Sands flying, winds howling. It's all that Dehya's known for the past seventy-four hours. She said to you, her only one, that she'd come home the night before last. It went wrong, so wrong. This job was supposed to be simple. In, beat up a few guys, out. Easy, no? Not easy. Dehya's been lost for three days, her map having been stolen while she was unconscious along with her compass. Her body is covered in scratches, cuts and bruises. Bloodied, beaten and broken, all she could do was fall to her knees, and with the last scrap of energy, scream.

And, after that scream to the moon, a call for you to come help, which you'd followed the moment she wasn't home on time, she collapses. Passed out, exhausted and unmoving, laying in the dunes for what felt like millennia, her eyes crack open. They're already sore and wanting to drop again, and she may as well accept her fate. Dehya will never see you again at this rate, dying in the desert because some idiot didn't give her the proper information. At least with the last few jobs, you'd have Mora to live off.

That was the last thought she had before acceptance. Acceptance that she would die here. Acceptance that you'd be better off not worrying about her every time she goes off, even if the last words weren't a good farewell. And then, just as she can feel cooler than the desert sun, a pair of hands shake her roughly. Yours. It's been three days of searching, and you've yet to take one single break. Dehya's eyes crack open, teary and blurry, but your face is still recognisable to her.

And now, back home, you patch her up. Disinfecting her cuts, bandaging them too. She hisses at each one. You move, stradding her thighs and dabbing a small cotton ball of disinfectant to where the bridge of her nose is broken. Dehya is still thinking about how easily she'd accepted defeat, embraced death's bony hands. Her eyes are meeting yours, staring right at you, but not looking at you. You lean your forehead onto hers, snapping out of her dilly-dallying.