By noon, the sharuq looms notice­ably closer on the east­ern hori­zon. Gil can even hear a new sound lac­ing the ambi­ent wind—a low, swoosh­ing, howl­ing noise that seems to emanate from the direc­tion of the sand­storm.

The natives clus­ter in the base of one of these barchans for the noon prayer. Jaruna word­lessly jogs down and joins them.

Gil climbs up the mas­sive dune alone. He takes a sip of water—his first of the day. He sloshes the mostly-full flask around, proud of his water restraint so far.

He lies down, just below the lip of the dune’s sharp crest. Then he closes his eyes and tilts his face to the sun.

The feel of sun­light from his dream last night—alive, nour­ish­ing, more like water than light—is still fresh in his mind. The sun here just feels hot and dry, an oppres­sive force. The sun­light pen­e­trates his eye­lids with a pinkish-white glare. There is no hid­ing from the Eye of Asham in the desert.

He real­izes that he has never actu­ally prayed to Asham.

He says the words in his head, mulling them over, not quite cer­tain what tone to take. It has been a while since he has prayed to any God, let alone the most pow­er­ful and judg­men­tal God of them all. For a while he con­sid­ers just pray­ing to Eye­nki, like he used to. Eye­nki is the God of wis­dom, and after all, he’s look­ing for answers: why does he have these hor­ri­ble dreams? Why do these dreams seem so much more real than his other dreams? Why does he seem to grow out of the black grass? What are the clouds, and why is he so instinc­tively hor­ri­fied by them? Is the black hole in the upside-down sky really Sin­nesh? Or if it’s all sym­bolic, what is it all sup­posed to sym­bol­ize?

But if he is, in fact, one of the mystics—as far as he could tell, Jaruna and Ayan never directed their prayers to Eye­nki. And as he thinks about it, why would they? What is the point of try­ing to talk to Eye­nki if you have the ear of the Judge and Cre­ator him­self?

He licks his cracked lips and begins, still fac­ing the sun with closed eyes.

He feels some­thing drop on his chest, some­thing hard and some­what prickly.

He jumps up. It falls to the sand, black and shiny—

It’s a scor­pion, huge and black, all curv­ing tail and spindly legs and night­mare eye-orbs. He madly brushes his hands over his torso, scream­ing and stum­bling back­wards away from the crea­ture.

The girl pops up her head over the crest of the dune. She must have tossed it at him.

His whole body shakes with rage and ter­ror. What really gets him—even more than the fact that she broke the truce—is that she knows per­fectly well how much insects ter­rify him. In fact, that was prob­a­bly the whole point.

Before, they were just being play­ful. This time she had gone too far. He clenches his fists, ready to actu­ally fight her in earnest, gen­der be damned—but then he hears foot­steps behind him plod­ding up the sand.

The mys­tic is hold­ing a long blue robe.

She takes the robe, war­ily sniffs it, and slips it on. The shapes and curves of her body dis­ap­pear.

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