I have since made much progress in teaching myself how to paint metal, leather, and fur in mere days.

Four days marching into the misery leaves only the blistering desert spanning this lonely horizon. Two colors set the contrast between Vaelia and Celestiae, ivory of the baking sand and the deep blue of the cloudless sky. Each dune hiked is a mountain, which can swell half a mile from trough to crest.

Wind carves across the sands, dividing half a dune with its other. Any spoor left by their march erodes within the moment. An implacable gale blows only the undulating track across each rising bluff, the fingerprint of nature’s breath.

The first day into the desert was one of timeless misery. Cecil will not soon forget how hot his fur became, despite the insulation. The sensation of baking had lasted until they reached the end of the rocky plateau.

Leading them, the wildebeest had marched callously and confidently through the heat. Experience is what drove the guide, and knowing that things would get easier once the wind hits.

That wind has hit them, and for days it has not let up.

The equipment he wears underneath his attire is not heavy or constricting; the vexation with it comes from the struggling cadence within the machinery. The air his lungs push through the tube sounds to be fighting rhythmically against a whirring, busted filter. Out of paranoia, he regularly elevates his arm to check if the warning light is on, but it broke that first day through the heat. He, nor his companions, have any real way to know if they are breathing in the rusty sands. Not unless someone’s breath tastes of baked, dry blood would anyone know they are about to die.

If not for their guide advising otherwise, Cecil and his companion would have set camp as soon as the cooling wind struck.

“One cannot rest when the sand dares not.” the wildebeest said at the end of that first day. “Moments into that nap, you become buried beneath these finest grains, never to be found. The sand feels too blissful when its warm embrace envelops your exhausted body.”

The times they rest last but a moment — to catch their breath. Any longer and the peak vanishes, sending the weariest to their doom.

The wildebeest had promised at the minimum five days without sleep. It has been four. Their guide had confessed only the day before, “The mountain we seek ought been well exposed and safe with caves and settlers.” As though he recently witnessed such mountains, they have yet to grace the bleak horizon.