Someone Else's Kingdom, BOOK I - Chapter 43

Naked from the waist up, and with a shemagh-type headscarf wrapped about her head, she was kneeling in the soft warm mud. Almost in a half-sleep, her eyes closed with calm poise. The headscarf was an orangey, terracotta colour, and in between the rag-like tassels of the fabric, and the few silky strands of hair that hung down upon her forehead, a branching rivulet of bluish blood could be seen beneath her grimy, but clear skin. Streaming down from beneath the headscarf, then fading from view just above the corner of her left eyebrow.

A large waterfall, that from her vantage point was out of sight, hissed in the distance. Its light misty spray, which she could feel on her skin, offset by the heat of the desert that lay just beyond the slither of lush, but muddy greenery on which she now lived. Hemmed in, oasis-like, between the vast ocean and the endless sand. As she opened her eyes and looked outwards from the shallow cave she was sheltered in, she could see the dark sandy beach down in the distance. Along with a small wooden boat tied to a post, where the yellow sand met a small headland. In her hands was a green stone. She looked down at it impatiently, as if eager to do something ..but she knew it was not yet the right time.

She closed her eyes again and started rocking back and forth on her knees, clutching the stone. She then began to hum and sing. Uttering strange words and incantations. Her voice a piercing echo in the cave, against the bassy backdrop of the hissing waterfall.