The suns’ rays burn against my closed eyelids. Annoyingly bright, forcing me to wake up. I’m still tired and don’t want to move. Exhaustion is a heavy weight and I’d love to sleep another hour or two. That’s not going to happen but damn wouldn’t it be nice?

Forcing myself awake, it’s obviously later than I normally get up. Both of the suns have crested the horizon, their harsh rays assaulting my eyes.

“Ugh,” I groan, pushing myself to a sitting position. “Light is evil.”

I mutter, wiping the sleep from my eyes. It’s quiet, almost too quiet, but it takes a moment before my eyes adjust to the hateful brightness and I look around. Samil is standing next to the coals of the fire with his back to me. His shoulders are slumped, his head down, and his tail shifts agitatedly back and forth, dragging in the sand.

“Hey,” I call.

He turns and there’s a lochaber lying across his arms. He looks up from it with apprehensively. His mouth opens, then snaps shut and he shakes his head.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“They’re gone,” he says.

“Right, when will they be back?” I ask, stretching and yawning.

“No,” he says, shaking his head again. “Gone. I woke up and they were gone.”

“What?” I ask, cold racing through my limbs. I leap to my feet and look around. We’re alone. There’s no sign that any of the others were even here. “Were they taken?”

My first thought is Invaders, even if it doesn’t make any sense.

“I don’t know,” Samil says. “It could be Invaders…” His voice trails off as he echoes my thought.

“Yeah,” I say. “But why would they leave us?”

“Right,” he says. “I don’t know. It makes no sense.”

Samil takes a step towards me and instinctively I take one back. He’s big. Sure he’s smaller than the other Zmaj but he’s bigger than me. A lot bigger than me. He pauses and there’s a hesitant look on his face. His grip tightens on the lochaber in his hands and he nods sharply.

“I will get you home,” he says. “You can count on me.”

His words carry an air of gravitas with them. They’re a pronouncement more than a statement. At his words his shoulders square and he straightens to his full height. His wings open part way and an air of confidence washes out of him that I’ve never seen from Samil.

Biting my lower lip, cold knots in my stomach cause a reflux in the back of my throat. I’m not going there. Memories are the past. Samil will protect me. Last night was a fluke, I’m sure of it. He didn’t mean to scare me…

“Okay,” I say, but my voice has a slight quaver to it. I can’t help it.

Samil smiles and then turns away and gathers his pack. He rolls up the furs he slept in and I watch him for a moment before I do the same. Tying the leather string around my bedroll I lift it and my arms burn in immediate protest. This thing is heavy!

Samil appears in front of me out of thin air and I barely suppress a yelp as I stumble backwards.

“Don’t do that!” I exclaim.

“I apologize,” he says, stepping back. “Please, let me take your roll.”

He holds his hands out. The sincerity on his face and in his voice is soothing, calming my shattered nerves. Gratefully, I hand the burden over.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “You startled me, is all. Thank you for carrying that.”

“Of course,” he says, smiling brightly. He starts to say something else but stops himself, then everything is awkward.

“So,” I start, hoping to move past whatever this weird moment between us is.

Something passes across his face but I’m not sure how to interpret it. It ends with him frowning and looking around.

“Let me…” he says, trailing off.

He walks away, staring at the ground as he moves around the perimeter of the camp. While he does so I tie on my sandshoes as we’ve all come to call them after the snowshoes that inspired them. On the far side of the camp he pauses, then kneels and examines the ground closer.

“What is it?” I ask, slowly walking closer.

“Tracks,” he says. “They… went this way.”

I don’t miss the hesitation in his words. “And?”

He looks up, frowning. Staring at the tracks, it’s more than obvious that they aren’t footprints but drag marks even to my inexpert eyes. Right now I’m wondering though, will he lie to me? If he does, what does that mean?

He looks back at the tracks then up to me again.

“They were taken,” he says finally.

“Oh.”

When he says what I already feared when I saw the tracks myself becomes real and an empty blackness opens up, threatening to swallow all my thoughts. I’m circling a dark drain, lost, alone in the desert with a strange man, no a strange Zmaj.

My fears run so deep I can’t move. I’m frozen, staring at the drag marks in the sand. Samil stands up, ducking so he can meet my eyes.

“Inga,” he says. “We will save them.”

“How?” I manage to croak out.

“We will find a way.”

