Hoshor Plains I Wear My Sins On My Sleeves

Colin wipes sweat from his forehead. He's sitting hunched over beneath a tree, gnarled and chronically bereft of water. The sky turns a violent red, the horizon hums with heat. It was so unlike the foggy and sudden sunsets back home as if the day couldn't wait to leave, barely putting its shoes on before it slammed the door.

He sighs, stares upwards past the branches. Welcomes the surge of vertigo that starts from his toes and swallows his heart. A dull ache lingers in his joints.

Donovan gets up and leaves, and Colin cannot help but leave with him. He straightens his coat, sparing a respectful nod as his mind drifts towards promises of a desert. Vague images of endless sands, an alien palette restricted to virulent blues and deep orange, the wasteland where after his baptism, Jesus had agonised for forty days and forty nights. The thought of it sends a chill through him, or perhaps that was the wind.