Runa adjusted the cloth over her face. Her eyes stung as the wind whipped the sand around her. It wasn’t an especially hard wind, but walking into it for most of the day with very little changes had meant a lot of sand had gotten in her face.

She got some respite as she sank into a valley between two dunes, ahead of her, she saw the blue tail of Antyza swishing as the woman crested a dune capped in grass. It had apparently rained recently enough to feed the grass into growing ...