Atlas sat back on her heels. She drew in a ragged breath, wishing to God and all the other entities she could name that this trip would end soon. She felt she would lose her mind if she had to spend another day in this dust. Every lungful of air brought with it the taste of metal and plastic, along with a fresh mouthful of grit. It did nothing to alleviate her feelings of nausea from being in a hot car.


    She started coughing, wrestling with her own body to get control of the fit before she made herself sick again. It was no easy feat when every inhalation made her lungs seize up against yet more dust. After a moment, though, it settled. She spat on the sandy ground between her boots and got slowly to her feet.


    A piece of orange cloth was tied around her neck, wet from sweat. She yanked it up to cover her nose and mouth and took another shaky breath. This time, though, the sweat-and-cloth filter did its job and she didn’t cough. One breath, two, and she felt well enough at last to try her voice.


    “Hey!” She called out without looking up. “Hey, let’s find some shade for a bit, okay?” Her voice was still hoarse, but it carried as intended. Footsteps heralded the approach of someone behind her. She glanced up, squinting against the searing noon sun, and saw her grandmother.


    “Yes, we can stay inside til it gets cooler,” the older woman responded soberly. Her voice was strong, unaffected by the frequent coughing fits that plagued the rest of them.


    Atlas rolled her shoulders and shielded her eyes with one hand. “Great, thanks. And Anji? Is she…” the urge to cough cut her short and she briefly struggled again to contain it.


    “She’s fine,” her grandmother reassured her. Rather than risk speaking again, Atlas nodded curtly and turned back towards the car. Facing away from the sun was an instant relief. Her cheeks tingled briefly, sweat prickling at the mere memory of it.


    The car was parked a ways down the road, on the far side of a small hill that provided a scrap of shade that was more for looks than actual protection from the sun. No amount of shade felt deep enough out here to shield from the constant white-hotness of it. It felt, to Atlas, inescapable. She took another steadying breath and, patting her grandmother on the back as she passed, started back up the small slope to the road.


    “You should really cover your face, Aana. This shit can’t be good to breathe.” Atlas gestured to indicate the dusty air. Aana smiled widely.


    “I’ve survived much, granddaughter. A little dust isn’t going to do me in.” Atlas shrugged. She could tell her grandma was having no issues just from the way they walked up the hill. Atlas was almost immediately huffing and puffing, struggling with each breath, while Aana climbed noiselessly beside her. By the time they reached the car again, they had stopped twice for Atlas to battle another bout of coughing.


    “Attie!” the small voice of Atlas’s cousin, Anji, greeted them as they started down the far side of the hill. Her small body rocketed from the car so fast she skidded the last couple feet. “Attie, are you okay?”


    “Never better,” Atlas assured her, catching her in a brief hug. “You taking good care of your dad?”


    Anji rolled her dark eyes. “He’s asleep, Atlas.”


    “Ouch!” Atlas feigned a pain in her chest. “The full name treatment? Damn, kid.”


    Anji’s eyes lit up with laughter, but this close Atlas could hear the small whistle that came with each breath her cousin took. Frowning, Atlas turned to her grandmother, whose face was grim. A silent understanding passed between them.


    Anji, small for her age, was bundled from the eyes down in a recycled work mask and a makeshift balaclava. What little there was of exposed skin on her face was bright red with sunburn. She was entirely clothed in materials they had scavenged along the road; it was all lighter fabrics than they had at home and more suited to the endless sun and heat. The only remaining thing she wore from the start of their journey was her pair of handmade boots.


    Aana had made them herself, in a tradition of careful craftsmanship handed down through generations of women in their family. They were soft but durable, and had held up well despite looking a little worse for wear. When they were first made they had been decorated and lined with fur, but once the weather had begun to change, Atlas’s father had seen to carefully cutting it out to keep Anji’s feet cooler.


    Without the fur they looked oddly naked and foreign. Bare to suit the bare landscape, Atlas supposed. Her own shoes had been scavenged near the border. They were regular sneakers, and not all that old. Plain white with an unfamiliar mark on the side. It had been a lucky find, though she was loathe at first to abandon the comfortable warmth of her own familiar boots. She glanced down at the shoes, sighing, and took Anji’s hand.


    “Let’s go,” Atlas said. They started back up the hill together hand in hand.


    Peering at her granddaughters’ receding backs, Aana stepped around the back of the car to rouse the last member of their ragtag little party from his sleep. He was laying on a camping pad in the small swath of darker shade cast by the car, dressed like the rest of them in scavenged clothes. Instead of the work mask his daughter wore, he had a faded bandana tied around his face.


    His breathing was slow, restful. Aana grimaced, wondering how anyone could sleep in this heat. She crouched beside him and shook his shoulder.


