The first rays of morning light pierced through my eyelids. My body still aching, I let out a sigh and rose from the sand, pushing the man's corpse aside. I stood up straight and, with my dagger, cut another piece of flesh from his thigh.
"Where am I?" As usual, I was lost, because I kept asking such strange questions out loud—no one could hear me back then. "Yeah, just as I thought, I'm lost." I looked in every direction, hoping to find something other than sand.
"Nothing." As usual, I wouldn't find anything in the desert; I didn't understand how I could still have faith that I'd find anything besides salt, sand, and rocks. I looked up at the sky and located the east—"All right, north is over there; that's where I came from"—I pointed with my mace—"I have to go south," I muttered.
As I walked through the marvelous sea of sand I found myself in, I meditated aloud. "What was it my uncle used to say about walking in the desert?"
"There are people who survive on the moisture that seeps from the rocks and the beetles." I had never seen a beetle in my life.
"There aren't any rocks to lick here, and I've never seen a beetle walking through the desert." I didn't even know if there were beetles in the first place.
The last time I saw my father, I asked him why we were walking so far, why we didn't just stay in one place. I still remember what he said.
"The desert is dangerous; there's always someone lurking, waiting for you to let your guard down." But I didn't understand exactly what he meant.
I was lost in my thoughts for hours, until the sun reached its highest point in the sky. And I saw something I didn't know what it was… it wasn't a rock or a tree…. Those were a different color. I approached that green thing shaped like flat stones and tried to touch it with my fingers. "Ah! Shit," I said, shaking my hand in pain. I thought that thing was alive and had bitten me.
"Hey, you! What are you doing with that cactus?" I turned my gaze behind me while still shaking my hand in pain. "You're not from around here, are you?" said that young woman dressed in deer skins. "If you need help, you can come with me." I didn't feel much confidence in those words, but I was curious; besides, she was just an unarmed young woman, and I was already an armed man experienced in battle… at least that's what I wanted to believe.
"What's a young woman doing all alone in the desert?" I asked her in a condescending tone.
"I could ask you the same thing: Why is a young man with a deer's head wandering aimlessly through the desert?"
"I'm a nomad, like everyone else." I didn't know exactly what that word meant, but I used to hear my uncle say it a lot when he described us. "Why is a young woman traveling alone and unarmed through the desert?"
"So you're a nomad," I said. It was the first time I'd seen a woman who wasn't part of my family. Her skin was so clear and glowing, a shade similar to that of a dry tree trunk. And her hair was long and straight. She was definitely older than my sister—at least in age—and also taller, though less sturdy.
"Is it fun being a nomad?" What a strange question she asked me, I thought.
"What exactly does a nomad eat?" At that moment, my stomach churned. What were those strange questions? I thought.
"Wait a minute, where the hell are we going!" I stopped dead in my tracks. She stopped a few steps ahead of me and, turning halfway around, said to me.
"I already told you I'd take you to get some water."
"Sure, you did." The whole situation struck me as incredibly strange.
A young woman in the middle of the desert offers me water to drink after I come across a green thing out here. All those life-or-death battles have made me way too suspicious… I mean, what could a girl as slender as her possibly do to me… plus, she's kind of pretty. Her eyes are lighter than the damp sand on the shore. Mine are more like the night when the two moons are hidden. I thought too much at that moment and somehow ended up theorizing that perhaps those damp stones from which people quenched their thirst were the ones on the shore, soaked by the great bitter lake. My feet started to hurt; maybe it was from walking so much in the desert or from the wounds I've suffered these past few days.
"We've walked far enough. Where exactly is that water?"
"Water? Oh, of course, it's very close." I had walked right past it just a moment ago. "That's right, I have a little water with me." He handed me a half-full canteen.
"Why don't… no, never mind, thanks." I drank every last drop; my mouth was so dry I almost choked on the water.
"Cough, cough," I sighed. "I really needed that. Thanks. I've never tasted such delicious water before. Where did you get it?"
"You'll find out soon; we're very close now," he said as he held out his hand, waiting for his empty canteen.
"Sorry, I was thirsty, so I finished it." He took it and tucked it under his arm.
"Don't worry, it must be awful to be that thirsty," he replied with a huge smile.
The landscape had changed a bit; you could now see sand dunes and much larger rocks in the distance.
"I'm getting tired of all this… You said we're close, right…?" I saw the head of a red deer peeking out from one of the dunes; I think it was the same one from last time—I mean, it's the only red deer I've ever seen, though also the only living one.
"That's right, we've arrived." Everything turned white and then black.