The afternoon is worse.
The wind feels like fire. The sun glows with angry light. Even the clear turquoise sky seems lit with an inner flame, radiating down heat like the walls of a vast oven.
Nobody says anything. Speaking, Gil finds, takes energy and makes you thirstier.
They walk and walk and walk.
Every hour or so, Jaruna stops and turns behind them to shoot the wind astra. Every hour, bit by bit, the desert’s blowing sands swallow their trail.
Over the course of the day, the astras form a sort of rhythm. Rhythms, Gil finds, are important in the slowed-down world of the desert. Aside from the astras, only the sound of his own plodding footsteps etches a rhythm to the bright, burning hot hours.