    “Robert, time to go. Get up, son. ”


    He turned over onto his back and opened his eyes. They were bright blue, starkly contrasted with the rest of the family’s. His hair, too, was lighter, and his skin fairer. There was even a dusting of freckles underneath the red of his sunburn. He sat up and yanked the bandana down from his nose to wipe away sweat.


    “Yeah, I’m up.” His voice was almost as hoarse from coughing as Atlas’s. “Is Attie alright?”


    “She’s perfect but we need to get out of the sun. All of us.”


    She held out a hand to help him up. He grasped it, thinking not for the first time that his mother-in-law was far stronger than she appeared, and heaved to his feet.


    Immediately the sun beat down on his head where it peeked out from the shade. He made a sound of disgust and raised his hands in a futile attempt to ward it off. Together they rejoined the girls, traveling up the embankment and out onto the road.


    “There’s an old building this way,” Atlas announced hoarsely, quickening her pace to get to the head of the group without really thinking about it. It had become a pattern since they had left home: Atlas in front, flanked by Aana, then Anji, and Robert bringing up the rear. A sunburned and odd little army shuffling through the dusty wasteland, with Atlas at its point.


    Thinking of herself as any kind of leader would have been amusing to her just a few months ago. Now it felt like it had been her responsibility all along. She led the group around the side of an abandoned, decrepit building until they came to a broken front door. At one point there had probably been glass there, but the wind had long since swept it away. It was probably dust, now. It certainly felt like they were breathing bits of broken glass, anyway.


    “What is it?” Anji asked in a whisper.


    “I don’t know,” Atlas replied truthfully. She had scoped it out a little bit before going back to get them, but the best guess she had was that it had once been some kind of shop. Taking Anji’s hand, she gingerly stepped over the bottom of the door frame and into the shade of the building. It was only slightly cooler. Hardly different from outside, really, but being in real shade felt great on her burned skin.


    The building was small and divided into three smaller aisles by what had once likely been sturdy shelves. A counter, covered in dust and grime, ran along the left side of the building. Behind it there was a heap of bent and rusted metal that may have been a chair at some point. Trash littered the floor, and the walls were covered from floor to ceiling in faded graffiti.


    “Cozy,” Aana muttered, making the girls grin.


    Robert came inside last and surveyed the place with a frown. He immediately started kicking aside trash to clear a spot on the floor. One of the aisle dividers, which was already leaning askance when they entered, pushed aside easily when he tried it. He enlisted Atlas’s help and together they moved it farther back against the last aisle. This way they had a somewhat cleaner area of ground on which to sit.


    Anji dropped to the floor with a huff, sending dust whirls up in a hazy cloud. Her normally wide eyes wore a permanent squint these days from exposure to the elements, and it pained Atlas to see. Mentally she made note that if they happened to come across some sunglasses or goggles, she would pick them up. She didn’t know the extent of the damage that the dust outside could do, but based on what they had seen, it wasn’t likely that the answer was ‘none’.


    That thought sent her spiraling, so she shook it off and yanked the cloth down from her nose and mouth. Gratefully, she took a breath of mostly dust-free air, sucking it in as if it she were coming up for air while swimming. Anji copied her, tugging the medical mask down and inhaling loudly.


    “There. Better?” Atlas asked her, smiling.


    “Yeah, but it smells weird in here.” She wrinkled her nose.


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    “Yes well, had I known we were coming I would have told room service to freshen the place up.”


    Anji chuckled at that, stretching out on her back and gazing up at the collapsing ceiling. Her father took a seat beside her, instinctively taking her small wrist up in his hand and beginning to count her pulse under his breath. Anji acted as if nothing were happening.


    “This isn’t so bad,” the girl said to nobody in particular. “I bet we can find shapes in those stains up there. That one over there looks like you, dad, if you had a loooong beard.” Her dad smiled distractedly.


    “How long do you think it will be now, Aana?” Atlas asked her grandmother somberly as the elderly woman joined them on the floor.


    “Who can know, Attie.”


    “You don’t even have any idea?” Atlas tried her best to keep the frustration out of her voice, but with little success. “We can’t continue like this forever. If we don’t die of exposure, we’ll almost certainly be ca-”


    “Atlas!” Robert cut her off. He cut his eyes sideways meaningfully, indicating Anji. Anji hadn’t taken her eyes off the stains that littered the roof above them, but everyone could sense that her attention had changed. She was listening carefully to the adults, her shoulders rigid.


    Atlas changed her tactics. “We just really need to find some water soon, Aana. And maybe some clean clothes. Anji is starting to stink!”


    Anji sat up instantly, confirming everyone’s suspicions about her attention. “Hey now, you’re not exactly an olfactory pleasure to be around yourself, cousin!” She stuck her tongue out. Atlas returned the favor and they both laughed. Even Aana’s tired face had a hint of a smile.


    “Anji,” Robert said calmly. “Now be still, I have to start over.”


