“Do you truly believe everything happens for a reason?” Her eyes tipped upwards and held mine painfully long. “I do,” I whispered, so sure the churning of my stomach could be felt and transferred to her body as painful as it was. She seemed sated by my lie, however, and I continued to feel bile rise in my throat.
Cohra carried her sister for countless leagues to escape. Barely free of childhood herself, the journey across the Berlese Desert was one they should not have survived. Stretched to the limit of her endurance, the young woman finally fell to the scorching sand, convinced of their doom and heartbroken for the young child strapped to her back, who now keened for their long dead mother. They were still too far from the nearest settlement Tapar, their salvation. When a hazy outline of a man appears before her vision Cora knows she is desert sick. When she begins to float off of the ground, she knows she is dying. It is only when a scream rattles her to consciousness that she is aware that hands are tearing her sister from her body. There is no meaning to struggle. They are either dead or it is Diasosi, divine rescue. It is with this resignation that Cohra collapses into the arms of her hallucination, completely spent of the fortitude which has kept her and her sister alive. But being captured by the Utung, the desert wanderers, is something she had not considered. They are considered fable in her village, a story told to obstreperous children who wander too far past the border of the dunes. Mythical or not it seems they are more than eager to provide care for her and her sister as they heal from the trauma of losing their home and mother. There is kindness in their actions she knows, but it is soon apparent that the price for her life was her freedom, and the death of a culture which was once her whole world.