The dust blew around her in a whirlwind of leaves and dirt combined, coating her face and tattered clothing in a thin layer of brown muck. She turned her face upwards to look at the dark sky, her eyes closed to the busy wind that blew her long hair around her. Her thoughts danced frantically in her head, trying to claim the memory that she so desperately desired to remember.
She wasn't sure where she was; a mountain somewhere, grey and desolate as she could ever imagine. A few trees sprinkled the vast landscape that threatened her sanity, and there were veins of water that pulsed throughout. Far off in the distance a plume of smoke rose, probably from a fire of a traveler she presumed was just as lost as she. But he was too far away to hear her call to him, and she was too weak to walk to him.
She couldn't remember the last time she ate, but it had been a while since her stomach had protested the lack of food. She took sips of the water from the streams, but she was careful to only drink small amounts of it. She wasn't sure of the composition of the water, and this wasn't her home. She was sure of that fact, and because this place was unknown to her, she knew that the water could house bacteria or viruses that might potentially harm her. Not that it would make a difference, though, if she couldn't grasp that little memory hiding in the shadows and recesses of her mind.
She sat on the dry ground, listening to the leaves beneath her crunch in protest. In some subtle way, the sky told her it was okay to rest a while. The birds flying above would keep watch over her and if she grew too thirsty or hot, the sky would cry for her. So she laid under the cover of her ever-present protector and slept a while, dreaming of faraway lands and people that seemed so real to her.
She awoke not many hours later to a loud roar, and water poured down on her, drenching her dirty clothes and washing her filthy skin. She was a dark pale, if there ever was such a color. The lack of nutrients and abundance of desert sun wasn't healthy for her usually flawless skin. Her hands were cracked and her pretty face was marked with scars that she couldn't remember receiving. Her body ached from lying too long on the hard ground, but she was used to the constant groaning of her bones and limbs.
The lightening was the only thing illuminating the landscape in front of her, but she wasn't afraid. She had been on the same mountain for an innumerable amount of time. She counted the days by the cycles of the moon and sun, just like she somehow knew to do, but she didn't know the exact amount of time she had been here. Four cycles she had counted, but she wasn't aware of anything before that. She usually spent her days wandering aimlessly around. She had long given up looking. The landscape was just as barren as it had been the last three cycles, and she didn't think anything new would suddenly make an appearance.
Her heart ached for comfort from familiar arms, but she was alone. So she liked to sit and think about the people she might have known, characters that she made up in her head or the ones that appeared in her dreams. They had names; Jack, Daniel, Teal'c. The latter was so much different than the first two, stoic, large, but with an aurora of protectiveness, loyalty, and potential danger around him. He had a golden tattoo on his forehead that she supposed meant something important at one time, but no longer held the same meaning. She liked to imagine him as the warrior of the group, and often placed him in situations that normal people like herself would never get out of in one piece.
Daniel was an intelligent, attractive man, not much younger than she. She had a tendency to think of him as the accident-prone one of the group of men, and she placed him in situations that she laughed at; he was the damsel-in-distress, and she was his knight-in-shining-armor.
She wasn't sure of Jack. Whenever she dreamed of him, she awoke with a pang of sorrow and love, and desperate wishes of improbable things. He was the alpha male, leader, with a soft spot for children, sarcastic humor that not everyone appreciated, and the strength and loyalty of a thousand stubborn men. She liked to imagine him in two different scenarios: the one that saved her and many others, or other more unlikely scene of unadulterated love and passion.
These were the three she dreamed of most, so she assumed they meant a great deal to her in the life she couldn't remember. There were others; minor characters that might of meant something too, but weren't nearly as close to her. These three were special, and she knew their quirks and personalities almost more than she knew herself, which, she reminded herself, wasn't much at the moment.
She knew she was a scientist, intelligent and at least semi-important. She assumed she had been here on a mission of some sort, but couldn't gather what it might have been. Based on the abundance of different-colored soil around her, she guessed she might have been collecting soil samples. But why? And what had happened?
