Lightning on the Sands

A short thing that popped into my head a few years back and I'm only just now revisiting it and might lengthen it. I don't know.

 

She treks through the sands, the desert sun beating down on her. Sweat coats her body, pasting her white tank top to her and turning it and the wrappings on her knuckles and hands to a dirty sandy color as the ever-present dust clings to her. A buff colored trench coat is thrown over her sun burned shoulder, matching the pair of loose, many pocketed pants whose cuffs are tucked into a pair of combat boots. Her once wheat colored hair, turned muddy brown by the grit that coats it, hangs limply from the tail that fails to keep it from plastering to the back of her neck.

Pausing for a moment on a high dune, she raises a hand to her brow, shielding her eyes from the midday glare. As she squints past the watery heat waves rising from the baked dunes, her electric blue eyes linger on the indistinct outline of a walled town and the distance of sand that separated her from it. Temporarily dropping her coat, she judges the weight of the water skein dangling at her hip. Satisfied, she unclips it from her belt and downs the last mouthful of tepid water. She continues toward her destination as she grabs her coat and clips the water skein back on her belt, fully aware of the jackals that have been following her for the past hour or so.

She slides down the soft side of the dune, treading her path between hills to trade higher ground for surer footing. Luckily, she does not have to see her hunters to know where they are. As she makes her way through the dunes, small wisps of stirred up dust begin showing up over the dunes on her left. They are stealthy, but not stealthy enough. The wisps start from behind her left shoulder and quickly move up in front of her, crossing what will be her path in about half a kilometer in an obvious ambush maneuver. There will be no way for her to change her path without them seeing her and adjusting their strategy accordingly. With a quiet sigh of resignation, she heads straight for the last dust cloud.

Shortly she comes to an area of high dunes too soft and sheer to go over quickly or easily. Gritting her teeth, the back of her neck prickling, she steps between the hills, knowing this is to be the battleground. As she reaches the middle of the sand canyon, three large males appear at the end of the valley in font of her. She looks over her shoulder, as if checking her escape route, and sees two others behind her. They close in on her and encircle her, sneering and snickering. They may look human, but they are no better than jackals: scavenging what they can, stealing anything else they need to survive in the harsh clime.

The pack leader steps forward, arms crossed over his puffed up chest, a nasty grin smeared across his face, a greasy topknot perched on his otherwise bald head accentuating his rooster-like posture. He seems to think she will be easy prey, ignoring the definition of muscle on her petite frame and the slight crookedness to her nose where it had been broken in the past and not set correctly. As he reaches for her, she smirks, throwing the coat in his face. In the split second it takes for him to claw his way out, she has stepped back and delivered a punishing kick to the chin of one of the males behind her, dropping him to the ground like a sack of stones. Without pause, she fluidly brings her leg back down, braces, and lunges at the second male with all her weight.

The leader removes the coat in time to see her fist smashing into his man’s temple, and the eerie blue sparks that fly from the connection. He lets out a roar of rage as the second henchman drops much like the first. He throws the coat aside and swings at her as she turns toward him, his ham of a fist connecting with her jaw and cheekbone. She drops to her knees at his feet, seeing four boots instead of the expected two. Before she is able to scramble our of the way, he deals a swift kick to her ribs, knocking the air out of her completely and turning her double vision into no vision for a short while. Thinking her finished, the leader and his two remaining men snicker over her, hiding their unease behind bravado and lewd comments. They wait, expecting her to lose consciousness at any moment. Wrong move. She explodes from the sand, her fist slamming into the leader’s chin in a devastating uppercut as sapphire electricity arcs from her fist to his body. His eyes roll back and he collapses like his men, scorch marks on his chin, neck, and jaw. She turns to the last two of the pack, cerulean electricity sparking from her clenched fists and glaring eyes. Not made of the sterner stuff of their leader, they turn tail and run.

Shaking her head to clear it of the lingering double vision, she strips the fallen of their water skeins. After a moment’s consideration, she empties their coin purses and rations pouches and adds the contents to her own. She picks her coat up from the sand, throws it back over her shoulder, and continues on her way, leaving nothing of herself behind except molten glass footprints, like lightning on the sands.

Reviews

[SR Urie]

Hello,

Impressive text, obviously put some hours in on this one. Not only are there no type-o's at all but your words flow like water, like the granules of sand in the desert breeze. When your hero gets into the attack sequence the adjectives are descriptive and make her seem ultra-worldly in the desolate environment. Her overcoming adversity in battle, along with collecting from her antagonists what they were attempting to seize from her makes a really good way to end an introduction to an exciting book, at least for me.
If I may, a tad more explanation of the hero's character and past would spark interest better in the introduction. Plus a phrase or two more on her appearance and mental fatigue or anger, and a tiny flash of her destination; what it is she's enduring the desert for would add to an already exciting plot.
Keep it, do the labor and write the next phaze of your lady warrior/hero's journey, and enlighten us, those who'll potentially read your text, with your gift for words.

BZ