Disclaimer: I do not own 'Kingdom of Heaven.'

This is a work in progress, taking place around 1169, when the campaign to conquer Egypt by the Kingdom of Jerusalem under Almaric I fell apart, and onwards, following Saladin's rule. Dialogue in this chapter involves main character and her mother and their reactions to this new world.

1.
'Lucille! Lucille!'

Lucille batted at the giant moth brushing at her nose. 'G'way,' she mumbled.

'Lucille!'

The moth brushed at her nose again; Lucille groaned. Persistent little bugger, this moth was. 'Noooo!' Lucille whined, combating fire with fire and taking a giant swap at the moth. 'I sheh shto!'

The moth's movements stopped, but for only a moment. 'What?' the moth demanded.

Lucille rolled over, attempting to settle back into a comfortable doze. Moth couldn't get her nose if it was pressed into the bed. 'Waz tha?' Lucille asked, coming to a little. 'Wh-?'

For some reason, it felt hotter than usual for a house supposedly kept in perpetual 60 degree stasis.

'Lucille,' the moth sighed in extreme annoyance. 'I am your mother and I demand you wake up this instant!'

'Ah,' Lucille nodded knowingly, her chin brushing against something grainy. 'Shtupih womahhhh…'

The moth choked. 'What?'

'My mah,' Lucille confided to the moth. With her cheek pressed into her very warm pillow, biscuit crumbs aside, Lucille didn't feel so aggravated all of a sudden. What harm was a giant moth to her clothed arse anyway? 'Sheeez…dump az a pose.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Dump,' Lucille repeated, 'az a pose!' Lucille then went back to nuzzling her pillow. 'Hmmm…'

'Alright,' the moth said, this time with a determined edge to its voice that Lucille hazily thought sounded familiar. 'If you won't get up of your own volition, then I'm going to have to make you!'

Lucille smiled, because this was very amusing. 'U?' she said. 'A moh? Hmmm. Dooo yoh worz.'

In the next moment, Lucille found that the giant moth did indeed make an admirable foe for her backside now stung like a thousand nettles had poked at it. Lucille sprang off her bed, and in her rage, tripped over its edge and landed on the floor in a heap. 'What the fuck?' she wondered, her body having met with a sea of sand.

'Glad to see you up,' said the avenged voice of Lucille's mother, Carol. 'And don't curse.'

'Why is it so bright?' complained Lucille, rubbing at her eyes and challenging her brain to defy what they saw. 'Fuck. …Why are we in a desert?'

'Stop cursing!' her mother told her. 'It's the first step on the road to Bad Habits, you know.'

Lucille gave her mother a tired look. 'Ma, it's too late for that talk.'

'Lucille!'

'What?' Lucille rolled her eyes at her mum's unwillingness to understand even the most simplest of things. Lucille was in college and all of nineteen but her mum never failed to try and treat her like an infant. 'All I'm sayin'-.'

'Say-eeng,' her mother reproved, tapping a foot on the sandy floor and looking comical. 'Say-eeng.'

'…Say-eeng,' Lucille repeated obediently, '…is that I think a person should be allowed to curse a time or two when she wakes up in a place unfamiliar to her ken, that's all.'

Lucille's mother, seeing at least a bit of the wisdom in this, nodded her head. 'Alright,' she conceded. 'But no more.'

Lucille pushed to her feet, thankful that she had socks on, because...lesu, was this sand too fucking hot for her right now. 'If a scorpion walks up and bites me on my toe,' she said, 'I'm going to curse its parentage until we're all blue in the ears. And that's a promise.'

'I don't know why you couldn't be more pleasant,' Lucille's mother told her. 'It would go a long way in making me feel more at ease.'

'Of course it would, oh mighty social worker,' Lucille replied, referring to her mother's chosen profession. 'But I can't, because all logic points to the fact that some arsehole-.'

'Language!'

'-Like a thief, stole away with our sleeping forms into the night, or day rather, and left us for dead in this most barren of places: a desert!' Lucille's mum 'hmmph'ed at her daughter's dramatics. 'Which desert do you think we're in right now?' Lucille pondered. 'It would be really funny if this were the Sahara-.'

'I don't see how it would!' snapped her mum. 'The Sahara's huge!'

'Carol,' Lucille said patronizingly, for the first time using her mother's name. 'My point exactly. I was being sarcastic.'