Slowly he reaches across the empty space between us. I watch his hand approach, expecting the fear to latch onto it as it has so many times before but this time it doesn’t. Maybe it’s too busy with the fact that all my friends have been kidnapped by something strong enough to snatch them while Samil and I slept, not even considering that the best of the Zmaj warriors were taken. When his hand touches the bicep of my arm I don’t jerk away.

His hand is cool on my burning skin. He tightens his grip, gently, until it’s a reassuring pressure. Tearing my eyes from the marks, I meet his eyes. His certainty and confidence shine and become a rock that I’m clinging too. I cover his hand with my free hand.

His scales are smoother than I would have thought. They’re not soft, no, definitely a hardness to them but I expected them to be rough, which they’re not. Slowly I run my fingers across his hand, exploring the new sensation. After all this time, I’ve never touched one of the Zmaj. There’s an exoticness to the way he feels that’s almost erotic.

Almost, but as the paralyzing fear recedes it’s replaced by an instant flash of being pinned down on the ship in that smoke-filled hallway. Forcing a smile on my face, I give Samil a nod of agreement.

“We’d better move then,” I say.

“This way.”

I fall in beside him and we follow the tracks. They’re obvious for a while but by the time the suns have fully climbed into the sky, making me think it must be about an hour or so, I don’t know what he’s following. The unending sand seems the same to me, outside it’s variation in color but you have to look ahead from a high vantage point to even see that. When you’re in the middle of a particular shade of red, it all looks the same. Only when you’re higher up can you see how it striates shades of red to an almost white then back. It really is beautiful, especially when the suns are hitting it just right so that it sparkles like miles of precious gems.

One way or another I’m completely dependent on Samil now. I know I can’t survive out here on my own. This was supposed to be a fun excursion. Light and easy, no stress, no real challenge. How did this happen?

What if… no I won’t even think that. My friends are fine. They’re all okay and they’ll probably have orchestrated their own escape by the time we find them. We’re not a rescue party of two, this is only a journey to rejoin them.

Pausing, I uncap my canteen and sip some water then dig a piece of epis out of my side bag.

“Want some?” I ask Samil.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Thank you.”

The Zmaj hardly ever drink water. It’s weird. Even with epis us humans needs a lot of water. Compared to the Zmaj we drink gallons of it. I think they only drink every three or four days and then it’s a glass or two at the most. It’s obvious that they’re well adapted to Tajss’ desert heat. I think, randomly, that they’re more adapted then humans were to Earth. Almost as if they were engineered for it.

That’s impossible, of course, but they are the epitome of evolution for sure. It’s too bad that the Devastation happened. I bet this place was a lot nicer before that.

“Samil?” I ask. He’s standing a few feet away at the edge of the dune, staring out across the desert. He looks over his shoulder. “What was it like? Before?”

“Before?”

“Before the war,” I clarify.

“Oh,” he says, looking back out over the desert. He motions that we should move so I fall in beside him again, hoping he’ll talk while we travel. We go for a while before he speaks. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t?” I ask.

I know the Zmaj suffer from something that causes their memories to not be clear but they all seem to recall some. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about it.

“No,” he says and it sounds like a sigh. “I was very young when it happened.”

“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry, that must be even harder.”

He shrugs, but his eyes stare out across the empty waste before us and I’m certain he’s seeing something more than the sprawling sand.

“Perhaps,” he says. “Or maybe it’s easier? I lost less than the other males. They had lives, jobs, friends and family that they recall. I don’t. I have dim memories of other young Zmaj, my age, and one particular female. She was old, so old I think perhaps she was an ancient. She cared for us but she also punished us if we were bad.”

“Were you bad?” I ask, attempting to pull his attention to something lighter.

“Often,” he glances and smiles. “I believe I was something of a troublemaker.”

“I can see that,” I laugh.

“You can?” he asks. “I didn’t think it would show.”

“You do tend to provoke Padraig.”

He spreads his wings, straightens his tail, and puffs his chest out. “I would never provoke that runt,” he says, lowering his voice so that it takes on Padraig’s booming bass quality.

I laugh so hard tears form in my eyes. The way he swaggers, his voice, he really does a great job of imitating Padraig. As I wipe the tears from my eyes, Samil’s chest drops and he laughs too.

“See,” I say. “I told you, you were bad.”

“I guess I am,” he laughs.

It’s a moment of levity that we both need. But as soon as it ends, the weight of my worry crashes onto me and a sick feeling settles in my stomach for having been light-hearted while my friends are in danger. The look on Samil’s face tells me he’s feeling the same. Hardening my resolve, I grimace and we pick up our pace.