Darkness rested over the Hadarac Desert. The great sand dunes lay silent and still, frozen in time until the morning arrived. Above then hung an inky sky strewn with millions of distant stars; glittering pinpricks than shone with the desert's fire. They seemed to flow in and out of time like great waves across the darkness, linking the past with the future in cobwebs spun from diamonds.
Standing on the dead dunes looking up at the stars was the silhouette of a girl, framed like a shadow against the moon. Her hair was roughly knotted at the back of her head and her clothes were dishevelled by days of travelling, but she held herself like a queen, regally staring out across the desert. She stood there for a long time, as if trying to fix the desert into her memory. Finally she kissed two fingers and pressed them against the sand, biding farewell to her past; then looked for one last time at the stars. There, just visible on the horizon, the outlines of the hills of Surda could just be made out. Watching them, she quietly murmured "Mama, Dadi, Maia… goodbye".
Then she shouldered her pack and set out for the hills, leaving the desert for her future.