly watching the sparks that leapt up into the sky without really observing them.

When sleep came for him, it came with the dreams again. The dark of night and the hills faded away into the endless, broiling wastes once more. The sun that had shone so bright swelled and darkened into a giant red ball that stained the landscape as if with blood and baked the land hard as iron. Each reluctant step kicked up coarse dust from the dead earth, dust that clawed at a parched throat.

The pursuer still remained, off in the distance and obscured by the red haze of heat and dust. This time he was closer, a dark form that grew minutely clearer with each passing step.

Nhaqosa continued to walk, pushing on through the pain that weighed him down and sought to drag him back. The maul dragged behind him, a load that had become like a ball and chain around him.

Sweat coursed down his body, mingling with the red dust so that it appeared as if rivulets of blood rolled down across his white hide. Teeth ground down tight to keep from crying out with each step and the tearing pains that arced through his body.

There could be no stopping though, not until the journey was complete, however long it took.

~~~~~

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