.....
Yyaio returned to her senses some time later with the sun occluded by shade and moisture on her cracked lips. Water diffused through her parched body as if soaking into a sponge. With that reintroduced conductor, dormant processors could return to work, muscles could move, and the thoughts that had tapered away to nothing could resume.
She didn't know how long she had been out. Her internal clock had been hopelessly corrupted, and could barely tell how long each cycle of time took. All she could do was measure the flick of pulses from her sundered sensors, those bloodshot eyes, and try to come up with a best guess scenario for when it was, and whether the cycle that just passed was a millisecond or an hour. The sun staggered and stumbled in its track beneath the translucent veil above her.
As the water spread through her she regained her limbs, and sat up slowly. A terrible twinge ran up her side as she moved, and the synthetic muscles in her abdomen spasmed. She hissed in reaction as her head rose to look about her.
She had been stretched out on the ground in a small white tent, the walls nearly transparent beneath the blaring light of the sun outside. The air was hot. The ground was hot. Still, not nearly so hot as it must have been outside. And at the opposite side of the tent from her, a Vulcan man sat cross-legged, watching her in return.
His hair was white, and his face lined with crags as deep as the Forges' ravines outside. Dark eyes watched her like shadowed pits within the cliff face of his hard visage. He looked as ancient as the rocks, and stubborn as the relentless sun outside.
They watched one another for a long moment, and Savant couldn't quite explain the transaction that had taken place. Something was clearly exchanging between them as their eyes held upon one another, but the frayed ends of her ruptured neural networks didn't seem to have the self awareness needed. Neither smiled, neither moved, and yet there was some sublimated conversation that took place in that space between them in the shelter of the tent.
Finally, Yyaio broke the voluminous silence, her ragged voice seeming unnaturally loud. "Thank you. You saved my life."
He didn't speak, not for a long moment. She could see that he was considering her, the mystery of who she was, and what kind of a creature she might be. One as acute as this man seemed no doubt realized she was no Vulcan - she hadn't the ghostly other-presence, the ensoulment that living creatures shared. What could she be, and why was she here of all places?
When he finally replied, his voice was gravel-rough, as hers. They had both become denizens of the desert. "Who are you?" No politeness to be expected from him.
"Yyaio," she replied as she pulled herself to a painful sitting position similar to his. Her broken hip would not allow it, however, so she simply leaned, the muscles in her abdomen twinging again. It looked agonizing. Neither of them commented on it.
"I came here to learn. The desert. It was the only teacher left to me." she finally assumed a seated position she could hold without trembling.
He was as unmoving as the cliff face he so resembled. "Did you learn what you came to learn?"
Yyaio could barely remember what she was trying to learn at all, she could hardly describe whether she had solved her puzzles. Her hands balled into fists as she thought of that terrible fact. All of this sacrifice - the sacrifice of her very being - and she didn't even know if it had been worth it. Why was she doing this to begin with? What divine plan had pushed her into the Forge? She stared at the baked-hard ground. "I don't know."
He inhaled, and let the breath out audibly - a Vulcan chastisement if there ever was one. His eyes didn't waver from her. "It is fortunate I found you. You would not have lasted the day."
Yyaio didn't think it would help to tell him that she could survive indefinitely, in suspended animation, until finally the scouring sands stripped her flesh away layer by layer. "Yes. I'm very fortunate. I am in your debt."
He cleared his throat and let the matter drop by putting a canteen to her lips - the same canteen, she surmised, that had given her a new license on life. "We might as well travel together. We are both here for the same purpose."
"You are here to learn as well?"
"No," the ancient Vulcan replied as he capped his water. "I came here to die."
