Arikh, Part 1

“It is not that I do not love you,” I swore, watching the color drain from poor Shukri’s face, “But that I promised myself to another.” Arikh, my dearest love, had somehow found me. I had heard his voice call to me under the moonlight. It was quiet at first, and I feared it was merely an apparition, an artifact of my own guilt. But it was clear as day now. I would not leave him again. The sands swirled around me in the blistering wind as I struggled to follow the call of his voice. I needed to see him. To embrace him. To know he had forgiven me so that I could forgive myself. I climbed to the top of a dune and shielded my eyes from the wind, staring off into the dark. He called my name again. Closer this time.