'Well,' said Carol. 'Look who's going to get another swap on the fanny if she isn't careful!' She raised a hand threateningly and Lucille took a step back.

'You're not touching me again,' said Lucille. 'That still stings. Your handprint is indelibly marked on my arse forever-.'

'I thought I told you not to curse!' her mother said. 'And look what you're doing now: cursing.'

'I curse in situations I either find unsolvable or terrifying,' Lucille responded calmly. 'Forgive me.'

Carol sniffed. 'Of course I will! I know it's only a front you put up to hide your softer side, anyway.' With kind eyes, Lucille's mum gazed on her daughter. 'I would like a hug?' she requested. 'If it's not too much to ask…?'

Still wary of getting spanked, Lucille replied, 'I'm afraid it is, mama.'

Lucille's mum moved forward with arms outstretched. 'Oh, just come on! Hug your mother!'

'I'd really prefer not to.'

'You're hurting my feelings.'

'Well, it's the desert,' Lucille said in an obvious tone. 'We need to toughen you up. Only the strong survive…'

'What are you talking about?'

Lucille sighed. Fiddling in her pajama pockets, she said, 'I don't suppose you have any water with you?'

Without looking, Carol shook her head. 'We'll have to do some walking, I think,' Lucille's mum said-probably the first proactive thing she'd said since Lucille had been torn from her sleep around five minutes ago.

'You're probably right,' said Lucille. '…Jesus, but it's really hot out here! How do they survive, you think? Not every animal can keep water in a hump. Not every animal has a hump…'

'What are you talking about?' her mother asked again. Carol put a hand to her daughter's forehead. 'We need to get you into some shade. You're already babbling from heat exposure.'

'I'm babbling?' Lucille asked, a bit offended. 'Moi?'

Carol gave her daughter an odd look. 'I hope you're not referring to me in that little snarky statement of yours. You are acting far too grumpy this afternoon for anyone's peace of mind-.'

'Excuse me, if I'm a little tense from being dropped in a desert!' Lucille exclaimed. 'I'm not used to walking this far when I sleep-walk.' Then with a look to the sky, she said, 'Jesus!'

'Don't say that name!' her mother said. 'I will never understand why you young people persist in using that name when you don't believe. You grew up Unitarian. Say, 'oh my goodness!''

'So just to keep things straight,' Lucille said, ignoring the part about 'oh my goodness' because of how ridiculously stupid it obviously was, 'I am allowed to say his name when I do believe in him? Isn't that a little bit worse since in that situation I would be crying wolf or some such? In the sense, obviously, that under normal circumstances, when I say that name I am not in mortal peril or a situation out of my control? I am just using it as a curse to get out my frustration?'

Lucille's mum gave Lucille her blankest look. 'God save me from dim mothers,' Lucille murmured. 'What I mean is,' Lucille continued a second later, 'is this: I am…we are in a situation out of our control. Possibly in mortal peril.' She gestured around her at the very empty and arid land. 'That I do or do not believe in Jesus ordinarily bears no marker on the now, because you and I are not in an Ordinary Situation. Do you understand?'

'…Don't use that tone of voice with me,' Lucille's mother ordered. 'I'm not being rude to you.'

'You are being obtuse though, and that's the greater offense.'

Lucille's mother gasped. 'Oho, little girl, you are in for it!'

'Calm down, mother', Lucille said, seeing a look fall over her mum's eyes that could not be healthy. To be safe, Lucille covered her arse with her hands; she started backing away. 'Don't want to get the stroke…'

'I'll be calm once I smack some sense into you!'

'You, who doesn't believe in violence?' Lucille asked. 'You, a champion for the lesser man? Why break your oaths to yourself now? We should be banding together, we should.'

Carol paused in her stride towards her daughter. 'You're right,' she said, apparently having thought it over. '…I must be the bigger person right now…'

'Yes,' Lucille said to her mum, nodding. 'Very good. I agree.'

'I suppose we should decide on our course, then,' Carol volunteered, looking askance at the sun overhead. 'Do you have a watch on you?'

Lucille shook her head. 'I don't own a watch, sorry.'

Carol whirled her head around. 'Don't own a watch?!' she repeated. 'Why ever not?'

'Uh, hold on Squawky, no need to shake the dunes into a frenzy.' Lucille's mum glowered. 'I don't own a watch, because I usually carry my cell phone with me. Something I obviously wish we had now.'

