4.
He is sitting still, his hands steepled still, his eyes still trying to focus on the tips of his fingers. It is almost completely dark and he can barely see anything. He tries to keep his breathing regular. In, out, in, out. He tries to relax each muscle from toes to neck. He tries to think of logic and duty and to push away the animal need. He can feel a slight lessening of that feeling within him – that feeling that he is wound tight and about to snap, the feeling that somewhere something is shrilling so high-pitched a noise that he cannot hear it, that feeling that his body is going to split apart with an aching that can barely be described.
He is so tired. Ordinarily tiredness would be pushed away, but it is hard to fight everything at once. The air around him is growing colder, the wind turning back the other way and bringing drafts down from the far mountains. The sound of the sand hitting stone is ceaseless, like the claws of a million insects catching on slate. The sand drifts over his bare feet until his toes become buried, but he does not flinch to shake the sand off because more will always come.
His shoulders ache, and finally his hands fall back to his sides. His fingers are numb and the blood begins to rush back into them now that they are turned down toward the ground. His flesh tingles and he flexes stiffly, rubbing sand that he cannot see beneath his fingertips until his hands have come back to life.
His head is a tight drum of aching. Each beat of his heart pushes blood through his temples. His lips feel stiff and full. His eyes are crusted half closed. He sinks back onto the sand, only having the presence of mind to wrap the loose neck fabric of his kaftan up over his mouth and nose before he falls into some kind of sleep.
In the depths his mind uncurls. He can feel the cold of night at the edges of his consciousness, but everything else is heat. His blood is running like snakes. His bones are long and malleable. His arms move about a woman who is not there, stroking her flesh and exploring her by no more than touch. His lips are sinking over hers, over her ear and neck. His mouth is on her breast and his hands are seeking between her legs and he feels her receptive dampness. He rises onto all fours like a dog in heat. He is crouching over her, driving into her, and he is woken by his own cry to realise that he is alone, lying in sand, the fabric no longer over his mouth and his body jerking in climax.
Alone…
He huddles tightly around himself, his hand pushing into the sand and trying to find some warmth down there that has lingered from the day. He is alone. He cannot control this. He will die alone, in madness.
He tries to sleep again. He has to sleep. He is thinned out with tiredness. He feels like nothing but bone and hot skin. He lays one hand beneath his head and closes his eyes and tries to stop a noise of despair from escaping his mouth. He drifts away again, his mind flickering into a dream place where cool hands stroke his body and he reads the contours of a woman with his fingertips. He strokes his fingers down her cheekbones and he drowns in the depths of her eyes. He twines her hair about his hands and his mouth nuzzles her like a creature seeking food. In his dream he remembers another dream, long ago, and he searches about himself, trying to grasp at that figure who has suddenly become elusive and unreal. He doesn't know which way to turn.