The darkness was something she was getting very used to. The darkness and the soft calming feeling of how it wrapped around her.

Mary was lying down on a straw mat in the middle of the desert. There was a light tarp over her body hanging from a few branches in such a way that it kept the fabric off her body but only by a few inches. The ground was still warm from the hot sun of the day, and there was only a soft whisper of a wind tonight, a wind that did nothing to remove any of the lingering heat from the day.

Mary was getting very good at this, at least this part. She relaxed her body and thought of a perfect blackness that surrounded her. It was a trick that she had read a long time ago about meditation. If you have trouble emptying your mind, or you find that thoughts still intrude on your meditation, think of a perfect space in which you reside, total and perfect darkness and complete silence.

She could still feel the straw mat beneath her as she breathed evenly and deeply. She let the darkness envelope her mind and body and soon she felt that surreal feeling of sinking down. Her body was nothing more than a shell, a casing, that her consciousness sank into. As she sank, she felt her arms and legs lengthen till they were miles long, she could barely feel her hands and feet, they were so far away.

She wrapped herself in the perfect darkness and silence of her meditation where she neither wanted or needed anything. She just wanted to float in this perfect space deep within her, far from fear, or pain, or worries, or stress. But her duty nibbled at her causing the slightest twinge of guilt. She knew she was doing this for a reason and that her pack and the whole Mountain may be counting on her. If she failed, if she never succeeded in her task, there was no guarantee of the other group's success.

Her mind worked slowly, sluggishly, decoupled from her body it was hard for her to find a reference point in the perfect void her consciousness now floated. this was due in small part because she didn't want to break her meditation, and mostly because it was hard to think in this space and even harder to focus. Thinking back to the mountain and the training that she and all the other Scouts had gone through, she tried to force her mind back on the rigid rails of sight that she had learned all those months ago. This deep relaxation was only a small part of it. Coming out of the tower after days of training felt like waking up after a series of dreams and nightmares that you couldn't wake up from. It had seemed normal at the time, but looking back on it, here, with almost perfect clarity, removed from her ego, she wondered if she hadn't been manipulated in some way, changed.

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She let those thoughts slide off her. This was not the place for such memories, no thoughts at all should ruin this place and she tried to gently move her mind the way Elder Huan Li had shown her. But the thoughts of being in the Tower wouldn't leave her. There was nothing to fear here and yet she did, fear had trickled its way down into the perfect space and her eyes shot open and she sat bolt upright, toppling her tent in a heap around her.

She struggled and kicked and fought her way out of the light tarp and jumped to her feet. She placed her hand on her chest and tried to ease her breathing, to stifle the fear that had gripped her so completely. Her body was covered in a cold sweat that the night air was not cool enough to dry, so she stood there trying to get her breathing under control as she looked around wildly for whatever had caused that fear in the first place.

She tried to focus, fighting against her panic, to hold on the memories of what happened. What caused it, Mary? Think! But she couldn't hold on to the memories and before she could really focus, they were gone. She scratched her head in consternation. It was there a second ago, what had made her so scared? Why had she ruined her little tent that she would have to set up again? She sighed into the night sky. She was being silly again, trying to run away from or hide her failures. She started picking up her tent and set it up again.

There had to be a way. She was a scout for Christ's sake! And more than that, she was tough, tougher than this problem was anyway. She just had to focus and work through the problem. She remembered meditating and dropping down, then when she tried to reshape her thoughts, to reach out with her senses, it all…came apart. But why? Why was that as far as she could go? What was stopping her?

She stood up with her hands on her hips. She hadn't survived growing up and avoiding the pitfalls that other girls her age, fell into by just giving up. She just had to keep pushing, like her soccer coach always said, "If you don't push through the pain sometimes, then your body will keep telling you sooner and sooner to quit." A good point there, though this time it wasn't her legs that were heavy and her lungs that burned, this is something she was admittedly pretty new with, but the principal remained sound.

She slid down back onto her straw mat and started again.

* * * * *

Furaha Jabari sat cross legged facing the fire that her father had built. She wore a light wrap around her midsection, and a light open tunic on top of that that was synched around her waist with a broad leather belt. She wore simple brown leather pants that fit nicely into her sturdy boots.

She was looking into the fire. The group she now traveled with was not to her liking. She didn't trust the outsiders. Far be it for her to really question them, she knew they weren't lying or trying to hide anything, and it really wasn't up to her. But still she hoped they would fail. She would do as the Matriarch wished, but she didn't have to like it.

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