The Samaritan of the Sands

How could anything survive in this heat? The smell, the feeling, the taste... completely devoid of moisture. She quickly learned to keep her mouth shut as she traversed the land: her saliva dried quickly and the dry, dirt-like pellets from the earth had a very unsavory taste. Spitting didn't seem to help, so she had to scrape the offending bits of earth from her tongue with her fingers in between the buffets of wind that kicked up more.

It is completely unlike the that she met the first person who was kind to her, Kawasaki. Haruna wished she could bring that atmosphere to this land, at least to make walking minimally tolerable. She already emptied the water bottle that Kawasaki gave her to stay hydrated, but it felt as though the heat had already sucked all of that moisture back out.

She wanted to take off the loose, ragged garb that clothed her in an attempt to fight the extreme heat, but Kawasaki told her that it was inappropriate to do so (whatever that was supposed to mean). Her skin was caked in dried sweat, feeling like another layer of garment that wasn't needed.

Her knees buckled from exhaustion and the ground seemed to come up to swallow her as Haruna collapsed. The heated earth felt like a blanket, which she didn't expect, but it didn't excuse the fact that there was no water. Haruna knew that she could die here, but her mind only lamented that there was not a drop to drink.