Which had woken her? The dream, the heat, or the need? The need to ask, to be answered. That had been her life for days - waking from one dream into another, unsure which were her memories or another's. Now though, she knew she was awake. Never before in a dream had she felt such unrelenting heat, an exhaustion that ached down to the very marrow of her bones. Have to find shelter, have to get away from the sun, was all she could think, her tongue like sand in her mouth.

If it hadn't been curiosity that drove her to investigate the corridor, it would have been raw, unrestrained instinct - escape, escape, escape. Escape the heat, the sun, the searing sand under her paws. That dislodged stone, that corridor, offered shade. What did it matter that it also offered danger, the unknown, possible death? So too did the scolding world outside of the pyramid's gullet.

Abandoned by rational thought, Esther scrambled into the corridor's darkness, away, away, away from the sun. Her tongue hung from her mouth, her eyes wide, and her body trembled with not only fatigue but a sudden wave of uncertainty and compulsion. Some part of her, at least, had enough sense to lean against the stony wall, dragging her scent along the path...

She wanted to reprieve and answers - something she slowly began to remember once more as the memory of the sun's heat drifted to the back of her mind - but not desperately enough to die in the dark.