The desert wind breezes through the village hidden in the sand, and onward to rasp against the curtains of the open window of the guest room. Ed chews his bottom lip as the gritty air ruffles his already messy bangs. He stares blankly at the darkened ceiling, forcing himself onto the study of the bizarre arrangement of unfamiliar lights he had seen above him earlier that night.
Stars are not remotely stationary, he knows. They move over time, usually taking eons to sweep their way across the universe, and insignificant humans hardly take notice of their grand dance in the heavens. The thought that they could have moved at all while he was in the dark has every little hair on the nape of his neck standing on end.
He thinks of standing in the timeless white, and that very.. timelessness ..causes a whole host of worrisome theories to arise.
Those pinpricks, which are really distant suns, should be in the very same places as he had last seen them. That they are not would indicate the passage of massive amounts of time.
He plucks gingerly at a particular theory, one which is gaining more and more weight. The thought that they're not even the same stars nearly has the heftiness of truth to it by the first inklings of dawn.
"The Gate must not only be a timeless thing, but possesses a much further reach than I ever dared to imagine," he whispers to dark. "Which would mean I'm truly screwed."
The first light of dawn chases the fleeing shadows, and he shifts to his side away from the window on the borrowed bed. He mentally grapples with the welcome distraction of crisp cotton sheets wrapping over his too thin limbs, and kicks his left false leg back to it free of encumbrances. He growls his frustration, the likes of which only the lack of sleep can bring.
The bed reminds him of something, of his time in what passes as a hospital in this place. His treatments had to have been very costly to these people.
They claim to not be his captors, and although the one called "Temari" said they had rescued him, he knows they were under no obligation to treat his ugly wounds, nor the resulting illness from the deep set infection in his chest. He thinks of the spear he pointed at this "Gaara's" vital points barely two days ago, and feels his gut wrench in shame.
Gaara didn't deserve to be treated like that.
He folds his knees up to his chest, and squeezes his gritty eyes shut. The problem of the strangeness of the night sky aside, there is a weighty debt here that he is responsible for, and a debt like that is something he can fix. But first he really has to get some..
His eyes snap open again at the rapping knock at the door. He wrinkles his nose, and wobbles to his mismatched feet. He looks down at his soiled boxers, and with a grimmace, wraps the clean sheet about himself before he reaches for the knob.
He hears the muffled jingle of metal, and widens his eyes as the knob wiggles, then turns on its own. Just visible through the forming crack is a face. Two others shift behind her, but Not!sheka catches his frazzled focus best. He knows he is staring.
"Good morning." She says cheerfully, filling the silence with a fake smile in place. "The uh.. hospital sent me..."
"Hospital" he understands well enough, but she speaks too quickly for him to catch the rest. He wrinkles his nose in absolute disgust at the thought of the place, puts his palm firmly on the wood of the door, and abruptly shoves. It clicks closed.
There are frenzied whispers. Some says "slower" and another says "stupid".
"I'm the med nin. Uh. I see you are...better." She yells out like he's a twit of a toddler, speaking far too cheerfully for his tastes. He chews his cheek, figuring her to be some sort of breed of nurse.
"No hospital." Ed says. "Fine I. Go away."
"No. No hospital." She says, and pauses. "Let me in. Lord Gaara wants me to check some..."
She babbles on, and Ed sighs as he again looses his tiny grasp on the language. He vaguely recalls Gaara pointing out someone he called a med-nin the night before as they made their way back to this room. The woman looked hard in his direction as he shambled through the door and immediately shooed out all the frowning people with the maps.
The gesture was a kind one, but as he has yet to manage to sleep, he swallows his yawn.
"No." Ed says, reaching for the word in his fuzzed up head. "No sharp. Thin metal sharps. Points. Arrgh! Metal things."
"Thin. Sharp.. Oh.! No no." She says. "I don't have senbon. None of us do."
"Senbon." Ed tastes the word, and swallows. He supposes it's their word for "needles". A few breaths later, he cautiously opens the door.
Not! Sheska walks in, and the two others dressed in khakis follow. He doesn't watch were they go in the room, as his attention is drawn elsewhere, and what he sees causes him to narrow his eyes.
In the hall, slouching on the wall, is the fellow with spikey pony tail: The one he once called "Pride".
Sent via a stray supercharged nano particle of unobtainium....
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