    Everyone fell silent as he quietly counted off the rhythm of her pulse.


    “One… Two… Three… Four….”


    His counting, hypnotic and somehow lulling, brought a curtain of silence down on them. Atlas felt her eyes growing heavy. They were not only tired from the sun and sand beating against them but from the long day, the long weeks of early rising, and the endless miles of unchanging scenery. She started to wonder about how many days they had been on the road, and instead slipped into sleep.


    Anji fell asleep shortly after, kept awake longer by her game of finding faces in the ceiling. By then her father had switched from taking her pulse to absentmindedly stroking her forehead with a long, callused finger. She stared at a stain that looked like a little like a tiger until it blurred into a restless dream.


    Robert encouraged Aana to sleep, too, assuring her he had the first watch. The older woman smiled kindly, humoring his attempt at chivalry by closing her eyes. It was purely performative; sleep was hard for her to come by these days. There was some type of rest to be found in laying still, though, and she used the time to let her aging muscles be still and recover.


    She could hear Robert preparing tea, not over a fire like they would have back home but simply by placing the kettle outside in the hot sand. When he returned to their spot on the floor the familiar smell of juniper tinged the air. Aana felt a wave of deep sadness. It smelled like home. And when the tea ran out, what would there be left of home?


    When he roused her later, she was surprised to find that she had in fact fallen asleep after all. She stretched the stiffness from her joints and sat up. It was dark outside, and Robert looked exhausted.


    “Son,” she scolded gently. “You should have woken me.”


    He grinned, looking years younger under the expression. “I know full well when you’re pretending to sleep, and I wasn’t about to disturb you actually getting some real sleep.”


    She patted his cheek, letting the mock disapproval fade form her face. “Okay, alright, point taken. But, I’m up now, so get you to bed!”


    “And a fine, comfortable bed it is,” he commented, yawning nonetheless as he stretched out on the bare floor. They had only one camping pad remaining, and he made the girls take turns on it. He scooted over to be near Anji— it was her turn on the pad this time— and fell promptly to sleep.


    “Tea, then,” Aana murmured to herself. She dug in one of Robert’s bags and found the packet of dried berries and pine needles. It wasn’t quite near empty yet, much to her relief. She pinched some of it into the still-warm kettle and stood with a groan. She felt her age more than ever in this heat.


    After adding a pour of their rapidly depleting water to the tea, she crossed to the missing shop door and twisted the kettle down into the sand outside to warm. The stars were out, briefly visible during this moment of calm winds where the dust wasn’t quite so pervasive. She quickly found the familiar line formed by the three runners, and felt again a pang of loss that went a few steps beyond homesickness.


    She remembered a thousand moments of gazing up at the same three stars, in cooler climates, with the familiar buzz of her village around her. Remembered the smells of salt and fish and fires as she bounced a younger Atlas on her knee and carefully taught the names of every star she knew. Pointing at each one and tracing the shapes of the constellations.


    Her two daughters hadn’t had much interest in the skies when they were children, but Atlas, perhaps taking after her name, delighted in them from the moment she had first become aware of their presence in the night sky. And the sea of stars that blanketed their part of the world had been dazzling. Shaking her head to bring herself back to the present, Aana stretched the stiffness from her legs and returned to where the others slept.


    When the sun had begun its slow crawl up past the horizon, Aana made her way back outside, where the slanting dawn light was already making the temperature climb. She moved into a pool of shade near the door and sat on her heels while her second pot of tea warmed outside.


    When it had, she drank down two cups—brewed weak to conserve their supply— and busied herself with unpacking and repacking all their bags. It was comforting to her, somehow. It reminded her of long, cool summer evenings spent cleaning the house. Cleaning not because anything needed tidying but because the long days stretched forever if they didn’t occupy themselves with something. It passed the time and made her feel useful.


    With the sun came a steady wind that offered little relief from the heat. The sand and dust kicked up, pelting the sides of their temporary shelter. The wind blew debris around and whatever dry, hardy plants grew in the shady spots around the building tapped out an eerie rhythm on the outer walls. It was a restless, lonely sound.


    By the time everyone had awoken, the wind had made travel impossible. They shared a breakfast of stale salted meat and scavenged greens. Anji, long past complaining about their underwhelming food options, grimaced around each bite of greens but choked them all down nonetheless. When they had finished, Atlas set about her usual chore of scrubbing the dishes out with sand. She had to cover her whole head, working blind to avoid the punishing sting of the wind.


    Robert and Aana worked to rearrange their grimy camping spot into something a little more suitable and welcoming. Nobody said it aloud, but they all feared they might be stuck there for far longer than they would like.


    Atlas and Anji whiled away the afternoon by playing word games that the younger girl made up on the fly. As the wind grew too loud to be heard over without shouting, they fell into silence instead, laying with their heads together and staring up at the stains on the half-collapsed ceiling.


