Urraca's Introduction

The sun is being fed to the horizon. Sailing low to the dunes, flakes of misty gold billow in and out of reality as the last bit of marbling sunlight is caught withering gracefully in puffs of sand lifted by the breathy wind. A countenance of exultancy forms in a storm of the evening's fighting breath; having battled for one last brilliant flair of light before it is swallowed, at last, by the great desert maw. Night. In the safety of the dark, the beady eyes of the sky begin to blink open. They expand their conquest of the night sky, dotting the western providence which had finally fallen into a heavy rest. Under the hood of invading starlight, the rolling dunes lay still. Only two dark spots interrupt the endless heaven of grains.

At first glance, the darkest dot would appear to be a heavily blackened rock, misplaced and partly buried. And yet, as the wind stiffly ripples through its tough skin and pushes open a flap on the flank of the dark object, it would appear to be a leather sack on its side, gathering sand as the wind slowly sculpts the rising face of the dune. The second dot remains a few meters behind. The wind reveals with ease a billowing black cotton that puffs in the air but never leaves the ground. The dancing sessile garment wraps around a darker shape. A figure wearing alizarin clothes under the black vestments whose only features not covered by the cotton has been burned by a harsh sun. Her hands and face, scorched by the ethereal flame of day, rest their anterior sides in the still-warm sand. Her hair and neck remain wrapped but the cloth covering her face flickers gently near her cracking lips. Sand has found its way into every crevice of the unmoving body. Then, as slow as the setting sun, her face begins to twitch. Her dark eyebrows lower and her eyes crunch further closed, as pain pushes through her expression.

A cold wind picks up again and the figure juts up and out of the sand, like a black vine shooting from the earth. She stumbles for a bit before keeling over to her knees and folding like a book. Her hands rise shaking to the back of her head and gingerly pat it. With both hands still resting on the back of her skull, her green eyes lift to meet the leather bag. The whites of her eyes flash and she grips a poorly made glaive in her right hand and flies back up, and with the devil on her tail she struggles helplessly down the soft sand, treading through it until the bag was in reach. She tears through it, wild in a sort of panic. Her burnt hands reel back in pain only to be forced forward in angry desperation. She manages to pull a bag made of an animal's bladder and died red, fixed with a beaded drawstring. It flops in her hands, empty.

"Noooo!" Horror cracks in her voice as she continues to dig until catching sight of a buried object next to her shin. She digs. A tin canteen, crusted in cemented sand reveals it's belly to have been split open by a sharp knife. Horror fades into disbelief and she remains quiet, holding the metal in front of her face. Then a spark ignites and her jaws grit tightly and her eyebrows furrow deeply. She throws the canteen with such force that the fist hit it takes to the ground bounces it further and resounds a ringing in the metal before it spins and is silenced quickly by the second fall. In a fit of rage, the young woman screams into her arms and begins fruitlessly kicking a wailing. From the eyes of the night, she appears like an unsettled gnat, sending euphemisms to the sky and kicking sand.

Finally, her anger subsides and she stands defeated, her head lowered with one hand pressed to it, but her garments continue to sway in the breeze. Her head slowly turns to the canteen and she slowly wades her way through the sand, picking up the tin and carefully tucking it away into the leather bag. Now with shakey hands, she slips back into the pack to discover almost every other object untouched. She pulls the bag over her shoulders, runs her forearm over her head, and begins to tread clumsily through the rolling dunes.

The moon was hard to see, but its sliver was irreproachable. It marked the sky like a hand on a clock, and now, it was beginning to also lose the war. Yet, it's gentle light refuses to pull out of its graceful descent. As the east begins to shift hues, the moon dips down, hopelessly swallowed into the starving land. Green eyes watch solemnly.

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Soon, a mirage forms in the blooming sunrise. The woman squints, sweat beading her brow which was now mostly rewrapped. Sage palms and a glistening blue bed hiding behind a dust cloud, a little less than a thousand brazas away. She turned to the east and seeing no sun, began to take longer and quicker strides. A race of woman and light. The moment the sun plucked it's way up from the earth was the moment she had chucked her heavy sack and weapon to the base of a tree and held her knees as she gasped for breath. Dripping from sweat, her hair had wrapped itself around the frame of her face, dark and wild. She slips towards the water that tempted her and falls to her knees a meter from the bank. There on her knees, she pulls out a scrap piece of silk, a cup, and a bottle without a lid. She places the items to her side and painfully begins to dig in the sand closest to the cool water. Soon, the small hole she makes begins to fill with water from the basin. The water creeps into the depression and begins to fill it up. As it does this, she dips the bottle until it has filled up and wraps the bottle's neck and opening in the silk. Pouring the rest of the water through the fabric into the cup, her knees give way for her to properly sit and drink.

The sun now an hour into the sky, the young woman fills her fourth cup and begins to walk around the oasis. The water was clear and still, tempting her to bury her head into it's mirrored depths. Her eyes wearily grazed along the shore, expecting something to be revealed. The sound of flies buzzing was the only sound in this quiet place. She turned to the tree she claimed and lifted the glaive from the trunk. Using it as a walking stick, she stepped forward, exploring the underbrush until a corpse of a camel and a man caught her eye. Flies were just now finding the cooled bodies and were feverishly fighting over spots to land. The unsettling sight sets the woman's feet to back away, and yet she remains in eye contact with the sad display. Her green eyes recognizing the person but saying nothing.