[Egao, Egao Everywhere]

Yes, this is a short story about two RP characters that I ship.

The wind was stale. He couldn't hear a single whiff in the air, couldn't feel the slightest push on his skin. He pressed onward, lest he waited for the sand to swallow his feet and burn his skin particle by particle.

He listened to the other pair of footsteps following closely behind him. Sand was a difficult surface to read noise from. He couldn't tell how well Thalia was faring. He rather not look and find another more reason to be worried. Shamees could only multitask actions, not emotions. More importantly, his mind needed to stay attuned. In such terrible scenarios, it was more often a battle of will than physical endurance. He needed to stay indifferent to the passage of time, to the seething heat and to the empty spaces miles across them. He only needed to keep walking and not think of fear or hope.

He'd done it more than once; Shamees had defied death in worse situations but in those times, he was alone. And in those times, he was always the sole survivor. He didn't think how different this could be, if his tactic was going to help the other person survive.

“You look tired,” he heard Thalia say.

“No,” he replied. His back was slouched and his shoulders was sagging. He was walking like he couldn't take another step, but he was. “Conserving energy. Less effort in moving.”

“Does it make a difference?”

Shamees didn't answer. Irrelevant question, irrelevant answer. Better not to talk all together.

But Thalia didn't let the conversation die. “What was your first impression of me?”

He gave her silence but he would endanger her of rambling. The point of this was for her to survive.

“Later, Thalia.”

“There might not be a later.” She didn't sound despondent or remotely disturbed. She was stating a fact.

“I'll make sure you survive,” Shamees said, neither optimistic, encouraging nor determined either. He, too, was stating a fact.

She was silent for a while but her gaze behind his back was too strong for Shamees to ignore. He couldn't go back blanking his mind. To his dismay, the longer the silence was holding, the more he was giving into it, letting the little voice in his head talk.

“You should have stepped away since the beginning. When people become connected, it's harder to throw your life away.”

What's done is done. Shamees was used to the hard life...but what about Thalia? She braved through many challenges in her life before and she would take on those obstacles ahead of her. That was her problem – Shamees fought the walls hitting him, never the other way around. Thalia was constantly on the offensive and Shamees feared her internal battles would be causing her demise. Her decisions were never easy on herself. Each blade she swings wounds her back.

Shamees panted, beads of sweat merging at his chin. He stopped his thoughts immediately and focused on the gold dust of the dessert. He didn't like looking too far back in the past or beyond the future. He focused only in the present. That was what they had to overcome.

But he couldn't shrug the silence Thalia was keeping. Was she still behind him? It was hard to tell.

“Thalia.”

“Yeah?”

Shamees turned his neck around. Thalia wasn't as red as he thought. She had a slight tan that became more visible under the sun. She had always been outgoing as a child so she must have acquired the darker tone from her adventures. Her hair was damp with sweat and her face slightly glittered from the beads that dripped from her temples. Her eyes were still dancing emeralds. She wasn't looking as bad as he thought.

He took her hand – not sudden nor slow. He had reached for it and Thalia, more focused on keeping her feet out of the sand, grasp on the air where it was without looking up. Their hands held onto each other like a loose chain link. It didn't matter how tight they might hold onto each other as long as Shamees knew she was still there. He let his mind go back in meditation and he found all his fears and worries suddenly vanish. Something pulsed on where their hands touched like there was a second beating heart there, giving them both the energy to keep on moving.

He'd always survived on his own. To save a life, another life had to be sacrificed. Breaking this law increases the risk of failure as many idealists harshly learn. But when the risk is worth it, it didn't feel so dangerous. It only felt right.