Tired, cold, alone; that was how Sakhmet stood along the top of a dune, her face tilted up towards the night sky. She found herself there often, casting herself further away from the herd with each passing moon rise and fall. A sigh escaped her ashen lips, her breath lightly seen upon the winter chilled air. Though many thought Salem to be a hellishly hot place, they often forgot how the night temperatures could plummet in such a bipolar and temperamental way. Sakhmet enjoyed it though; the crisp air always felt good in her lungs.


Glancing over her shoulder from the direction she had come, only her hoof prints could be seen in the sand. Her two-toned eyes could not catch the different colors of the herd, and although she preferred that her features still hardened and she straightened to face forward again. It had been a full season since she had spoken to her Beloved, if she could even still call her that, but Sakhmet had not abandoned her as she had said she would not. Rather, she lingered like a sentry on the edge of the gathered herd, silent and ever watchful for the dangers that might threaten them until night would fall. Only then would the mare escape into the expanse sand sea.


But when would it be enough? Though Sakhmet had done well to harden her heart to such feelings that had plagued her at first, was she doomed to be a ghost the rest of her existence? Step for step, she began to walk further from the herd. The silver colored grains cast in the moon’s lightening, shifted beneath her, glittering down the dune’s face. But even as the silver began to give to the warm dawning light, Sakhmet did not greet it at the herd’s edge as she had done every morning before. Rather, the grey mare had found herself on the further side of the Dunes, the scent of others intriguing her. What of their neighbors? Were they of their same desert bred as well? In her solitude, Sakhmet’s curiosity of the outside world had grown, but loyalty kept her from crossing the line. Rather, she sighed, turning to follow it instead. To patrol the border as a good sentry would do.