A light sound of scratching and puffing was coming from next to her face, a hot and rhythmic stream of air made her hair dance back and forth.

  “5 minutes…”

  With a weak movement of her hand she tried to silence the noise that was disturbing her placid sleep. Something soft to touch, with a consistency similar to a warm blanket, appeared to react to the gesture and a piercing shriek reverberated in her years, deafening her for a moment.

  With a burst of energy Nadia sprinted in a seating position, looking confused at her sides, squirting her eyes to pierce the blinding light coming from above. She remained motionless for a few minutes, intent on chasing away the fogness in her mind, still confused by the abrupt awakening.

  She focused on the blurred silhouettes on the horizon, composed by a series of shapes of various sizes, most of which small with the occasional high triangle. As she began to think more clearly,she was able to distinguish the shades of their colors. The smaller ones were of a bright gold-looking yellow, with a darker half on the left, the bigger ones were instead brown or black, with irregular volumes that made them look like an abstract piece of art.

  Once free of the confusion she was conscious of the surface on which she was sitting. It was comfortable, even if a bit rough and coarse. A single glance was enough to justify all these sensations, it was sand, simple and pure sand.

  “What the f***!”

  It came out as a whisper rather than a real scream, whatever her intentions, but since her brain hadn’t registered it, she uttered it again, this time with real conviction.

  “WHAT THE F***!”

  Strangely deprived of any energy she let herself fall on the back, staring at the clear and unbroken sky in disbelief. A big and bright sun was dominating that vastness without caring a bit about the small human that was probably losing her mind at that moment.

  “What the F***! What… the… f…”

  She kept mumbling curses for quite some time, completely lost in this nightmare.

  But nobody can stay still under such heat without paying consequences, and it didn’t take long for Nadia to feel a burning inferno coming to life in her throat. Water, she needed water, she was desperate for water. With a single purpose now filling her every move, she quickly got to her feet and scouted around to find any source of the liquid nectar. Finding none she started to panic, doubling her efforts. Everywhere she looked there was only sand, rocks, and more sand. Exhausted she finally fell on the ground, drawing ragged breaths.

  This moment of stillness helped her regain some lucidity, and she began assessing her situation with more rationale. She didn’t know why, but she was now in the middle of a desert, dunes and rocky formations were all she could spot from her location.

  She was wearing her normal clothes, meaning whatever happened to her was probably during the day, most likely after her working hours since her company badge was not across her neck. She emptied the pockets of her jeans but found only the essentials: wallet, a handkerchief, and the keys of her apartment. She wondered when she would see her small room again. Granted, it was nothing special, but it was all she could afford as a low-grade administrator, Paris was not a cheap city to live in.

  Stopping her thoughts to go any further and bring forward more memories, Nadia got up and set off at random, in the hope of finding a place to sleep, and hopefully something to eat.

  Nadia was walking through the desert, her direction still unchanged from when she took it several hours earlier. While walking she began to notice the landscape morph around her. The terrain started to become more humid, with her feet now sinking by a centimeter in a mixture of gravel and dirt. Sparse vegetation began to appear, small bushes composing the majority of it, with isolated trees of a meter tall here and there.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  When she first heard it she dismissed it as an auditory hallucination, but after the sound raised in volume she was convinced it was real, undoubtedly that was the angelic echo of rippling water.

  Excited, she began following the promise of quenching her thirst like a hunting dog. In just a few steps she found herself running, and after taking many turns and falling a couple of times face first on the ground, she finally could gaze at the celestial vision of a small stream. Without hesitation she crouched next to it and started drinking with haste, sating the crave that kept her enduring so many hours of grueling march.

  The night was falling, and a cold breeze was growing, making Nadia shudder. Drained by her wandering, she lay curled up in a spot of bare ground and quickly fell asleep.

  ***

  The morning after she was woken up early by the bright sun peeking out on the horizon. Aching and feeling pain in body parts she didn’t even remember having, she felt immediately refreshed after drinking a bit of water.

  “Okay, what should I do now?”

  She expressed the most burning question aloud, to the amusement of the many shrubs in the vicinity, no doubt. Being alone in a desert is definitely a lonely experience, and she had to stay focused, or risk incurring a swift loss of any lucidity.

  “The most pressing questions are: where am I, how can I sustain myself, and how the hell can I go back home”

  With frustration she counted on one hand the challenging tasks ahead of her, and even if just three fingers weren’t much, she knew that before seeing her small-and now remembered with fondness-apartment again, she would have to swallow a lot of shit.

  Beginning with the easiest point, the first, sounded like the most logical thing to do. So Nadia got up and started looking around her with diligence. The conclusion she drew was fairly similar to the one, a version much less attentive of her, had reached the day before. She was in a desert.

  Swelling down the growing collection of curses, she took a deep breath and assessed that not all hope was lost. She found water, and everybody knows that settlements can be found alongside rivers. Even if calling that embarrassment of a rivulet that, would have been a big embellishment. She only hoped it wouldn't run out before she found some life capable of speech.

  With a newfound sense of direction and a plan, she began treading across the wilderness again. The facts that her belly was still empty and that she didn’t have a shred of an idea of where was… here, were still on her mind, but rather than losing time on unsolvable problems she much preferred focus on the achievable.

  Stopping just to drink a bit when she felt the urge, she kept walking, occupying the time with looking at the surroundings. The plants were like the ones she saw in documentaries; she had always wanted to visit other places, but every holiday she could snatch from that heartless of her boss she preferred to spend lying motionless on the sofa. She had hobbies, mostly reading, watching TV, and embarrassing attempts at registering covers of her favourite songs. But none that included other people, and that was fine for her, she didn’t like people.

  It wasn’t her fault, she had attempted to socialize with everyone, both back at school and when she landed her current job, but all she got back was empty promises and small talk.

  “Hey Nadia, maybe tomorrow I am free for that drink, but today my parents come to visit the newborn and I really can’t”

  “Sure, just let me finish this task, the boss wants it for tomorrow. It will just take me a moment, can you wait by the entrance?”

  “You look lovely in that dress, pink is your color, it is like seeing a fairy”

  “Can I help you with this? I know you like to do everything alone, but it is quite the load of work”

  They either considered her a whiner, dumb as a brick, or someone that falls for the first blatant excuse.

  Nah… she was done with everyone, she just needed her apartment, which she was remembering more fondly with each step on the rolling terrain.

  It was when the sun had recently stopped beating down on her from right above, contenting to burn her from a more angled position on the right, that she finally noticed a silhouette resembling something artificial in the distance. It was a rectangular black mass, the light was reflecting on its surface like it was made of glass, but it being fully opaque while being blinding gave away the material as metal.

  Who would build such a monstrosity in the middle of nowhere Nadia could not tell, she just hoped they had something edible, she would have killed for what resembled a proper meal here.