The stifling heat began long before the sun reached its highest point in the sky. Erian felt the heat begin to bite into his skin.
There was not enough shade around, and the narrow stream became his only anchor, the sole reason he didn't stray. He knew that if he moved away from that current, he would lose the only thing keeping him alive.
The heat rose at an unbearable pace. Sweat ran down his forehead, his neck, and his back, making the white tunic cling to his skin.
Erian bent over the stream again, plunging the fabric into the water. He heard the wet sound as the cloth soaked through. Then he draped it over his shoulders and chest, letting the initial cold draw a little of the heat away, and it felt almost like relief.
The coolness did not last long. Shortly after, the sun turned the cloth into a steaming layer against his skin, forcing him to wet it again and again.
Each time he dunked the tunic in the water, his body thanked the contact, even though he knew it would last only minutes.
Hours passed, or what he thought were hours. The heat hammered at his head with a constant buzz. The sensation was like having embers burning inside his skull. His lips ached, dry and cracked, and his tongue rasped against the roof of his mouth like rough paper.
Erian couldn't leave the stream, but he also couldn't stay exposed on the bank all day. With slow steps, he groped around, searching for something that might give him shelter.
His hands moved through the air until they found dry, twisted trunks stripped of leaves or living branches. Some were so thin they were useless. Others, though thicker, were split, broken from the inside.
After a while, his fingers touched a hollow surface. It was a wide trunk, fallen on its side, with an irregular opening.
Erian bent and felt inside. It was empty, rough on the inside, but offered something he had not found anywhere in that desert: shade.
He couldn't see it, but the coolness of the air inside told him the sun didn't strike there with the same fury.
He crawled in as best he could, careful not to scrape himself on the splinters. The space was narrow; he had to bend his knees and curl up, but the difference was immediate. The heat stopped weighing unbearably on his skin and became a whisper outside.
The trunk was not a perfect refuge: the air inside was laden with dust, and each breath made him cough, but at least it kept him away from the sun's direct burn.
Erian stayed there a long time, the wet tunic still across his chest. He listened to the constant murmur of the stream a few steps away, his only company amid the aridity.
His whole body ached, not only from the heat but from the hunger that was wearing him down. Waves of sharp twisting came from his gut, as if it wanted to swallow itself.
The pain came and went, sometimes sharp, sometimes dull, but always present, reminding Erian that he could drink all he wanted and still not survive on water alone.
When the air inside the trunk became unbearable, he crawled back out. Though his eyes saw nothing, the sun blinded him. It was a heat that could be felt in the skin, enveloping him like a burning wall.
Erian leaned over the stream again, soaking the tunic, washing his face and neck, drinking until his stomach felt bloated. Each sip calmed the burn in his throat for a moment, but the emptiness in his belly grew crueler.
Then he decided to move along the bank, never losing contact with the current. The water would be his guide and his support.
He began to walk with the vague hope of finding something to put in his mouth, even though he knew nothing alive remained around. Deep down he searched for another miracle like that fallen fruit that had eased his hunger for a while.
He walked slowly, testing each step with his feet and hands, following the liquid murmur.
The heat made him dizzy. More than once he lost his balance and fell to his knees, feeling the world shift beneath him as if the earth itself were trembling. Erian paused often to dip the tunic in the water and drink a little more.
After a while, he forced himself back to the hollow trunk. Though imperfect, at least it allowed him to regain some strength.
There inside, curled up, he thought about tearing pieces of the dead wood to chew, just to fool his body, but he gave up when his mouth filled with dry, coarse dust he could not swallow.
The sun began to sink slowly. The heat did not vanish, but its intensity waned, becoming more bearable. Fatigue, however, was heavier than ever. Every muscle ached and the hunger did not relent.
This time Erian did not try to resist sleep. He closed his eyes, listening to the stream's murmur a few steps away, and let the darkness envelop him.
When the sun set, Erian's tunic remained wet from so many times he had soaked it in the stream. During the day it had given relief against the sun's fire, but now, at night, that same moisture became an enemy that made him shiver uncontrollably.
The duality was cruel: under the sun he burned like ember, under the stars he trembled as if ice ran through his blood.
The cold began as a light touch, barely a whisper on the skin, but soon it became sharp, slipping mercilessly through every fiber of the soaked cloth. The white tunic, so light, was no more than a useless disguise against the night wind.
Erian curled inward, trying to preserve the little heat his body could still produce. His teeth chattered; each strike of his jaw sounded in his skull as if the cold sought to break it from within.
The air he breathed was icy and humid; each breath made him cough, stealing the air from his lungs.
Then he felt it: a strange contact covering him little by little. Something soft and dry enveloped him, different from the trunk or the earth. Thin branches, broken leaves, dust with a faint smell of old wool and wet soil.
Erian did not understand where that had come from. He had not heard footsteps; there was no one.
For a moment he thought the wind had gathered those scraps to cover him, as if nature itself wanted to offer him a makeshift blanket.
He let himself be wrapped, and against all odds, it worked. Those leaves retained what little warmth he had left and the sensation brought him a memory of home: Nalia laughing beneath the trees.
A knot formed in his chest and, before he could stop it, tears ran down his cheeks. Although he had never seen her face, his sister's laugh always stirred flashes of light in his mind, like sparks dancing among shadows.
It was the closest image he could conjure, and in those dark moments it made him feel less alone, less lost in the blackness that surrounded him.
He kept crying silently. He missed his sister with a pain that hurt, as if her absence emptied his chest. But remembering her made him understand that all this, hunger, cold, pain, he had endured so she would not have to.
That thought brought Erian a small comfort: he wished that right now Nalia was safe, sleeping in a warm bed with hot milk in her hands and delicious food on the table. Clinging to that image made the tears subside little by little.
The shivering eased. For the first time in a long while, his body stopped fighting something and simply rested. Fatigue overcame him without resistance, sinking him into a deep sleep.
In that dream he heard a voice. It was strange and at the same time familiar, deep and serene, but its words arrived distorted, like a murmur the wind carried from far away. Erian could not understand them, only fragments, loose pieces of a language that seemed both known and unknown.
Still, that voice gave him peace. A calm he had not felt since they threw him into the abyss. He tried to follow it, as if it were a guide, but the dream turned foggy and the voice faded into silence.
Erian woke with his body a little warmer, though the dampness still clung to his skin. The improvised layer of leaves still covered him and he understood that without it he might not have endured the night.
With his eyes closed, sunk in the ever-present darkness, he promised himself not to give up. Because even though hunger and cold haunted him, though the day burned him and the night froze him, there was an invisible force watching over him.