Darkness surrounded Sabit on all sides. Somewhere above her, the stars paraded in their divine majesty across the vault of heaven, but Sabit could not see them. Tall, stiff stalks of grass towered over the warrior, pressing in on either side. Their dry edges snagged along her arms, the occasional broken stalk taking a bite from her calf or ankle.
Sabit pressed forward into the darkness.
Her brows furrowed in concentration, Sabit focused on putting one foot directly before the other. Her only hope of emerging from this abyss of midnight grass was to hold to her dead reckoning of where she had spotted the shrine just before sunset. Her waterskin was dry and her bag of food had been licked clean of crumbs the day before. If Sabit did not emerge from the grass near enough to that shrine to view the sunrise, her trip would have been for naught, and her life itself in peril.
For hours, Sabit’s steps had been marked only by the gentle susurrus of the tall grass against her strong limbs. The soft ground cushioned her every measured footfall.
The sound of slithering scales caught Sabit’s attention. She stood stock-still, ears straining, probing the darkness for the source of the sound, its size, its threat.
The whisper was definitely behind her. From the creaking of the thick stems of grass, she judged it large enough to not be ignored.
If she turned, Sabit knew that this markless sea of grass might swallow her direction as easily as it engulfed the night sky itself.
Behind her, a sharp hiss of reptilian hunger filled the night air.
— — —
Photo by Irina Kostenich from Pexels
Wayfarings of Sabit: Dawn is copyright (c) 2018 by Michael S. Miller. All rights reserved. New chapters post every Thursday (and the occasional Monday). You can support this and other stories on Patreon: https://patreon.com/michaelsmiller Find more sword and sorcery fiction at http://ipressgames.com/fiction/.