The sun hung low on the horizon, enormous and burning a dark orange-red. It cast a merciless light across the Blasted Lands - the dunes glittered goldly and, at this time of day, cast great dark shadows across the waste. All that was visible for miles and miles was that vast sea of sand, unchanging and barren, and, strangely, a figure moving slowly across it on foot.

Moon had wrapped her tender feet in strips of cloth that she had torn from her clothing. She had been traveling for two days across the desert, staying in the shadows of the dunes when she could during the day and seeking shelter in shallow, rocky caves at night. When, in the city, she had become seperated from the people she had met - Jinn and Piper, kind, queer people who had helped her and seemed to understand her - she decided to go back out into the Blasted Lands. She had to go somewhere and she had the sense that there was something out in the sands, something that called faintly to her. Moon had no idea what it could be, good or bad, but she had decided to go, both to see what it might be and to discover more of the world. But after a few days out in the unforgiving desert, she was beginning to rethink her decision.

 

The first thing she was aware of was the pain.
 
It was not sharp, fresh hurt, but an deep and complete ache. She felt as if she had been beaten, repeatedly and methodically, as if by a tanner purposefully turning a hide. It was a new sensation to her, this pain, and for a moment her mind struggled with so alien a concept, until her human body took over as simply and suddenly as a switch being flipped. Oh, she thought inadequately, as her entire body began crying out. How strange. It took a herculean effort to lift her long, slender arms - they trembled as she did so, her hands hanging lifelessly from their ends like lead weights. She curled her arms around herself, clutching feebly at her stomach. So this is pain. She paused for a moment before adding silently, It hurts.

By then, she had finally out from the enormous shadow of her physical ailments, enough to slowly realize that a hot, cruel wind whipped across her skin, bits of sand and rock stratching at her ruthlessly. It was dry, and she was thirsty - her mouth was chalky and her throat tight with thirst. She heard nothing, for miles and miles, just the wind tearing over craggy rock and an inhospitable sea of sand.
 
But at least it is not dark, and it is not close. It was the furthest thing from it; the light burned white through her eyelids, and even without lifting them the moon could tell that there were miles of space out here, perhaps hundreds, all gold and sky. And although she was aching, and parched, and too weak to even force her eyes open, although she had been ripped from her home and everything she had ever known and was left sprawled across the sand in this frail human shell, she did not mind.
 
Anything was better than the grave.