'Well, it probably wouldn't be able to tell us the proper time anyway,' Lucille's mum said. 'I don't believe there are any deserts in America.'

'There are wastelands, but they don't qualify as des…' Lucille decided that maybe she should stop her lecturing-tone of voice. 'You're right,' she said. 'We're obviously not in America. Though a cell phone would change with the time zone.'

'It would?'

'It should, but I guess that's a moot point since I don't have one on me.'

'I guess so,' Carol said, like their plight was now Lucille's fault, since Lucille had failed to maintain a hold on her cell phone when they had been kidnapped/transported.

'…Okay,'said Lucille, trying to get things back on track. Her mother was not the sharpest crayon in the box, she knew this. Lucille peered up at the sky to get a direction. 'I think it's around mid-day. Which kind of boggles since that's when we both started napping. What's the time difference in Saudi Arabia, mum? England's of course five hours…that would make this more? Depending on where we are, I guess. Shouldn't it be the middle of the night at least?'

'You would know more than I,' Carol told her daughter. 'You being the Classics major and all.'

'One: I haven't declared. Two: what, I've taken four Classics' courses? Beginning Latin and Greek Mythology and Ancient Greek and Classical Civilization. Three: I'm not that smart. I basically know bollocks-all about deserts. Four: what the fu-?'

Lucille's mum interrupted her. 'Don't you have a Muslim friend?' asked Carol.

'…And of course that qualifies me as an expert on deserts,' Lucille deadpanned.

'Well, shouldn't it?' Lucille sighed. Her mum continued in this irrational vein for another ten seconds. 'Why don't you know more about deserts, hmmm? I'm sure if you had studied hard enough or showed more interest in your friend's culture-.'

'Oh my God, but you would try a saint!' yelled Lucille. She stared at her mother, overcome with annoyance. 'I no longer know if you're joking or being serious, and you never joke!

A smile twitched at the corners of Carol's mouth. 'For the record,' replied Lucille's mother, 'I am joking.'

'Thank God.'

'Hey now!' said Lucille's mum. 'What did I say about taking names in vain?'

'We are not going back to that!' Lucille said fiercely, horrified that her mum still had a tinge of laughter around her eyes. That her mum had the audacity to laugh at her in this situation was incredibly offensive. 'Never again.'

'Don't be so sure…'

'So!' said Lucille, clapping her sweaty hands and changing the subject. 'We've decided we know fuck-all! I suppose that means that things are only going to get worse?'

Carol's amusement abruptly ended. 'If you don't have anything nice or productive to say, I suggest you keep your mouth shut,' she said, 'because you are not helping!'

'I'm sorry,' Lucille replied. 'It's just that we've been walking for a while and the sun is still fucking at its zenith and I'm…I'm just frustrated. I'm sorry. I want to go home!'

'We both do, sweetie,' Lucille's mum said, patting her on the back. 'We'll get there, don't worry.'

Lucille barked out a laugh. 'You are the parent.'

About two hours later, Lucille and her mum had begun to hit a bit of new terrain.

'Praise Jesus, are those trees?' Lucille ran, as much as one can on sand-though it was getting more tractable, truth be known-and fell to her knees before a small tree in supplication. 'How do I get water from you?' she asked frantically, patting it down. 'How?'

'Lucille!' her mother called. 'Stop that right now! You'll drive yourself mad! I don't think there's water there.'

'There has to be water!' Lucille replied. 'It's a tree. I'll eat the bushy part if I have to. I'm so thirsty!'

'Why do you think you're thirsty?' her mother asked her, coming to a stand-still next to her daughter.

Lucille glanced at her mum. She had to be joking again. 'Is that a rhetorical question?'

'No, I'd like an answer.'

'Well, Carol-.'

'I am 'mum' to you-.'

'-We are both thirsty because we are in a desert,' Lucille explained magnanimously. 'There's no water. We need water to survive and wet our throats. Though seriously this is the oddest desert I've ever seen what with those mountains in the distance…'

'The only desert I've heard of that has mountains is Sinai,' her mum put in.

'How do you know that?' Lucille asked curiously, causing her mum to rear back in offense.

'I know things!' Carol declared.

Lucille pondered this. 'Wait, wait, your hospital's called Sinai-Grace, isn't it?' said Lucille. She nodded to herself. 'That must explain it.'

