31. Exhaustion (Patreon)

It took her a while, but after spending a solid half of an hour sitting down on the ground with her back to the wall, Aloe decided to stand up out of sheer boredom. Her head no longer throbbed in pain, but it had been so bad that she wasn’t able to take a nap in the meantime.

“Ugh...” Aloe groaned, her knees and thighs protesting at the ‘sudden’ movement. She instantly repented as her throat began to itch once more. Ugh... so she groaned in the confines of her mind. I shouldn’t have done that.

With the grace of a dweller on hard ground, Aloe managed to fully stand up, but she kept her hands on the wall and desk as her knees threatened to topple her.

The girl panted in exhaustion, a mundane activity like standing up had drained her of her energies. Hot air entered through her mouth, though the temperature was way lower than when she first fell to the ground. Aloe lay all her weight on her hands as she supported her body on the desk. Her arms had more strength remaining than her legs, for some reason.

Though the motion wasn’t with its cons.

Aloe snorted and whimpered as the palm that evolved the cumin seed received all the weight of her body. Hold! Hold... Not only did she hold the tears, but most importantly, the screams. She didn’t want to make more of a mess of her throat.

The reason why her palm hurt so much was because she clutched her hand before with such strength that it was a miracle she hadn’t drawn blood. Nonetheless, the marks and the wounds were still there. And the pain.

Fuck. There was no subtlety in her cursing, only plain unadulterated pain. I wanna die. It spoke of great lengths about her that this was the first time she said that expression jokingly.

She may be exhausted, but her body was in a somewhat good state, so slowly she made her way out of the house. The moment she opened the door, she became instantly more refreshed, a weight removed from her being. There were a lot of those as of late. The fresh, albeit dry air poured into her nostrils, lending Aloe newfound strength. Still, that wasn’t enough.

Aloe eyed her satchels but quickly decided against it as she looked into her body. It wouldn’t do shit, my deposit is almost full. The problem isn’t my vitality... She sighed as her boots pressed against the ground, shyly sinking into the sand. I feel as if I have just done a soldier’s training regime or something.

Her mind was better than before, far from optimal conditions, but it allowed her to think as she slowly made her way to the oasis, one heavy and deflated step at a time.

It was definitely the constant refilling of vitality. Aloe theorized. Sure, I’ve used up a lot of vitality, but rather than the consumption, I feel like the problem was that instead of running out I just kept pushing my body by giving it a fuel that wasn’t its own. She tried to come up with an analogy, but nothing came to her head. This cannot be compared to stamina no longer; one can’t just take “consumable stamina” to recover themselves.

Ugh... The girl mentally groaned. Karaim, why couldn’t you have researched more about the vital arts in general instead of writing about plants? And even then, you didn’t make that good of a job.

Badmouthing a dead man was commonly considered disrespectful, but as she was technically using her mouth, just keeping it to herself, there should be no problem. Or that was what Aloe thought.

By the end of the walk, Aloe was panting once more, so much sweat pouring out of her body that she feared she would dehydrate. It had been awful, it had taken five minutes for a path that it didn’t even normally make sense to talk about the time it took to complete, whether it was just minutes or seconds.

“Huh...” Aloe mumbled weakly as she saw the extinguished campfire of her boiling equipment. The fire has died out... Hopefully, there will still be some water inside, I’m sooo thirsty.

Fortune seemed to smile at her for once as Aloe found a respectable amount of water in the cauldron. Without thinking it twice, she grabbed the metal pot by the handle and started drinking from the brim. Water pushed down her throat audibly, so much so that she had to stop as her throat began to hurt again.

“Ah...” Aloe panted, searching for air as she almost finished the contents of the cauldron in almost one go. I needed that. She didn’t even care that the water was hot from being outside or stale, any dehydrated person in the desert wouldn’t turn away any perfectly drinkable water.

Whilst her mind remained as exhausted but active as before, her body had benefited from the refreshment.

Aloe left the cauldron as she had found it, though she didn’t bother to refill it nor restart the fire. Instead, she approached the oasis. The sun reflected on the crystal-clear water with a powerful orange glow, it was already afternoon. If she wanted to do it, this was her last chance before it got cold out here.

Shamelessly and tiredly, Aloe disrobed. In a time not too long ago, she would have been reticent to get naked outdoors, but as time passed and her mental faculties were found temporarily diminished, she couldn’t care no more.

Her desert garb was not the easiest piece of clothing to remove as it was made not only to withstand the harsh choke of the sun but also the deadly temperatures of the desert regardless of the time of the day.

Her satchels fell to the ground audibly with thuds and clinks, Aloe stored a myriad of miscellaneous items inside, from heavy ones to metallic ones. And whilst some may be fragile, she couldn’t bring herself to care any longer. Her exhaustion, both mental and physical, was getting to the point where she had difficulties keeping her eyes open.

She pranced over to the shore of the oasis, only to be reminded that underwear was a thing as her socks got wet on the water.

“Ugh...” Aloe groaned defeatedly. “Not the wool...” The girl painfully removed her woolen socks, and then also her undergarments. “You dumb...” She stopped herself as self-deprecation would only lead her to another downward spiral, one maybe even worse than the first one.

The drenched socks did work as a wake-up call as she moved her clothes from being littered across the dirt into closer to the grass, her underwear protected to not get even dirtier. Now that she was also close, Aloe lazily grabbed the towel that she always left on the drying rack, as it was already getting chilly so she feared for her health once got out of the water.

Aloe, with lead feet, stepped into the water. Even though the air was dry and hot, the waters were gelid. She found the low temperature surprisingly soothing. Her body was hot from a lot of factors and the cold helped her, especially her migraine. She enjoyed the coldness far better than the hotness.

The girl walked into the deep parts of the oasis as did the desert travelers from stories enthralled by the whispers of djinns into the sands, submerging herself as did those poor folk did on the sand.

She stayed underwater for a long time, her body feeling many times lighter on the liquid than on land. The buoyancy overtook her, feeling free from the weight of her body relaxed her. Every second that passed, she felt cleaner than the one before. Grime was being stripped away from her body slowly but inexorably.

It was then that she noticed that the uncleanness she felt wasn’t only physical.

There was a darkness in the back of her heart, she was well aware of it. It wasn’t a predator that hid in the shadows pouncing to strike its prey, but a construct of her own devising. She would face it, but not now.

That was a battle for later, one that she wanted to postpone as much as she could.

Time ran out as her body craved for air and Aloe resurfaced. She panted as heavily as she did before, but curiously enough, even though she was literally drowning – not a figure of speech any longer – her breathing was more vigorous than before. More lifeful.

The bath hadn’t resolved the taxation on her body, not even close to it; but like a paved road, it was now easier to walk than on the treacherous sands.

Aloe looked into her vitality, the chillness of her vital energy recovered, a cadence of life instead of weakness and decay. Perhaps the mental factor is more important than I thought... She swam back to the shore as the breeze exposed her to a potential cold.

But for the first time, Aloe didn’t feel happy from taking a bath, only plainly invigorated. That should suffice...