Timeless Sands
Copyright© 2026 by Sonarflash2026
Chapter 1
Doctor Alisen Ali Andersen rose to consciousness with a jolt. For a moment, the Canadian Egyptologist thought she was still drowning. She puzzled.
‘Drowning?More likely, she would be dying of thirst in the Sahara. Unable to move a finger, she struggled to rise, to swim up through something more viscous than water. She tried to reach, to fight out of an enfolding cocoon, struggling to grasp consciousness that rippled beyond an elusive, shimmering surface of unusual light.
Before terror could claim her, a calming touch washed through Ali. Like magic, her fear melted away. Impressions and images began flitting at the back of sight. Ali started to remember, this time without panic or fright.
She had been abandoned, left alone in the midst of desert fastness. Their small team had been caught in the middle of a war. Separated from other vehicles, they sheltered in a wadi. Tom Wescotte, Her post-doctorate assistant and their Bedouin guide had gone to replenish water. The young native insisted there was an oasis with good water only ten or fifteen kilometres east. He urged them to remained hidden in the wadi. Her assistant refused to stay behind, taking empty canteens and a Russian AK-74. Ali remained.
Before the men left, all three concealed the Land Cruiser with tarps. Battles had been raging all around the wadi.
Hunkered down beneath camouflage tarps beside the red Toyota, Alisen panted, starting to feel impatient. Worse, she was frightened by the sounds of distant gunfire, the explosion of mortar shells, and even more powerful blasts. Twice, jet aircraft screamed overhead, their passage followed by explosions.
After hours of blasting heat, Ali was worse than thirsty. Heat of the Sahara was too intense for one born and raised on the coast of British Columbia. Fear of discovery had been riding her, a constant, debilitating terror.
Now, even as Ali tried to will herself to conscious awareness and daylight, she remembered more. After two nights of waiting, she had taken down the camouflage tarps. Keeping one tied to the Toyota’s roof, another folded over the hood, she drove east, descending further into concealment of the dry wadi. Parts of the narrow cleft through rock and sand were tangled with dry thorn bush. Boulders often made the route nearly impassible. Cliff walls reflected blazing sunlight. Gradually Ali came into a gorge, though any shade was still too hot. Carefully navigating around boulders, over bald rock and through scraping thorn branches, she sought refuge. Greyish limestone cliffs held fissures and Ali kept hoping to find a cave.
Heat trapped between rock walls became even more oppressive. Then, she spotted an eroded fissure, a dark cleft in the overhang of a chalky, white limestone wall.
Almost paralyzed, still feeling as though held in a viscous fluid, Ali recalled the urgency, the relief at discovering the prospect of cool shade.
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