Auriel 3
by
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In the afternoon, Jesse was gathering grass for weaving when the wind began picking up. Within a few minutes, it was blowing hard enough to make working difficult. Collecting the grass he'd already chopped, he headed back towards the shelter, thinking the cliff behind it would afford some protection from the wind. By the time Jesse reached the side of the bowl and began climbing up, the wind was blowing so hard he had to use both hands in front of him to keep balanced, virtually walking on all fours. Discarding the grass and hanging on to his hatchet for dear life, Jesse struggled the rest of the way up the slope to the campsite. Reaching the top, a huge gust of wind almost bowled him over. The sand was billowing in immense sheets; swirling around in a choking cloud, obstructing all vision and stinging his skin like a thousand needles. Pulling the front of his shirt up over his mouth and nose to filter out the suffocating sand, Jesse groped and stumbled and finally managed to find the shelter. Unable to see where he was going, Jesse had become disoriented and stumbled into the back of the shelter - requiring him to feel his way around to the front where the opening was. Holding his breath, Jesse dropped the shirt from his face and, ripping apart the opening, dived through. As quickly as possible, he resealed the entrance. The shelter was constructed tightly enough to keep the sand out, but a fair amount had blown in while the shelter flap had been open - not to mention what was in his hair, eyes, ears, clothes, and up his nose. Hacking and coughing with eyes tearing, Jesse grabbed one of the water bladders and squirted his face to rinse his gritty eyes, then sat there, gasping for breath. Outside, the storm continued to increase in fury. The shelter shuddered with each gust of wind. At first dismayed that all his work to improve the campsite would be destroyed, Jesse soon began to be concerned about just surviving. Along with some of the gusts, something seemed to be hitting the outside of the shelter. He could hear what sounded like rocks moving, but couldn't be sure. He certainly wasn't going outside to find out. Just when Jesse was wondering how much worse the storm could become, the shelter moved. Not shaken, but actually moved along the ground by a gust. In spite of all the rocks he'd piled around the base of the shelter to secure it, it was coming loose. The movement became more violent, and suddenly he was flipped upside down and thrown against the far wall as the entire shelter was picked up and tossed about, end over end, by the wind. Completely disoriented, Jesse was unable to tell which way the wind was taking him. The shelter came to a bone jarring stop against some rocks, and then tore violently loose again. There was the sound of material tearing and, at the same time, the sand was everywhere. What was left of his supplies went flying in all directions as the now destroyed shelter proceeded to disintegrate in the violent storm, dumping Jesse out right in the middle of the dunes. Vainly endeavoring to keep a grip on some part of the shelter in the hope it would keep him from sinking, it was quickly torn from his grasp, and down he went. Arms and legs flailing, Jesse sank like a lead weight into the sand. Unable to breathe, unable to see, the sand filled his eyes, ears and nose like some insidious gas. He was drowning in a substance from which there was no escape. His lungs screaming for oxygen, Jesse struggled not to inhale. As consciousness fled, he felt his mouth filling with sand.
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About the Book
Jesse was off exploring where he shouldn't have been when his ship malfunctioned and crashed on an unsurveyed planet. The outlook was bleak. With only limited supplies and a disabled ship, he was stranded in the middle of a desert on an uninhabited world – or was it?
About the Author
Victimized by an overactive imagination, the author carries a battered, creaky laptop wherever she goes and pummels the tiny keyboard at every opportunity. A life-long lover of the desert (the hotter, the better) and longtime resident of Arizona, the author now lives in Phoenix. Forced to still work to support her expensive habits of eating and living indoors, the author divides what little spare time she has between writing, motorcycling, and spoiling her already rotten Chihuahua.