Salamander

Sal hadn't known real anger until now. He'd thought he knew it when that traveler spat on him, years back. He thought he knew it when his father whipped him bloody for killing that same traveler's camelephant.

 He'd thought he was furious when he struck down that shitstain of a father, only to be chased away from his tribe, with no family, no friends, nothing but the clothes on his back. 

But that was nothing more than a flicker. This rage, though, was a wildfire.

He lay in the sand, battered, broken, his right arm ending in a jagged stump just below the elbow.

 Weakness pressed his back into the sand, and he barely found the strength to breathe. The sands had always felt like home—warm, unending, something to hold him. Now, they felt like a grave. Around him, they took on the cool gray cast of nightfall, and he lay still as death itself, fury swirling inside while his body lay frozen in the open.

He wanted to laugh at the stupid, useless fate that'd led him here. 

All because of a mistake—a blundering, idiotic mistake. He'd thought those tribesmen knew what they were doing. He'd thought joining them was a chance at something more than the scraps he usually scavenged around the Oasis. When he'd seen them charging that merchant, he thought, Here's my shot.

A cut of the spoils. Maybe a real place among people. He could see himself in that moment, wide-eyed with foolish hope, throwing himself into a doomed fight.

He should've known better. 

What kind of idiot attacks a caravan without knowing who's guarding it? Those sand-slinging idiots hadn't stood a chance. The mercenaries tore through them, men trained to protect and punish—soldiers in everything but name. Sal should've run. Or fought better. Anything but drop to his knees and beg. But he'd seen that chance, that one-in-a-thousand chance, and he'd taken it like the young fool he was. And this—he looked at the mutilated end of his arm—was the only mercy he got.

A coarse, choked sob escaped him, half-choked by the sand he gripped in his remaining hand. It trembled around his knuckles, loose grains shifting, half-buried nails clawing into the cold. Every nerve in him screamed that it wasn't fair, that he wanted to go back and gut every damned soul in the Oasis. He could almost feel it, the satisfying snap of their bones, the sound of their gasping breaths. But what was he?

 Just a boy. Not even sixteen. A bleeding, broken boy with no future and no one left to care.

Hot tears ran down his cheeks, only to be cooled by the night's breath, the desert air turning frigid as the sun sank beneath the dunes. His vision blurred, his throat burned. He closed his eyes, waiting for whatever took him first—the cold, the pain, or the weakness.

Then he heard it—the flap of wings cutting through the quiet. His eyes creaked open, blurry and half-believing. A crow perched before him, feathers almost glowing under the moonlight. It cocked its head, its onyx eye studying him, its feathers gleaming like polished obsidian.

Beside it, as if conjured from some silent wish, lay a small jug of water.