I woke up the next morning with a pounding head, and an arm around my waist. My eyes followed the arm up to the shoulder and neck and face it was connected to. Memories from last night started flooding back before my eyes.
Jonathan and I were talking, we played with fire, I cut my arm to find out that I was alive, he confessed that he loved me – wait a minute – he said he loved me! I said I loved him too. We came back here to lie down. He asked me to marry him, and we kissed our brains out. I looked away from Jonathan Carnahan's sleeping form in shock at the remembrance of what had taken place last night.
I needed to gather my wits so I gently lifted Jonathan's arm from my waist and rolled away from him and laid his arm gently beside his head. I got up and walked around our small campsite. Evy was still asleep on Rick's shoulder and Rick had his shotgun in hand.
The Egyptian sun wasn't far from coming up over the next sand dune so I sat down at the top of the dune to watch the sun rise. I closed my eyes as I felt the first warmth of the sun's rays wash over my face. I inhaled the warm desert air slowly, savoring its ancientness. I opened my eyes and gave the desert the first smile of the morning.
Something inside me stirred, and I realized that it was my stomach growling ravenously. It suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't eaten since lunch the day before. We hadn't brought any food with us when we set out to save Evy from Imhotep, which meant that all of us were just as hungry as I was, maybe even more so.
I heard footsteps behind me so I looked backwards. I saw the spindly legs of a camel behind me. Squinting up in the sunlight, I saw Jonathan smiling down at me from his seat on the camel's hump. I got up and dusted myself off and stood on the left side of the camel, my hand resting lightly on Jonathan's leg. He bent down and kissed me, and then made his camel sit down in the sand so that I could climb on in front of Jonathan.
"Good morning," he said giving me a quirky smile.
"Morning. How's the scarab bite?" I asked, tracing my finger around the exit wound on his shoulder gently.
"It's fine. Just a bit sore is all, but not bad enough to consume my every thought; that's what you're here for," he replied, taking my chin in his free hand. A fierce wind blew against us and I braced against him as he wrapped his arms around me. "How's that self-inflicted wound of yours?" He asked, looking deep into my eyes.
"To tell you the truth, I didn't even look at it this morning," I said as I rolled my sleeve up to reveal the part of my arm that I had cut the night before with my knife. I stopped suddenly, looking at my bare arm. There wasn't a scratch on it, nor a scar aside from the ones that were already there from working on the farm.
"What's wrong, girl?" Jonathan asked worriedly as he took my hand in his.
"There's nothing there; no scratch, scab, scar, nothing," I said as I looked up into his face. "Blood flowed through the nick, but there isn't any trace of it now. Its as if it had never happened. I scraped the wet and dried blood off my arm and it all dripped into the fire last night. Then you asked me if I would listen to what you had to say and you kicked a scorpion into the fire, and it crackled and died in the fire. I…"
"Shh. It's alright," he interrupted. "We both had a long night last night, but things are already looking better to me this morning. The sunrise is gorgeous, and so is the girl I'm with," he said smiling into the back of my head.
I leaned against him comfortably and closed my eyes, letting his warm breath tickle my ear slightly. He didn't smell like he had been fighting off mummies in the desolate sands of Egypt. He smelled like he had just come out of the ocean, fresh and salty. How that was possible, I didn't know, but I also didn't care. I was with the man I loved, and that was all that mattered.
"Hey Jonathan, Rebecca, time to go," we heard Rick call. Jonathan made the camel get up from the sand and steered it back in the direction of the camp. "Are you two ready?" Rick asked as we rode up.
"Sure. We're the ones already on the camel," I said with a winning smile as I took the reins from Jonathan's hands. Rick smiled sarcastically back at me and turned to strap the camel next to him to the saddle on which they had slept the night before. Rick mounted the camel and Evy made her place behind him, wrapping her long, skinny arms around Rick's well-sculpted abdomen. She placed a kiss on the back of his neck and Rick made the camel stand up.
