sun

It got hot early that summer, far hotter than I'd ever experienced it. I always hated summer, and now, so soon after the spring had withdrawn, the sun burned bright and oppressive in the sky and it was all we could do to languor in the shade and hope that the nights would cool off enough to be tolerable. And for a while that's what we did: slept in the dark, emerged at night, when we could all at least pretend that this was some way to live.

That was the summer we left the capital to visit Drysi's homeland, the desert highlands east of the mountains--it was, depending on who you asked, a diplomatic visit to renew the friendship between the capital and the highlands, or a show of force to remind the highlanders what would happen if they ever proved to be inadequate friends. 

So we crept out one night from the place where we were not quite guests and not quite prisoners--Drysi most of all, the hostage who had been too long from home--and, guided by moonlight and desperation, we followed the stream to the lake and wetlands. There, rather than the endless stone and sage, low trees and shrubs and reeds huddled together, desperate for a taste of that precious water. And there we built a little shelter, and spent the day cooling ourselves in the lake and relaxing in the shade.

As the sun finally sank behind the mountains, so too did the thin wispy clouds that Drysi said marked a change in the weather first appear. A promise (and, perhaps, a warning) that even the most tyrannical reign must come to an end eventually.