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  ...The Desert...

  The sun beat down; it was late afternoon sometime, because she was walking toward its heat. She kept her jacket on so she could feel the satisfying sweat falling down the sides of body. She stopped for a drink of water from the bottle she tucked away in her rucksack. “The scales are always balanced, she thought.” The girl was there in the distance shimmering with her rotten skin and the sand half-covering her legs. If he survived he must serve some purpose, he must be part of the grand plan that asks us to look at our own fragility; but, in the end the scales must be balanced. He wasn’t conscious enough to balance them himself. “What a complete moron I’ve been.” She thought of pulling the plug and giving him peace, then he would finally know what she was talking about. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it, “best not to interfere” she thought; after all, he had been saved from death, not her. She let a trickle of sweat roll down her cheek and into her ear as she tossed back the last drop of water. She turned back toward the dunes where the heat made the air undulate. She saw the girl standing there with her half-grin. Bettina was too much of a coward to choose her own passing but the brightness refracted and reflected off the girl’s body blinding her with dust and dead skin, dark eyes. The curve of the undulation sent ripples through the creature’s body