On our way out of our campsite, Jonathan and I passed by the ashes of the campfire. We stopped and I looked down at the remains. "Hey Jonathan," I said, "you know, there should be some remains of that scorpion that you kicked into the fire last night, right?"
"Yes, why?" He replied, looking at me curiously.
"Well, from what I can tell, there isn't anything down there left of the bugger. Maybe he was incinerated," I continued with a shrug of my shoulders and then urged the camel forward to fall into line behind Rick and Evy.
Later, I could feel Jonathan's soft breath on my neck and smiled, knowing that he would probably be asleep pretty soon. "Hey Rick," I yelled forward.
"Yeah," he said as he turned back to talk to me, Evy in his arms already.
"I think I oughta stop a second and get sleeping beauty back here to sit in front of me so he doesn't fall off the camel's backside," I said, nodding my head in Jonathan's direction.
"Alright, I'll wait on you," he said with a warm smile, and held my camel while I switched places with Jonathan. I wrapped my arms underneath his armpits and grabbed the reins from Rick.
"Thank you," I whispered to Rick, knowing that he understood. Jonathan settled slightly against my chest, his head lolled back on my shoulder. I snickered softly at the way he had managed to find sleep. I gently kissed him behind his ear, lingering a moment to take in his sea-salty scent.
I pulled away, deep in thought. The past couple of weeks had been crazy, but I loved it. Adventure, adrenaline, danger. It was amazing, and after having a taste of it, I didn't think that my thirst for it could ever be quenched.
I was focusing on the desert ahead of us, the path that would lead us home, when Jonathan woke up suddenly his eyes big and his muscles tense. I came out of my focused trance and looked at him. "Hey, it's about time you woke up. Didn't you get enough sleep last night?" I asked jokingly.
He looked at me with those huge eyes and then relaxed and stretched as much as his current position would allow him to. "When did we switch places?" He asked, scratching his head trying to remember what had occurred.
"Oh about thirty minutes ago or so. You were so out of it, I was afraid you were going to fall off the backside of this camel."
"Well, thanks. I wouldn't want to do that, now would I?"
"Nope, I don't think so," I replied with a laugh. "What was it you were dreaming that made you wake up in a hurry like you did? You looked like you had seen a ghost or something," I said joking about our encounter with the mummy, Imhotep.
"Oh it was nothing, just a nightmare or something. Nothing major," he relied, taking one of my hands in his own and placing it on his chest.
"Aw, come on, tell me what you dreamt. See if you can scare me," I said trying to draw it out of him.
"No, its silly. Besides, if I tell you, you'll think I'm mental or something," he said waving me off.
"Man, we are in the middle of the desert with no one around for miles, and you are worried about what I'll think if you tell me your nightmare? What makes you think I don't already think you're 'mental or something'?" I asked, craning my neck to look in his face.
"No, I'm not going to tell you," he said, sticking his tongue out childishly and crossing his arms over his chest.
I put a hand on his cheek and said, "Try me."
His demeanor softened and he smiled slightly. "Fine, I'll tell you. It started out with me as a child around fifteen, sitting around the house thinking about what I was going to do with my life; like whether I would follow in my father's footsteps or not. Then it goes to the day that mine and Evy's parents died; I was seventeen and she was just about to turn nine.
Next, it goes to when we moved here to Cairo. Then the day that I picked O'Connell's pocket, and then the day that I met you in the library with Evy. These are all memories, and then my dream turns into the future. I have a family and a kid on the way, and then a midlife crisis.
Almost every second a new scene appears. In each I'm a few years older, chasing my youth as it runs away. The last scene was me when I'm at least 100, and I'm praying for another moment, finally realizing that time is a precious thing to waste. After that, my last breath is what woke me up."
"Well, sounds like you are afraid of growing old alone to me. I could be wrong, but that's what I think it is," I said, looking out at the desert sands. "Sounds like you ought to cherish each moment, each breath you're given."
"Yes, I suppose you're right about that. I haven't been doing that very well lately," he replied, resting his eyes in half slits against the bright, mid-morning sun.