It was in the asking, that she knew.
Sango is not too surprised to wake alone, and clothes herself quickly when she hears rising voices from a ridge just before her. Her garments are soaked with dried sweat, and prove to be a difficult endeavor against the growing sheen of liquid coating her skin.
The dunes become almost a friendly sort of thing, though, in the presence of water.
She falls to her knees at the water's edge, recognizing with certain familiarity exactly who those vibrant tones belong to. She prays in thirst.
It is exotic, to coat her burning wrists in the cool sweat of shade and flowing blue. It seeps between her fingers, and she bows forward, the sand beneath her knees spreading as she slides it into mud.
She is absorbed in dunking her head beneath this miniature lake when Miroku stops beside her. She closes her eyes and can feel the dirty grains of sand brush against her eyelashes as she sweeps her head back and forth underwater, breathing. Inhaling.
She consumes with passion, and jerks her head back up, into air, with a sudden movement and wide eyes, and she feels so alive.
The desert is still there, all around her, linger with a faint hazy in distance just enough to fill her mind with giddy joy.
Oh yes, she had known in the asking. Kagome should have been the one. She had a way about her. Kagome kept a familiarity around such words of requesting assistance. She would have known how to, and not been afraid of the asking.
'.. someone is coming', he thinks internally in careful slowness. The words wait in his mind for entrance, patiently.
Naruto feels the cold coming. He keeps his back to the sun, and pauses where he stands. The sand stirs at his feet and burns without flame. He is still just as lean and lanky as before, just as tanned. The heat swelters and holds court against him, and though he notices it not his skin browns, his hair lightens.
He lets the wind move through him, keeping his mind by measured movements.
There is the world, the tattered shack who holds a greatness inside and he has a deep yearning for it's innards. A monument of wood sinking gradually beneath the onslaught of sand and torrents.
He escapes the desert through a half-open door, following the fading trail of golden grain to worn gray wood planks. The floor creaks under his step but he bears no thought for it.
There is all that was left in the world for him, there are the remains of Gaara's face carved in shallow golden bronze. What is left of it all..
He sleeps with open eyes at the base of the temple.