ALL NOVEL 4. Oasis
This was, without a shed of doubt, the worst morning Aloe had experienced in her life. She woke up dehydrated and soaked at the same time, and when she stood up she almost fell back to the bed as her head spun around.
With some difficulty, Aloe reached for the waterskin in her backpack and took some hearty gulps. Hearty meaning the whole contents.
She groaned as not a single drop of water came from the waterskin. It wasn’t enough. At least now she didn’t feel like she was going to die.
Aloe thought about dressing herself but was repulsed by the idea. Not only she was soaked in sweat, but all the dust in the dirty bed had adhered to her body. Feeling dirty was an understatement. She felt like a mine slave worker rather than an upper-class citizen, and that she couldn’t allow. Rather than a drink, what she needed now was a bath.
“I mean, there’s an oasis nearby...”
The girl tiptoed to the door, trying to open it but finding resistance. She then remembered she had locked it the night prior and quickly snatched the key from the desk and unlocked it. Whilst covering her chest with one arm, she opened the door with her free hand. Aloe peered to the outside, the oasis almost blinding her as the light from the sun reflected from the water's surface and into her eyes. There was obviously no one outside, yet she could help to feel some shame as she opened the door half-naked.
Shyly, Aloe put a foot on the outside, the clear sand feeling like melted rocks under her.
“Ouch!” She removed the foot as soon as it touched the sand. “Yeah, barefoot is a bad idea.”
She didn’t want to dress. Her desert garbs weren’t exactly clean, but they would then be foul if she wore them in her current state. Her boots though? Yeah, those were already torn asunder.
Aloe put on her thick boots and went outside the house. She took the first steps slowly, gawking at her sides in paranoia. She was in the middle of nowhere in the desert, but that didn’t stop her unconditional fear of someone out there currently spying on her.
She continued shifting her head from side to side, her steps heaving on the sand with the imprints of her boots. It was only when she was covered by the shade of a palm tree that she finally left her nervousness aside and removed her arm from her chest.
A sigh of relief left her body.
“Coconut palm and date trees, huh.” Aloe inspected the vegetation of the oasis.
She hadn’t had much time yesterday as she had arrived by night and even if that weren’t the case, she wasn’t in the physical nor mental state to check it out.
“I guess I can drink from a coconut until I refill my waterskin.” She had heard they were hard to open, but she had brought a knife just in case. It couldn’t be that hard. “Now that I think about it, should I be bathing in the place I’m going to drink from?”
Aloe lay her hand on the nearest palm tree, resting her weight on the trunk as the shade covered her nakedness.
“I mean, I’m going to have to boil it either way, and the oasis is pretty big, so I guess there’s no problem. Right?”
The oasis was colossal, making her think there had to be a subterranean river providing the water as the reserve was way too big for it to be formed by the very rare and fleeting rains, maybe the Eyana River or a tributary. It was difficult estimating the true size of the oasis, but it looked far bigger than Sadina’s main plaza. And Sadina wasn’t exactly a small city.
Before getting into the water, Aloe glanced at her surroundings once more. Just in case. Hesitantly, she approached the oasis shore and took off her boots, feeling the vibrant grass on her feet.
“Grass... It’s not that common...” She had heard of lands where only grass grew for kilometers without end, where graceful animals lived in peace. It felt impossible.
Dispersing her thoughts, Aloe removed her panties, leaving them on top of the grass (which looked far cleaner than her boots), and run into the water. She almost regretted it as it was unbearably cold, something you wouldn’t expect in the middle of the desert, but quickly acclimatized to the temperatures. She finally relaxed once the water covered her from the neck down. The waters were clear but at least now she recovered her decency.
“Oh~” Aloe groaned in satisfaction as the dirtiness left her body. The dust peeled off her skin. “This is far better than a hot sand bath.” She wasn’t used to the cold, but the water was a magnificent sensation. She couldn’t have allowed such menial use of water back at home. Or at least for free.
Then an intrusive thought hit her.
