Going Forth by Day
Darkness surrounds and penetrates me, the darkness of earth, the earth of Egypt. Every land is different in the way it feels, the way it looks, the sounds and smells, and the taste of its denizens.
With the rising of the sun came the wail of the Keening. I lay safely within my temporary earthen grave in a dimly shaded corner of the hotel garden. And yet I felt my very being spasm with the shriek that was like unto the screams of men in battle. It brought with it terror and the heat of a desert Sirocco. And I lay parched and wracked with a thirst I had never known even as a vampire.
I was not conscious. Rather my mind wandered in a nightmare landscape of all the battles of my life. Sand dunes rolled outward in all directions while a ball of ruby and gold hammer the desert with harsh unyielding light and waves of rippling heat.