    Sleep stole over the group again, one by one. It was brought on by the oppressive heat as much as by their exhaustion and boredom. Only Aana remained sitting up and alert, watching over her family as she always had.


    “Attie,” Aana hissed in her granddaughter’s ear. The wind had become a steady howl across the broken doors. “Attie, wake up.”


    Attie opened her sore eyes and sat up. What remained of her grogginess evaporated at the sight of her grandmother’s worried eyes. “What? What is it?” Atlas whispered. She glanced from side to side, found both her cousin and uncle soundly sleeping, and calmed slightly. “Aana?”


    “Come,” the old woman ordered. She disappeared so quickly that it seemed the word still hung in the air behind her. Atlas shrugged her arms to shake off the hours of sleeping on hard ground before standing and following Aana into the dark.


    At the doors the wind was much louder, sweeping across like breath over an empty bottle and creating a steady, haunting whistle. Atlas instinctively pulled her bandana up. She could hear all the grit in the air blowing and didn’t care to breathe any of it in.


    She almost yelped in surprise when her grandma grabbed her arm. Instead she fell silent, prompted by the ghost of fear she could read on Aana’s features in the dim light. The older woman’s free hand was pointing out the door, towards something on the horizon.


    Something bright, and growing. A light? A moving light. Frozen by surprise, Atlas watched as it grew nearer. Aana tugged at her arm again and she finally turned away.


    “What is that?” Atlas demanded. She had to shout to be heard over the wind.


    “No, not that,” Aana hissed, voice almost indistinguishable from the sand pelting the walls beside them. “That’s someone, but… behind them. Look.” She pointed again.


    Sure enough, this time Atlas shifted her focus and noticed a deeper darkness behind the light. It was vast and impenetrable, and, now that she was straining to make sense out of it, she realized it was also loud.


    “What…” Atlas trailed off, mystified.


    “A dust storm,” Aana’s voice was grim. “Whoever that is, they’re running from it. We definitely can’t risk leaving. I’ve no idea where the next shelter is. Safer to stay here. But…”


    “But that means this is probably exactly where that person is going.”


    Aana nodded. The two women peered anxiously out into the dark, toward the light, toward the massive cloud of dust behind it, and considered their options.


    The rushing sound of the dust grew louder and louder until it was absolutely deafening. Robert and Anji, awoken by the noise, joined the two of them in the doorway.


    “What is it, Aana?” Anji asked. Her voice was completely swallowed by the howling wind. She gave up trying to ask and instead peered out into the distance where they were staring. Aana turned to Robert. There was no trace of sleep left in his features as adrenaline took over.


    “Search the place for a weapon,” she shouted. Her voice was steady but demanded obedience. Robert immediately disappeared back into the store. Anji was looking from her grandmother to Atlas, eyes brightening with fear.


    “Attie?” Her shout was pitched high, her expression cautious.


    Atlas leaned down to speak directly into her cousin’s ear. “It’s alright, Anj. Don’t worry. Just being careful. Go back inside, I’ll be there in a sec.” Atlas tried on a reassuring smile but knew that if it looked anything like it felt, it wasn’t very convincing. Anji swallowed hard and followed after her father.


    “Aana… There’s not going to be anything. Shouldn’t we just hide?” Atlas’s attempt at imitating her grandma’s steady voice fell flat. She couldn’t keep the quaver of fear out of her words.


    Aana, stern faced, shook her head once and continued to survey the horizon. Her thin lips tightened into a frown. “Help him look,” she commanded. “Anything will do. A pipe… a stone. “


    Atlas blinked, unable to disguise the shock on her face. She felt the first real stirrings of fear somewhere in her chest, not at her grandmother’s urging to find a weapon but at the fear on the old woman’s features.


    Her grandma, her Aana… The unflappable, level-headed woman that had raised her… Afraid?


    The light was close enough now that they could hear the sound of whatever was coming. It was a long thin whine that sounded alien as it rose shrill above the wind. Really afraid now, Atlas let the noise chase her back inside.


    Aana fished inside the bag she wore slung over one shoulder and pulled out a small sealskin pouch. It was finely made, though covered in patches of rougher manmade materials. It was the oldest thing she owned. She pried the pouch’s drawstrings loose with deft hands—she was old, but hale— and carefully withdrew a small blade from inside. It was curved and resembled the blade of an axe, though smaller and without the long handle.


    It felt familiar and sad in her hand. She hefted it, slipping her fingers between the back of the blade around the handle. Held like that, the blade surrounded the front of her knuckles.


    In peaceful times this had been not a weapon but a tool, and she had to push back the memories that holding it brought flooding back. She exhaled in irritation. Old age, it seemed, was making her nostalgic. She took a deep, steadying breath, gripped the knife tighter, and watched the strange light in the distance grow as it raced across the desert towards their shelter.