Closed Expedition Footsteps Lost in the Desert Winds

[Nobilis]

꧁ Another Fight That Didn't Need to Happen ꧂
Another Scar I Didn't Want​

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It wasn't meditation.
That would be an exaggeration of both the act and the purpose.
This was utilitarian.

It was necessary.​

Her mind was completely blank and she focused on only two things: the fire in front of her and her breathing. It was challenging, though, the pain was intense—not the worst she'd felt, not by a long shot.
When her concentration broke, and the pain flooded back, she took a moment and let go of the needle, letting it hang by its thread from the half-stitched shut wound on her shoulder. She grit her teeth and let the tears from her right eye cloud her vision for a moment before wiping it away with a shaking hand, leaving a streak of blood along her cheek.

She stared at the fire and said his name. Then she said it again. And again. And again.
The shaking of her hand slowed and she picked up the needle again and pushed it through the flesh of her shoulder, the thread a line of fire with every passing inch that it travelled through skin and muscle.

An eternity later, she reached the end of the wound and tied off the thread before using a small dagger that she normally kept in a little scabbard tied to the inside of her arm to cut the thread. The needle fell to the ground and she replaced the ornate blade to its hidden home. She leaned back, resting her back against an old tree, and closed her eye for a moment.

"Another couple of inches..." She took a deep breath and said nothing else. A few minutes later, she opened her eye and tried rotating her right shoulder—it burned and seared and she wanted to scream in pain. But she didn't, she just repeated his name. Turning towards the ground, she pat around where she sat and found the needle and thread that she'd used to stitch up her injury. It was slick with her blood, sand and dirt stuck to it and the thread. She needed to buy more thread, she was running out. "Another couple of inches, and you'd have maybe had me," she said.

It was too dark to really see what her current situation was. She hadn't expected to get jumped like that, her attacker hadn't seemed like the type. And he'd been coming from the opposite direction—she doubted that anyone in Khare knew who she was, but one never could say for sure.

"No," she asserted. "Just a bandit. Maybe." She crossed her legs and leaned forward, reflexively reaching out with her right hand before the pain stopped her. She switched to her left and grabbed her pack, flipping open the flap at the top and pulling out a small wooden case. She replaced the needle and thread before snapping it shut and putting it back in the pack. Peering into the bag, the soft orange glow from her earrings lit the inside and she found another small satchel—food. She pulled out a ration, a strip of meat the consistency of old leather, and held it between her teeth. Then she rifled through another pocket and pulled out a little metal tin, she opened it, and scooped out two fingers' worth of the brownish paste inside and rubbed it over her injury. This too needed to be refilled, she was getting injured more often than she used to.

Either she was running into more skilled opponents or she was getting sloppier. Both were less than ideal.

She closed the tin, put it in her bag, and then pulled it up and put it on her lap. She put her head back, closed her eye, and let the darkness of a dreamless slumber take her away.

---

The din of flies woke her up in the morning. The sun hadn't come up yet, but the desert flies wouldn't wait for the other animals of the desert to steal perfectly good carrion.

It took her a moment to gather her senses about her. She was still sitting with her back against the tree, her pack was still in her lap, and her sword... She glanced over at the corpse, playing host to a thousand insects, and spotted her sword buried deep into the man's side. She picked herself up, yawned, and ignored the pain in her arm as she walked over to the corpse.

She swatted at the occasional mass, but largely ignored them as she crouched down and pulled her sword clear of the dead man. There was no spurt of fresh blood, only a sickly and thick ooze that poured from the wound and pooled on the sand, only to be immediately blanketed with flies. She used her left arm and reached over to the man's opposite side and then with a yank that she felt radiate pain through her body, she rolled him over and looked at him.

The man was boring. No tattoos or markings, not even a lot of scars or injuries. If he'd been preying on travelers he'd made a habit of picking weaker targets. In a moment of revulsion, she spat on his face and then wiped at her lips. Using both hands, she started to strip him out of his clothes. She found a pouch with a handful of coins, but not many—probably why this animal was out on the outskirts of Khare, trying to find money. She put her sword down on the ground and picked up the man's—it was reasonably sharp, but poor quality. She stood up, planted the tip of the blade into the ground and used her foot to push against it. The blade bent, easily warping where she had applied the pressure.

"Worthless," she muttered, tossing the bent blade aside before returning to the swarm of flies to finish her search. There were no indications that the man had been hired to go after her specifically, no markings on his skin to suggest membership in a guild or clan, and not even parchment. Just a half-empty bag of coins, a small leather pouch with what smelled like alcohol, and a shitty sword. She sighed, picked up her own sword and stood up, taking a step back from the corpse and looking around. "There you are," she said, walking over to wide-brimmed hat that had tumbled off her head the night before and had gotten caught in some shrubs growing from the dry earth. She picked it up, tapped it lightly, and then examined it carefully for a moment. It was still in one piece, the two little bells that hung from the brim at the front, tied there with red silk threads, were still there. She placed it gently on her head and then walked back over to the tree to pick up her pack.

She grit her teeth and slung it over her shoulder before turning back to look at where she'd spent the night. She'd left nothing, save some blood and a corpse. And let the vermin feast on his corpse, she thought. Turning west, she could see the dark dot on the horizon. Khare.

Still far away, but not as far as it had been, she started to walk towards her destination, accompanied only by the soft and quiet chimes from the bells that hung from her hat.

She had no idea what she would find there, but it had to be better than corpses, scars, and flies.