45. Awakening
Out there, the sun causes the landscape to ripple with a mixture of the vindictive sun and the heat that rises steadily, reflecting off of the pale ground. She is sometimes unsure if her targets are real or not. At night, when the temperature drops away from the amber colour is holds during the day, she feels more lucid.
She volunteers for midnight watch often, and sits outside of her Spartan tent, staring at the watch fires on the nights when she is not on duty.
Across the camp in the men's quarters, her charge sleeps as if drugged. In daylight he is her sole focus, that dark smudge of his hair and the greasy pillar of smoke rising across the barren desert. She does not yet love him, but she faithful to the knowledge that she will probably follow him for the rest of her life.
She wonders if he notices her; her skin is still pale, despite the constant sun, and her hair has only faded from gold to flax. She blends in with her khaki cloak and the bright world around them, one true constant. (Although sometimes she wavers unsteadily, like a mirage, she is one of the few who has yet to fall, victim to the heat and brilliance that refuses to abate.)
Like those around her, though, her eyes are becoming blank.