Beneath the sheltering sandstone rock that overlooked the oasis, Orhan reclined. Everything about him was sleepy today; his ears and bottom lip drooped lazily, as if the muscles holding them in place were slumbering, and his dark eyes were half-hidden by their thickly-lashed lids. Even his hair was plastered against his skin, flattened by the humidity. Meanwhile, rain gently drummed all around him, as it had for over a week now. Rain was always a blessing in the desert, even in the winter – when there tended to be too much of it – but over the years Orhan had found that when it carried on for weeks at a time like this, to the point where the sand was so sodden that no breath of wind could lift it, it sapped all the energy out of him and made all his cares and duties seem unimportant. When the air felt as thick as mud in his lungs, and not even hiding beneath his rock could keep him dry, there was nothing better to do than, well... nothing.

Eventually his eyes closed fully, and his head drooped so low his chin touched the ground. His muddled daydreams sharpened into focus, becoming reality. He dreamed of the vast riverlands across the sea, where snows would be blanketing the land from one horizon to another, transforming it into a pale, shimmering alien world. He dreamed that he was galloping with the stout, shaggy river horses, and could feel the shockwaves of his hooves hitting the earth. When he slowed to catch his breath and turned, she was there at his side, smiling up at him with wickedness in her expression. He suddenly remembered Arcana, and reflected how she now seemed little more than a boyhood crush: insignificant, compared to what he felt now. “It’s been a whole year,” Orhan told her between each gleeful gasp for breath. To his confusion, she replied in a voice that was not her own, “My father is going to kill you.”

“Kazga?” he whispered plaintively, and back in the warm, wet realm of the living, where his sleeping body lay, the word tumbled from his lips for any to hear.