Rosewater Oasis Plume

For @Akhre.

Nokht had been curious ever since the other boy arrived; his senior by a few months, but he'd spent long enough cooped up in the sesh's quarters, healing from his injuries while Khusobek fought with his own, that he knew him to be one of the mazoi's sons. Redsand fur lightened by a touch of fire, a pair of amethyst eyes set into face that seemed all too at ease for the realities they faced.

Amethyst eyes borrowed from a fellahin woman who surely laid dead beneath the rubble, all the same as his father, and his sister.

How did he surivive? Was he there, amongst the panic? Were his screams an addition to the symphony that filled that flooding cavern? Nokht felt a familiar guilt clawing a hole into his chest. He had left them. All of them. Would the redsand boy be angry at him?

He did not know, and he could not rest with it, not that Nokht rested much anyways.

So today, he came forward from the outskirts, limping his way through the vibrant halls that flanked the oasis looking for the fiery figure with an offering of a small fish in his jaws; one of the few things he could actually catch, plucked from oasis waters.

When he did find him, he found himself hesitant to approach. He mustered up a mumbled ...Hey. and fidgeted with his paws against the sand.