Chapter 5
Nabooru struggled with the dagger. It had taken her almost half an hour of rolling in the searing sand for her to finally roll into it, and now she was struggling to pry it out of the sheath with her teeth. The leather thong that tied the dagger into the sheath was supposed to be tied with a slip-knot so that the dagger wouldn't fall out of the sheath but a firm tug would still release the dagger. Nabooru figured out that it had been tied with a granny knot after she had given the knot a firm tug.
Leather isn't the most forgiving of yarns when it comes to untying knots with teeth. It will absorb saliva until the straps expand enough to make the knot turned into a Gordian knot...and if the leather isn't properly cured when it finally does dry out the strap will have hardened into something closer to a rock than a strap.
Nabooru bit at the top overhand knot and pulled back. It gave slightly. She bit at it a few more times and the thong finally gave. She spat the straps out and bit the handle of the dagger. A firm tug freed it from the sheath.
She pulled her arms up to her face and started sawing at the knot binding them. Occasionally she risked guiding and adding extra force to the dagger by pushing on the flat with her fingers. Finally the ropes gave way.
Nabooru undid her blindfold and the bindings at her knees, then overviewed what she had: a sinlge strip of black cloth about two and a half feet long and an inch wide that had served as her blindfold, four pieces of hemp twine between six and ten inches from the bindings on her arms, a single three-foot segment of rope from her legs, and one dagger with a leather sheath. The sheath didn't even have any hooks or slits to attach it to clothing with. It just had a single slit at the bottom of the sheath to let water drain out if it ever got wet.
She wiped off the dagger and returned it to the sheath, then looked at the blindfold. She had been totally naked for a whole week now, and even though it was pointless in the middle of the desert, modesty was calling. It was doubtful that such a small strip of cloth could satiate that need.
She tried to wrap it around her waist. The two ends were a full inch apart. Modesty would have to wait after all. Finally, she opted to wrap it around her ankle to hold the sheath for her dagger, then as an afterthought she slid the shorter twines between the wraps and wrapped the whole thing in the longer rope segment to keep everything in place.
The dune next to her was one of the taller ones. Nabooru started to climb it to get her bearings, but with every step the sand sank half the distance. Finally she got to the top.
Water is everything for desert survival...and Nabooru didn't have any. She didn't even have a container to hold some in if she found some. In effect, even though she had been kept well hydrated durring her torture, she had lost enough blood and other fluids that she had two days -at most three- before dehydration killed her. She had to conserve the water already in her body and get out of the desert and to a decent water source before dehydration drained her strength to nothing.
She looked over the desert. Nothing but the ridgelines of dunes as far as the eye could see...except...
She squinted. She couldn't quite make out what it was at this distance. She got a quick direction from the sun. Assuming it was the middle of the afternoon, then whatever that was, it was South-East.
She started to walk down the hill in the direction of the disturbance. If it was a tree, chances were she could get some water from it, then she could rest until night.
When night finally did come, she would continue to head East until either dehydration killed her or she came to the Hyrule River.