The rain that trickled from the soft sky ceased and the hot sun began to peak from behind a menacing cloud, maybe hoping that it would get to shine again. This little bit of welcome light shone on her path and she could again see in front of her. The plume of smoke had disappeared, probably put out by the teasing rain. The rain would fall every now and again, just enough to cool her off but gone before she could fully enjoy its cool reprieve.
She stood up and decided to walk toward the cave she knew wasn't far from the empty spot of land she was currently occupying. She had already searched the cave two cycles before and had decided to venture from it in hopes of triggering some forgotten memory, but she had no such luck. She knew just as much as she did when she first woke up in her bloodied and torn clothes in the middle of a patch of low brush.
There weren't many animals; she heard the occasional hoot of an owl or saw the unusual rabbit quickly scurry past, but nothing threatening had confronted her. She had tried to fish with a think, pointed twig but didn't have luck actually catching anything. She mostly munched on leaves and the very rare fruit, but her stomach couldn't hold much more anyway. She was so thin, and she knew that it was unhealthy.
She stumbled into the dark, cool cave and sat. She couldn't walk far anymore, a couple steps and her legs would tremble, begging for rest. She knew it was because she was weak from whatever had happened to her, and she was slightly afraid of dying here, lost and unknown to everything but the omniscient sky.
She cried again. Tears violently and unforgivingly fell from her crystal blue eyes, wasting away the stored water in her body that was keeping her alive. She cried a lot now- not from sadness anymore, but from the blank canvas that she couldn't paint with memories. She racked her brain, begging some merciful higher-being she didn't think she believed in to give her something. Some little bit of memory that would sustain her thirst and maybe that she could build off of. But when she thought she grasped even the edge of a hope, it would be whisked away and never reappear.
She slept a lot too, her dreams the only break of the boring and depressing life she was now living. They gave her a little hope, but they too would leave as soon as they appeared.
She was beginning to give up. The light of the sun shone into her cave, a sharp contrast to the darkness that surrounded her and consumed her. A sudden gust of strong wind blew, making her shiver in her wet clothes. Her head hung and her chin touched her chest; she closed her eyes, drifting off into a sleep that she wasn't entirely sure she would wake from. The warm welcome of death enveloped her and encompassed her, lovingly caressing her and leading her into the great abyss of the unknown afterlife. An unknown she could perhaps get used to, if it was this comforting all of the time.
And as she drifted away, she heard a noise in the distance. A loud yell, a cry that held back tears. Voices she didn't recognize but made her stomach begin to blossom. She was being shaken; the voices were telling her to open her eyes, to hold on, that everything would be okay. They were taking her home. But she was home, she tried telling them. She was being taken care of, and she was finally happy and at peace with her situation.
A man's voice, warm and loving, begged her to stay with them. To stay alive. He clutched her to his chest; tears dripped onto her forehead. They trickled into her mouth, the salty composition drying her throat more. She struggled to open her eyes, and looked right into the brown circles of the man from her dream, the one that made her heart beat just a little faster than normal. He was surrounded by another team, they were demanding him to move so they could take her of her. But she didn't want him to let go. She clutched his chest, but she knew he could easily move her because of her weakness. But he stayed still, looking at her with hope and strength. "Jack," she mumbled, the first word she had uttered since she woke up, the sharp sound making herself jump.
"Carter, please, hold on, we're going to take care of you. You're safe now." He seemed desperate; maybe he felt the same way she did.
"Jack," she said again, almost a confession rather than a name. She saw his recognition of her plea, and he kissed her forehead. She closed her eyes again, drifting away into the comfort of love and death.
He held her close to him, wishing he had found her even a minute sooner. He cried for her, not ashamed that he was supposed to be strong in front of peers. He heard their weeping too, their wishes that time could be rewound. He ran his hands through her dirty-blonde hair, holding her for the last time.
He didn't know what went through her mind as she was alone on the mountain, but he knew that she had held his memory close, just as he would remember her.