Chapter 90: The Price of the Future
The next morning, the desert seemed to have emptied itself of all anger. Far from the outbursts of the night, far from the silent screams of the flayed sand, it stretched as far as the eye could see — peaceful, flat, almost benevolent. A golden, gentle light embraced every dune, caressing the sand crests like an ancient hand. There was no more wind. Only that warm, soft, almost unreal silence that sometimes floats after storms, when the whole world seems to hold its breath. The war of the previous day was now only a memory embedded in the grains, a shiver in the earth’s memory.
And in the middle of that silent immensity, Lysara...
She was skipping.
Light.
Alive.
Her feet barely touched the surface, as if she no longer quite belonged to gravity. Her step — supple, rhythmic — traced a carefree, almost childlike dance. And her voice — clear, radiant, free — rose softly, blending with the air with the nonchalant grace of a bird rediscovered. She murmured weightless words, fragments of a song, or perhaps nothing at all. Just sounds, bits of joy, breathed into the wind like offerings.
Her laughter, discreet but genuine, split the space with more power than the previous night’s uproar.
And I, somewhere behind her, watched that silhouette glowing at the heart of the sand, and wondered if I was still in the same world.
— Aaah, I’m so happy!
Her voice rang out like a ray of light in the golden vastness of the desert — vivid, honest, crystalline. A simple, disarming exclamation, tossed into the wind without shame or restraint, like a truth too full to be kept silent. She walked ahead of me, still skipping a little, arms loose, movements light, almost floating. Each step stirred up a puff of sand that immediately faded into the morning warmth.
I walked beside her, more slowly. My kimono, perfectly smooth, fell around me in impeccable elegance. Not a fold out of place. Not a drop of blood. Not a stain. As if the fierce duel of the night before had been nothing but a fevered dream, a delirium erased by the day’s first light.