She had to keep in mind, the journey, ten days on foot. Three times the sun had passed, the moon had lost half of itself, the stars stayed constant, like the day’s never ending blue sky. Her youngest child, in her arms, was lighter than the dust her feet shuffled up into the air. Hold on. Breathe, a conscious push of in and out. The rhythm of the days, in and out, holding tight, forward. Push and pain. Seven more to make it through.

Her face tilted to the ground, stretched taut and dry. They shared the same skin. The tired earth which carried her was rustier though, she could see the difference of hue as her brown feet rubbed the wrinkled crust.

A smile, hard to lift on her face, came for a moment as she thought of the first time that she had really noticed her own feet. Her first daughter, just trying to walk, was in front of her and she held her arms up with her hands to keep her balanced. A grinning face full of concentration looked up at her and as she looked down, she could see her two feet standing guard on each side of the little wisp below. Those two feet and swollen ankles looked like they were the deep, brown roots of some tree, still moist and soft with youth. She was also the canopy above to shade that little girl from harm. But it didn’t last.

Her half smile lowered back to its wizened crust, her feet now were so calloused that she couldn’t even feel the earth she walked on. Not feeling felt better, not feeling had saved her when her husband abandoned her because she could only bring forth daughters. Their dowries would be a loss of cattle, so he left her to find somewhere else to spread his seed. After that she had become barren. But her mother had told her, not feeling, only meant death. So, she lifted her head back up, looked at the horizon and stretched forward, trying to see what had been before and might be again.

The heat helped, mirages and visions came easier. She squinted her eyes to what had been, what could be again.

There was, would be a breeze and the musk of the leather skinned cows. Maybe a sourness of milk, if it was calving season and they were making cheese. Small fires would be lifting smoke to the sky that was scented with the herbs slowly sizzling on whatever little they had on their small, makeshift stoves. Rain would come in the evening with the music of thunder. Grass would rise with outstretched stalks. Bees would find blossoms, sweetness found in their hives. She could taste it in her dry mouth. She felt the tension lessen in her body, her arms began to give way until in a jerk she pulled them back again to keep her child from falling. Her face tightened even more around her protruding bones and she thought that’s what you get for dreaming about what was, what could be. For her, this was all that there was. And there was not much.

She tried to press her feet tighter to hold the ground beneath her, but she was losing her hold, or maybe the earth had lost its pull, nothing held it together anymore, no bushes, no stalks, only the heavy exposed stones kept it from floating off into the shimmering heat.

Look forward, find balance, breathe in and out. She steadied herself, pulled her tattered scarf to shield her breath from the fog of dust.

Her thoughts turned back.

Just nights before when she had travelled at night to spare herself the heat of the day, she could still sweat and some of those drops had fallen onto the face of the baby she carried. Instantly, the child came to life and its tongue in a sluggish lick had sipped that brine.

Since then, her baby only slept. Her mouth too dry for a lullaby.

Her shoulders were suddenly bare. She pulled her dress up as it slipped once again from the vanishing folds of her skin. She could no longer tell the difference between the scrap of linen and the shred of her breasts.

The well was empty, she had nothing more to offer.

There was just the thirst. Hunger had left her days ago.

If only she could reach the camp. Those ten days on foot.

For her baby.

She clutched tighter.

There was nothing more to see. A chipped brown flat that gave way at its edges to searing blue, the color in the center of a flame. But still she followed it, legs locked in a forced march.

Her eyes closed, then fluttered open again. It’s for her, all these steps. Push, in and out. Pain.

The child she was carrying became lighter, a feather that could easily be caught and lifted any moment by her staccato breath. Carried away like the land in the gusts of heat.

She pulled tighter. Her skin, her baby.

Tighter.

Her eyelids weighed her down. Sleep. To lie down, find dreams.

No.

She stumbled and almost lost her bundle, if only she had taloned feet like the vultures above, she could hold on, onto the earth.

Hold on.

No longer tight.

She felt her bones collapse, there was no skin left to hold them. The bundle holding the bones of her child fell to join the bones of those who had walked before, joining the bones of the earth, feeling no more.

The rain came three years later, washed away the dust and what had remained.