Anna’s Wars

Anna stretched out on the warm sand again, rolled onto her stomach and looked back at the city, gleaming again as the sun slid lower in the sky. She drank in the view, etching it into her memory. The shining white walls had the very slightest tinge of pink. She breathed deeply, filling her lungs with air that was fragrant with the sea. She stopped.

 "Do you smell that?” she asked the group.

"What do you mean?” Nuhla asked. She rolled up onto her knees, her nose in the air. Anna could not help but admire how regal she looked.

"I don't smell anything.” she said dismissively.

Anna snapped to her feet, the backs of her legs shrieking in agony at the sudden move. She uncurled more slowly and carefully to her full height. The smell was gone, and looking around she saw nothing out of the ordinary and no one else. They were alone.

"It's odd that there is no breeze.” Anna pointed out.

"I love the cool mountain air.” Nuhla commented. "It is so absolutely fresh and clean, especially when it pours past the Palace out of the Great White."

The mention of the frozen plateau that held the Dovarsha-Issin captivated them all immediately, pushing aside any other thoughts.

"Have you ever been up there?” Anna asked with reverence.

"No.” Nuhla answered. "I have not even walked out the gate that faces the Great White."

"You can see the Great White from the Palace?” Tamisinthe asked incredulously.

"No, only the beginning of the Pass that leads up to it, and that only from the tallest tower of the Palace."

"What's that?” Miarka interrupted, pointing in fear and confusion.

They all turned to the east and an impossibly huge grey wall coming at them across the water. It filled the sky and seemed to stretch past the horizon. The slight smell from earlier suddenly became intense as horns began to blare from the towers of the Kishtar Palace. They struggled to get to their feet, stumbling as their leg muscles refused to obey. They looked to Anna in near panic.

"It's a Choking Fog.” she said in a fell voice, knowing without looking that the city was too far away. She could make it, but the others would not.

A flock of shorebirds shot overhead shrieking as they headed north.

"Listen to me.” she commanded forcefully, her eyes fixed on the rapidly approaching wall. It looked solid to her, like she could lean against it. "This is nothing more than a dense fog, but it is so dense that it can drown you." She watched it come toward them with impossible speed. It was fascinating, and it took an almost physical effort to pull herself away from the macabre sight.

She threw her arms over Luhinia's and Nuhla's shoulders. "Huddle up.” she told them, arraigning them in a tight circle as they sat down. She slowed her breathing.

"Calm down, breath evenly.” she instructed firmly, undoing the braid of her hair and bidding the others to do the same. The wall was nearing the city and had already blotted out the sun. She looked intently at the others. Luhinia and Tamisinthe nodded in acknowledgement and began to obey. The two others looked even closer to outright panic.

"Calm down.” she repeated to Nuhla and Miarka specifically. "We are going to sit here with our faces down. Let your hair and your tunic form a clear space in front of your body. Breathe only through your nose, as slowly and as regularly as you can." Her eyes left them and went back to the wall of doom that was closing on them. It was passed the city and the sound of the horns was lost.

"Water is going to drip out of your nose. Let it drip. Don't look up, and don't open your mouth." She could hear the fog hiss as it crossed the sand. Nuhla looked terrified, and Miarka was crying.

"We are going to sit here together and let the fog pass over us.” Anna said simply.

"How long will that take?” Miarka asked with tears in her voice, but before Anna could answer the smell grew into a stench, the temperature dropped and the other women disappeared in a grey haze.

Anna was stunned at the sudden change. She could not hear a thing. The impact disoriented her so completely that she almost started to look around to try and see out of the fog. Instead, she hung her head and reached up and pushed Luhinia’s and Nuhla’s heads down as well. She could feel Luhinia reach out and do the same for Tamisinthe.

Looking down into her own lap helped settle her. The short skirt under the travel tunic had ridden up on her thighs, and she could see the sand between her legs. Then that disappeared into the grey fog.

Anna put a hand into the lap of each woman next to her. Each grasped her hand, Nuhla with a crushing grip. Anna could only hope that they also reached out around the circle.

The notion that she was alone swept over her as suddenly and completely as the fog, almost making her swoon. She fought another urgent impulse to look up and get her bearings, struggling to remind herself of the danger.

“'How did I get so confused?” she asked herself. “How long have we been sitting here?” she replied, and swirled down into a meaningless routine of endlessly repeating these questions.

A violent jerk on her right hand snapped her out of her fugue and into the desperate reality of their situation. They have not been taught what to do, she reminded herself, realizing that if the fog did not lift soon some of them were going to die.

The tug came again. She pictured Miarka crying.

She'll die first, she thought, and the certainty put her mind into action.