Birds circled overhead. My eyes tracked them, even in the distance. Their huge black wings beat against the warm current. If they found me, I'd be their gift. I wondered faintly if they would see me or smell me first. From what I knew about the birds, I guessed the latter. But I didn't know much. As I watched them, the sun moved gradually above the horizon, and the heat encased me, boiling my insides. The thought of this managed to move me. I extracted the pinned arm from under my side, and propped myself up on my elbow to have proper room to be sick. The contents of my stomach landed on the sand in a nauseating yellowish green puddle. If I had anything left to give, the odor would have had me retching again. But I was empty. After rolling onto my back, I couldn't see the vultures anymore. That was good. They were beautiful in their own morbid way, but I was giving them a feast, I didn't need to admire them as well. At this point, I'm not sure why my eyes remained open. They were heavy, but maybe I didn't have the strength to allow them to fall. That would be my final choice, but I had enough respect for my loved ones to not make it until I had to. Their faces swam in front of me. A particular cloud in the corner of my vision became my mothers face. A sharp, hooked nose and large, beady eyes. She reminded me of the birds. As if she could hear my thoughts, my cloud-mother looked at me, her eyebrows meeting in the center of her face, the way they always did when she disapproved of me. Which wasn't often. But this was a good sign. My mind was going, my body will follow.

Somehow, at dusk, I was still breathing. If you could call it that. Every inhale sounded like a whimper, and the breath leaving my body was shallow. Almost as if the air I was taking in was declining as the sun made it's trip across the sky. Wind-swept sand pelted my face. My watering eyes offered any moisture left in my body to the desert. A crinkle of plastic meant the empty water bottle capturing my last kiss for eternity was blown against a rock. I loved that water bottle. It was one of a dozen backups in my hiking pack, I never intended to use it. And yet, in the mile walk through the desert to this bit of unremarkable sand, it was my lifeline. My hope. Periodically, I would shake it next to my ear and take the sweet sound of water swirling around inside as a sign that all, was not yet, lost. If I had known that walk was just a steady march to the place I was going to die, I might have taken my time to do something more productive. I could have written letters, perhaps, to my family. Not that I had much to say. Surely, the people who kept me alive from when I was born (a difficult job, I might add) would not find much comfort in messily scrawled 'I love yous' knowing that ignoring everything they have ever told me was exactly how I ended up in this situation. Alone, thirsty, tired. It wouldn't redeem me, but the one thing I could do for them was hold on. So I kept my eyes open, and I waited.

And I'm still waiting as the wingbeats draw closer.