'Are you perhaps suggesting, dear one,' Carol replied threateningly, 'that I wouldn't know about the Sinai Desert on my own? That I have to work at its namesake to possibly comprehend the magnitude of knowledge that one such as you already possesses-?'

Lucille, sensing danger like any normal child would, quickly apologized. 'You're the one who knew where we were!' she added. 'Not me. Obviously, you're the smart one!'

'Thank you.'

'Welcome. Now, mama, do you remember anything else? I mean, don't mountains have rivers? How soon will we be able to find one, do you think?' Lucille shook the tree; perhaps if she shook hard enough, the invisible apples would fall off and they could both eat.

Lucille's mum frowned. 'I don't know. They didn't teach us a whole lot. …I remember there being a plaque hanging on the wall in our reception area describing the desert, but it beats me if I can remember any more of it.'

'Well, you did a good job!' Lucille said. 'Gave it the college try!'

'Thank you.'

Lucille nodded, standing up and dusting herself off. 'I suggest we continue walking in this direction. It'll have to be cooler in the mountains anyway.'

'This heat is starting to get to me.'

'…I wish I could take off my shirt!' said Lucille a minute later. 'I'm sweating buckets out here!'

'You don't want to do that,' her mum replied. 'You'll get sunburnt, you will!'

'I know.' Lucille rolled her eyes. 'Breathe!' she told herself.

'What?'

They spent half the night huddled together to preserve warmth as temperature in the desert-especially in the more elevated regions-dropped to around 40 degrees F. In the grand scheme of things, this wasn't very cold, but as Lucille had poor circulation anyway, anything below 65 degrees was uncomfortable. Lucille's mum fared a bit better, either used to colder temperatures having grown up in Northern England, or used to holding her tongue through nineteen years of unconditionally and selflessly loving someone else.

Lucille, needing something to do other than complain about their situation had volunteered to stand watch during the night. Carol had put up a protest, being Lucille's mother and 'the adult' to boot, but Lucille, through sheer annoying-ness had won out and Carol was sent to rest between two shady trees before Lucille resorted to matricide. Lucille felt better staying up anyway as she knew her mum needed the rest and she fancied a bit of time to think.

Some hours later, Lucille jerked awake, having evidently fallen asleep on the job.

'Shite.'

Checking on her mum and making sure no snake or scorpion or…bigger animal had dared to kill her, Lucille looked around warily, wondering what-if anything at all besides her own paranoia-had woken her up. A second later, Lucille felt the glorious sensation of a raindrop plopping down onto her hand; Lucille licked the spot in wonder, unfortunately tasting more dried desert sand than precipitation.

More drops soon starting falling however, and Lucille correctly surmised that her and her mum's luck was starting to change.

'Mum!' Lucille said, giving her a good shake. 'Mum!'

Carol immediately sprang up into a half-sitting position. 'Yes, what is it? Have you been bitten? Show mummy!'

'Mum, it's raining!' said Lucille joyfully, wanting to twirl around in it but knowing that such an act wouldn't be productive at the moment. Lucille felt a bit dizzy anyway from lack of nourishment. 'Hurry, we have to find something to catch it in!'

'Oh thank goodness!' her mom said, getting up fully. 'I thought we'd never get any water!'

'What should we use?' Lucille asked. 'It'll just go through my clothes…'

'Will it?' her mum asked. 'Wait! My slippers!'

'Slip them off!' Lucille said excitedly, prancing from foot to foot. 'I don't care anymore. My water can taste like feet! I don't care!'

'Hey!'

'You can't care either!' Lucille ordered, taking a slipper from her mum and holding it at an angle to catch the torrential downpour. 'Opeh yoh mow! It's raiiinee!'

Lucille's mum giggled. 'Oh, love, I'm so happy!'

Lucille grinned through a mouthful of water. 'Me ooh.' Deciding that she should try and make a bag out of her shirt anyway, Lucille handed her slipper to her mum and took her t-shirt off.

'What are you doing?'

'Tying my shirt in a knot,' Lucille replied. 'When I was a freshman, I remember having this drowning-safety class. They told us to make bubbles with our clothing. Well, I'm making mine into a canteen.'

'I thought you should have done that in the first place,' Lucille's mother said knowledgably, nodding her head. 'It seemed like the logical thing to do.'

'Well, I'm doing it now,' Lucille replied. 'Hopefully, it'll keep raining for hours more!'