“There aren’t any creatures in the oasis, right?” She knew that aquatic animals lived in the seas and rivers, even lakes, but a closed shouldn’t have any critters inside. It shouldn’t.
Aloe took a step back in proud precaution, not at all scared, then took some air and submerged her head into the waters. At first glance, it didn’t appear that any fish or worse creatures were swimming around, but just in case, she hastily scrubbed her body and hair as best as she could without bathing equipment and stepped away from the oasis.
The thought of... things swimming around unsettled far more than someone peeping at her. So much so that she had completely forgotten her fully naked state.
That was when she realized that she didn’t have any spare clothing. She hadn’t intended this travel to be a comfortable or a long one, but now looking back at it with the gift of foresight, she should at least have packed a change of underwear.
Considering her panties were the dirtiest set of clothing she had, Aloe grabbed them from the grass and rinsed them on the oasis. She couldn’t do a great job as she lacked a washing table, but it was better than wearing the used underwear back.
Aloe put her boots back and hung the dripping piece of cloth in the closest palm tree and proceeded to inspect the oasis. Not only she needed to wait for her panties to dry, but also her hair, so this was the best way to kill time.
The massive oasis bustled with plentiful fauna, far more than one would expect in the inner desert. In the undergrowth mostly composed of grass there still lay some stray flowers, not enough to be called a patch, but enough to give more color than just green. Aloe recognized the yucca and the jasmines, but most of the plants’ names were beyond her.
What interested her the most were the palm trees. The oasis was dotted with two kinds of them. Ones bearing coconuts and the other bearing dates. The sheer number of trees would allow a person to eat and drink indefinitely without depending on outside rations or the water of the oasis.
Aloe’s stomach rumbled in protest.
“I kinda forgot to have breakfast, didn’t I?” And also supper. But she left that unsaid.
The dates cried for her attention. She didn’t want to go outside of the grassy ground of the oasis until she was finally dry as there was a considerable stretch of sand toward her grand- her house. And going unto the sand whilst wet was just screaming to the desert to get dirty again. So, Aloe did the next best thing and grabbed a date.
“Hmm... sweet.” Aloe indulged herself in the sweet taste of the date. Almost maybe too sweet.
She now wanted something to drink but taking a sip from the oasis without boiling the water was foolish at best or a death sentence at worst. She wasn’t a doctor, but everyone knew that simple diarrhea could be lethal. Aloe also doubted she was able to open one of those coconuts with her bare hands. It was best to wait to go back to the house and grab a knife or set up her kit to boil water.
After downing the date, Aloe cleared her sticky hands from the date on the oasis and donned her now dry underwear. Even after realizing again her nakedness, she didn’t feel ashamed, but maybe... elated.
That didn’t stop her from running all the way back to the house, locking the door, and dressing herself in heavy desert garbs in a matter of minutes. Maybe the lack of clothing didn’t make her uncomfortable, but having her skin covered was far healthier for her psyche.
Aloe breathed in and out to calm herself. She grabbed her backpack and went back to the oasis, peering occasionally on the horizon, truly hoping nobody had seen her even if that was highly, highly unlikely. Once she arrived back at the shore, she took some materials out of her backpack and set up the boiling kit.
Calling it boiling kit was a bit of a misnomer as it just was a set of wooden stands and a thin and light metal cauldron. Aloe grabbed a loose piece of thatch fallen from a palm tree and put it under the hanging cauldron. With the lighter she had used to light her scribe’s light, she started a few embers on the thatch slab. This wouldn’t be enough to make a fire but unlike her clothing situation, she had packed enough dry wood to make a modest campfire just in case she was stranded on the desert. The night could truly be unbearably cold.
Once the fire was controlled and wouldn’t die out without supervision, she filled the cauldron by diving it into the oasis and then hung it on top of the fire. She would only need to come back after the water finally began boiling.
With her water situation solved, Aloe’s focus shifted to the main reason why she had come into the middle of nowhere to begin with.
The greenhouse.
