I am coming

He saw that he was running through the burning sand barefoot. 

There was nothing ahead of him neither could he see anything behind. 

The sand opened its mouth to devour him in. 

A massive fire encircled him and he was stuck in the sand till his knees, going deeper. 

"I am coming," he shouted. "I am coming."

He saw a gold medallion a few feet away from him. It consisted of a gold outer ring in which a coin shaped pendant was embedded in such a way that both of them appeared one oval pendant from afar. 

He recognized it, it was his. 

He tried to reach it with both hands but his body sank deeper in the sand, pulling him in with such force that was causing him to lose his consciousness. 

"I am coming…" 

~

"Where are you going?" 

He woke up to Claudia's cautious whisper. Breathing heavily, he looked around and then his vision came back to adjust on her face. The sun had risen already, indicating a new day. 

"What happened?" He questioned looking at her who was already staring at his face. 

He was still under the effect of the strange dream he saw. It seemed strangely real, just like the one he saw about the girl beside him even though the events in none of them made any sense. A fire in the desert? The sand eating him up? Nonsense, he thought while trying to shrug the feeling off. 

The only thing that was real in the dream was his medallion that always stays in his pocket. While standing up, he suddenly halted. In the dream he saw his medallion whole but in real he only has its outer shell. He lost the middle part when he was a kid and ever since he had been on a hunt for it. 

"You started yelling 'I am coming' so I got scared." Claudia said, mocking his heavy tone while she was carefully observing his actions. He wasn't even listening to her and seemed to be zoned out. 

"Are you okay?" She touched his shoulder lightly when he didn't move and kept gazing at the sand before him. 

"Huh?" He snapped out of his trance upon her touch and then shook his head, "Yeah, yeah, I'm good."

She shrugged a bit and went back to what she was doing earlier. 

"Here," She pushed something that looked like a plastic bowl towards him. 

"What is this?" For the first time he actually looked over to what she had been doing. 

The leather mats that they had taken out from the jeep in the night were lying before her in a scrunched form. The plastic bowl was one of the jeeps tools and it was filled with water. 

"Where did you get it?" He looked up at the water and then at her. 

"Gathered it from these," She pointed towards the leather mats. "The dew drops from night were sitting on them." She elaborated and he nodded. 

"You didn't need to though," he commented, compelled by his consistent urge of ribbing her. "We have plenty of water."

Luckily they had found a water can in the trunk of the jeep. As the town was near a desert, people usually carried water with them, especially the military. 

"That is saved for drinking so that we don't die of thirst in the way. Who knows how far away the end is?" She said, rolling her eyes. 

"Hmmm, so what am I supposed to do with this now?" He looked at the little amount of gathered 'dew drops' sitting before him. 

"Wash your face? Duhh!" 

For the very first time in his entire life, Hellion Duxsoro felt stupid. He didn't know what took over his ability of understanding and figurement ever since he was with her. Maybe it's the influence of this silly girl, he thought to himself and picked up the water, moving a little away from her. 

He broke a twig from the tree underneath which they laid through the night. Removing the outer wooden layer from one side, he skillfully turned it into a small brush for cleaning teeth. 

"I have toothpaste." Claudia, who was previously scrutinizing his actions, raised the small tube towards him which she had used earlier. It was one of the necessary things she had put in her bag before escaping. 

He took it carelessly without a 'thanks' which Claudia expected. Humph, why was I expecting any manners from him, she huffed and looked away. The silence between them was distorted by the roar of her stomach rumbling. She bit her lip embarrassingly while Hellion smiled. 

"Still you will not touch it, right?" He gestured towards the meat of the fox he had hunted earlier. 

The previous night, after they came back to the jeep, Claudia saw a beheaded little fox lying near it. She almost cried seeing the cute little creature murdered in such a brutal way while Hellion kept telling her that she was just being a little dramatic and that it was the right way of hunting an animal. 

He found a tree to spend the night under and from it he fetched the wood to burn as well. While he roasted the meat over the fire, they were still arguing about how he shouldn't have done this to the innocent fox and the argument ended with Claudia announcing that she won't even touch the meat. 

Now that she have said it out of an emotional surge, she had to abide by her word hence she slept on an empty stomach. Traveling, surviving the sandstorm and then being bitten by a poisonous insect, everything had exhausted her thus helped her in falling asleep even though she was hungry. Hellion however saved some of the cooked meat for her nevertheless. 

"Go on," Hellion added when she didn't move. This time however his words were more sincere rather than mocking but she couldn't tell the difference. 

After spending a whole day without eating anything, Claudia wasn't able to hold herself back anymore hence she pounced on the meat without caring about losing the bet. Due to the cold weather and being cooked, the meat hadn't spoiled over the night and tasted better than she expected. 

"Don't be stubborn in situations that don't harm anyone else but you. Let your guard down when you don't need it." He said and her hands that were pulling out the meat from a bone slowed down. 

That just came out of nowhere but there was something in his words or the way he said it that caused her to choke on something blocking her throat, a globe of tears.

Since her mother passed away, she became like that, waspish. Her father pulled farther away from her instead of giving her more time as he found his new world in his new love, forgetting about the older one in which he left her behind. 

Even though everytime she was being stubborn, she was harming or hurting herself indirectly but that fueled this bad habit even more instead of curing it because the idea that no one cared about her kept on growing with time. 

It was the first time someone acknowledged it instead of simply declaring her as 'self-centered' and it made her want to cry, cry a lot. 

"Don't act like you know me." She covered up all the cracks immediately. 

She hadn't built the skyscrapers to let them cripple away that easily.