'Well, we don't want a chill,' Lucille's mum reminded. 'It's still night out. But as long as it keeps raining like this for a few more minutes, we should be alright.'

'Right.'

The bad part of the storm followed a second later when both parties realized that the wind was making what sand there was blow up into their faces and sting their eyes.

'Crap!'

'Oh no, my skin will be paying for this in the morning!' moaned Carol. Lucille mentally rolled her eyes at her mum's priorities.

'Ma, I don't think it much matters,' Lucille started to say, but her voice petered off as she heard an odd sound, almost like several horses whinnying, getting closer. 'Oh…shite…' Lucille heard it again and this time it was much clearer.

'Lucille!'

'Please don't be what I don't want you to be,' prayed Lucille quietly. 'Please.'

'What is it?' Lucille's mum asked in a bit of panic, finally realizing through Lucille's tone of voice that something else was about to befall them. She looked around, squinting through the rain. 'I can't hear anything. I wish I could see in this dark!'

'We can't,' said Lucille unnecessarily. 'We can't. Shite, mum, we have to run!'

'What?' Carol asked. 'Why?'

'There are people coming. And they have horses. I don't think we wan-.'

'But isn't that a good thing?' Lucille's mum interrupted in a perplexed tone. 'It means we're saved, doesn't it?'

'Mum,' said Lucille, needing her to see reason. She contemplated shaking her. 'We don't know them. And they have horses! They could be Bedouin slave traders!'

'What?'

Lucille nodded rapidly. 'You see?' she asked. 'We need to get out of the way before they find us!'

Carol cocked her head. 'I don't hear anything.'

'Why don't we not hear anything from a safer distance?' Lucille suggested. She squinted and pointed to her left. 'Say behind that bush over there?'

'How can you see it?' Carol asked.

'I see a dark shape,' Lucille replied. 'It's kind of fuzzy though, so it could just be a coyote waiting to spring on us.' She said 'coyote' like 'ky-yoht' embellishing the pronunciation like a native Texan would. With her slight British accent it sounded very strange.

'What!'

'Kidding! Kidding!' promised Lucile. 'Only kidding. Jesus, but your sense of humor is sorely lacking in this situation, mum. What do you do when madmen run amok in your emergency room with butcher knives, I wonder?'

Lucille's mum glowered, but in the stormy darkness, Lucille of course missed it. 'I will have you know that in that situation, I would have help.'

'Security guards, no doubt,' Lucille said and sighed. She grabbed onto her mother and started dragging her off to the side. 'Well, mama, it's unfortunate,' she said, 'but we don't have security guards with us right now.' Lying down behind the bush-which really was rather large in the circumstances-, Lucille encouraged her mum to do the same. 'Pft, and who needs them anyway?' Lucille went on. 'Any of these arseholes try to take you and I'll bite their hands off.'

'What a lovely sentiment,' said her mum.

'Only for you,' Lucille assured.

'Can you still hear them?' Lucille's mum asked after a tense minute had passed with no one showing up. Neither of the women had dared to breathe very loud and all either of them had heard had been the lashing of the rain against the rocks. 'Oh, no, but I think the slippers have lost their water!'

'Shh!'

They both cocked their ears, waiting.

A moment later, a bunch of harsh-sounding gibberish followed, along with neighing horses, and more harsh-sounding gibberish. Lucille thought the language was Arabic since it had a lot of 'h's and stops.

'Oh no!' She made her voice sound tiny for that so not even her mother could hear her. 'I was right! They're going to kidnap us and sell us in their grotty slaver's trade! I'm going to have to have sex with a fat man with syphilis!'

'You don't know that!' her mother replied. 'They could just be trying to get out of the rain or moving camp or something. Bedouins are nomadic aren't they?'

'Yes,' replied Lucille.

'Well then, perhaps they're just moving from one home to another.'

Nomads don't have homes, Lucille thought, but didn't feel like pointing it out. Instead, she said hopefully, though truly not feeling any hope in this situation at all, 'maybe they'll just pass us by if we're quiet enough.'

Carol opened her mouth. 'I don't think-.'

'Mum!' Lucille said, actually placing a hand over her mother's mouth to keep her from saying another word. 'Shh!'

'Mmmey! Meh oh!'

'Shh,' Lucille said soothingly. 'It's for the best. Trust me.'