Cold wind. Cold heart. She was walking outside. To keep a promise.

It was 3:30am. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and the stars hung still in the early morning sky. She couldn’t sleep. 

She knew it was her last day. A desert full of scorpions, vipers, and lizards. The origin of every sandstorm and tornado. Standing at the eye of the storm, besieged by sand crusaders, she could only look up, expecting the moonshine to paint her skin and kiss her eyes. Now it was her time to leave. Nobody had managed to leave before, and she knew the giant claw would drag her back and throw her into the tempest again. But she would still keep her promise to the moon. Not for her future, but for her old friend, the moon. They’d promised each other, that during the eclipse, the moon would carry her to nowhere. 

She lifted her eyes. More than half the moon turned ocher. She’d never seen ocher before. She had seen the blush on young girls’ faces, the scarlet in monsters’ eyes, but never the ocher of the eclipse. It reminded her of bricks: solid and indestructible. Thinking of the ocher as the shadow of Earth in front of the moon, she thought of a fort protecting the innocent moonlight from the evil darkness. She felt satisfied. The chance to be saved by the moon comforted her. As if she were in a sturdy brick cabin in winter before a roaring fire, the sound of a mother’s lullaby nearby. She closed her eyes and smiled.

Then her smile froze. She felt an overwhelming force squeeze her body. The claw came as expected. Now she stood by the ruins of the brick cabin, as fragile as a new-born infant. Memories she once tossed from her mind reemerged. She heard every particle of sand become a scream, an acerbic curse. She saw the scorpions carrying gossip from everywhere to this desert. Then, the vipers hissed with their own judgements, and lizards squirted the venom of hypocrisy. They were her so-called friends. Everyone in her little group expected her to be biting sand, a scorpion, a viper or a lizard. And so she disguised herself to blend in. But her soul was in anguish. Every day, she lived under the shadow of her disguised persona. Her fort didn’t protect her soul but eroded it. She wanted to run away. 

She didn’t want to open her eyes. Her eyes would sting if she saw the gentle ocher light. It didn’t matter. She was dragged by the claw. Soon the moon would be too tiny to see. In an instant, with the surprise of her balance regained, she felt a soft blanket covering her body. She opened her eyes in confusion. A blaze of ocher. Suddenly she realized it was the eclipse. She found she was suspended in the sky. The moon was only one inch away. She reached for her finger, and then her whole body. Now she had become invisible. The cloak of invisibility allowed her to escape from the clutches of the claw. She looked down and saw the claw, wandering aimlessly. She saw the horrible creatures stop. The sandstorms paused for a moment, as if to mourn their loss. Then they resumed. Even before she said her farewell.

A great magnetic force pulled her onto the moon. Then she rode the moon, flying to nowhere.