He had sand in his mouth. The feeling was memorable, jarring violet, brown and dark grey. The three mixed to create a hideous colour. It had sickened him the first time it happened. The same sort of retching feeling as nails on a chalkboard to some. Distinctive and repulsive. He was twelve back then, had fallen off the bottom of a wagon, and had never seen sand like this, out here in the dunes.
Years had passed since that first time he'd tasted sand. He'd grown, he was a man now. Still young enough for other men to call him 'boy', old enough to have a young wife and children of his own if this were another life. It didn't sicken him anymore, it hadn't for a long time. Not because the feeling wasn't revolting, but because he was so used to it by now. Fallen - usually kicked, pushed, shoved, punched, cut or wrested down - face in the dirt. Tasting sand. Chewing it. Breathing it in. Choking. Turning it over around his tongue, sometimes he would deliberately rile himself with that feeling while he was down, and instead of the cringe it drew from him the first time, it would flare him into a fierce anger like fire in a worked forge. Strength and fury enough to rise again and make whoever had done that to him taste blood instead of the coarse quartz grains.
He tasted it now, though, and he tried to remember how this had happened. He'd fallen, but no one else was here. He hadn't been fighting, but his wound was hurting him. Agonising pain, while heat flared through him. Or was that the sun, unforgiving and leering from above? It always did in this accursed, bright, beautiful place. No, it wasn't the sun. This agony originated at his right collarbone where a savage new burn mark had remained open. It, too, was covered in sand as he lay there, face down, taking that resigned bite out of the dune.
"Take him." The final words Gazakh, his mentor, had spoken. He was to be the payment of his mentor's debts to the Pasha, Untikam. Ryheric and Gazakh were fugitives at this point in time, captured on the border to South Gondor after a month of pursuit and a dozen fights and close calls, all of the other men, their "allies", had been slain. The last three right before their eyes, flayed by Untikam himself just before Gazakh's morale finally gave way. He traded Ryheric's nineteen year old life to save his own. Ryheric would be taken by the Pasha's men as a slave, either to serve him or to be sold on. Currency, commodity. Untikam's men had dragged him off by force to brand him. He wasn't so easy to drag, it took three men while the youth thrashed and fought them with all the fury of life and death at his call. Branding was the way to mark a slave. It was not a station one ever left or escaped from, except through death.
They held him down and as the red hot iron was brought forth, Ryheric's fight paid off. Not before the brand had sunk in hot and hard enough to burn him to the bone. The brand swept off with the struggle, marring the symbol and leaving him with an injury that would not close for months - he had killed one of them in the struggle, then he took his chance and in madness, for the first time, he ran.
Blindly he ran. He didn't know if anyone pursued him, he just knew he couldn't stop. For days he didn't. Now here he was, tasting familiar sand as the sun beat down on him in the dunes. He was alone, he was starving. That in itself wasn't unusual, he had so often been starving and racked with hunger in his short life. But now he knew he was dying. The fever took him, the delusions - the agonising pain of poisoned blood that felt like it was ripping itself apart inside him. So much heat, so much burning. He was parched. He recognised he needed water, but he was so weak he couldn't move. All he could taste was sand.
A shadow fell over him, blocking the relentless noon sun. A tall veiled figure stood over him and he heard the sound of a baying dog. The figure whistled, and the beast came. He heard it panting and fancied in some delusion or other that he was about to be eaten by a large wolf - like in one of those fairytales he'd heard in Dale as a small child. He closed his eyes. He was ready.
... He remembered almost nothing of the weeks that followed. But the dark clad figure was a traveling healer from Minas Tirith. A wealthy, well connected scholar. He had hoisted the boy up onto his courser. The travels in these parts were extremely dangerous, and he wanted to leave swiftly. He fretted over the added burden. But he couldn't leave this young one to die. He hesitated at his Haradrim clothing. But when Ryheric had looked up at him, he saw grey eyes. Gondorian eyes. That was enough to stay his doubt.
He took him back to Minas Tirith, and for weeks, he saw him through the fever with the best, most expensive medicines and high quality, modern treatments and facilities. The boy never said a word to him. One day, when his health was regained, he was gone. The man somehow felt sad about this, but relieved... He would live.
Ryheric gasped in a breath. That wasn't sand he was tasting at all. It was the inside of his cheek - a rough texture. The stitches Winnie had tied in to close the new, gaping cut there.
Winnie? Where was he? He looked around, he saw no sun, no sand. Nothing bright. Khaki green everywhere. Euch...
Hazily he saw beside him a smear of colour - a person. Blue she was, deep and bright, unfaltering and fully focused. Another nearby, blue-teal.. Though her outline was dulled grey with what he knew was fear. A third, male - he was blue as well, though there was less fear. His outline was pale yellow.
In and out of his vision flitted another, keeping herself in the background.
He knew she was red, somehow. He knew it, or remembered it somewhere in his mind. Though he only saw violet in her - frayed black at the edges. Loss of control. A deeper fear. Panic.
He wanted to tell her it was alright. He wanted to fight her, to see a splash of red chase away the black as he knew it sometimes could. But he couldn't. He tried with slipping thoughts to remember who she was, but he couldn't.
He shivered. His skin was still burning against the cool Breeland air of evening as he fell back into unconsciousness.
