The ground rushed up to meet her; dunes rolling in pale arcs beside a savage strip of beach, an ocean surging beyond it.
She gasped as gravity took full possession of her trajectory as it struck the sand hills with bone-rattling force.
Metal screamed, and the cabin snapped and spun.
Her body slammed into the restraints, breath ripped from her lungs as the world fractured into sound and impact.
Darkness closed over her in a single, merciless wave.
High in the mountains that overlooked the Silent Desert, Idan worked the fence line that ringed his hut.
His hands moved in a steady rhythm as he set wire and stone back into alignment.
The endless cutting wind carried grit and heat, scraping across his skin.
He paused mid-motion when a violent psychic surge struck him, a pressure behind the eyes piercing enough to wrench his focus inward.
His head lifted, and his muscles stilled.
He turned toward the horizon where the arid land thinned into pale dunes and the sea darkened into a hard, shifting line.
A tight coil developed beneath his ribs, and he took a ragged inhale.
A rush of terrified emotion, not his, flowed over his senses.
He caught the impression of an unmistakable scrape of lungs desperately pulling for air, followed by a brutal impact and then nothing at all.
Silence fell.
Idan straightened and drew a deep breath, the world narrowing to a single point of intent.
The fence, the hut, and the mountain plunged away from relevance.
He stepped forward and then broke into motion, turning into a streak of force and purpose, racing toward where an explosive impact had just swallowed a scream.
Sheba woke with a jerk, choking on salt and grit, chest spasming as she dragged air back into her lungs.
She twisted with the effort, muscles screaming as she knifed upright, hands clawing at nothing.
Glass fragments and sand spilled from her curls and scattered down her shoulders.
She coughed until her vision steadied, then forced herself to take stock.
She was alive; however, she was also half sunken in a dune.
Damn.
As her fingers skimmed over her skin, she encountered bruising across the forehead and arms.
The skin was tender and already swelling, but nothing appeared broken.
She saw no blood beyond shallow cuts. Neither were her limbs injured, nor was there any internal pain agonizing enough to ring alarm bells.
A concussion, however, hovered at the edges of her awareness, a dull pressure at the back of the eyes, throbbing through her skull.
Where was she?
Sheba touched the ground around her with tentative brushes, and her palms encountered cool, wet seashore.
