In the desert, the sun shines an awful lot.
Edward pushed his hat back and squinted up at the sky repeating his thoughts aloud to himself. 'An awful lot...'
The blue of the sky was painfully bright, filtering away to a white kind of glare around the sun and boring straight through to the back of Edward's eyes. He tugged the peak of his hat down again and bit his lip. Surely the sand couldn't stretch on for much further without bringing him to some kind of watering hole.
His mind drifted like an anchorless dinghey back to the last time he had seen more than a few drops of water collected into one place.
He shfted his feet on the sand, and sighed. Then he touched the side of his resting desert-dragon. "Come on Ahmid, let's get going."
The red and black creature lumbered to its feet and waited patiently for him to mount, it huge spiked head moving slowly from side to side.
Edward grabbed the leathery edges of his saddle and pulled himself up, metally cursing the person who had first thought of clipping desert-dragon's wings to make them easier to ride.
"If you had been able to fly, old man, we'd have been there days ago," he said, patting the things neck. "Come on. Gee up."
The pure and undiluted idiocy of saying gee up to the ten foot long monstrocity rankled at the back of his mind as Ahmid started moving towards the next row of sand dunes.
Exactly what had he got himself into this time?
From up ahead, something caught the sun and reflected it baqck at the sky in a irritated sort of way. The glinting caught Edwards eyes, and he could feel his breath catching way back in his throat.
"Hmmm... water, do you think, Ahmid?" His voice cracked three or four times and he scowled. In the past few weeks, he had forgotten much of his training , but not that of never letting your voice betray your emotions. A swear word hovered on the tip of his tongue, but was forced back just in time. It would never do to let Ahmid pick up any swear words. The keeper might not take back a foul-mouthed dragon.
The thought of having to keep Ahmid with him for the rest of his life, not to mention the two hundred Yalum bill, stopped Edward from saying anything for quite a long time.
More than long enough for Ahmid to lumber over the brow of the dune and slow to a stop at the spot from where the glinting had been coming.
Edward slipped down from his saddle, and winced as his thigh came is sudden contact with one of Ahmid's spines.
"Fra-" he stopped short and gritted his teeth, thinking nasty thoughts as loudly as he could.
Then he scanned the sands in front of him. There was no water, but that did not come as much of a shock. After fifty such dunes and fifty such discoveries of waterless far sides of said dunes, he had become rather jaded.
But the glinting did interest him. It jarred his vision again, and he followed the dancing light until he saw a silvery edge of - something lying in the sand.
He bent down, and Ahmid chose that particular moment to nuzzle him in the behind affectionately.
A desert dragon's affectionate nudges are - forceful to say the least, and Edward found himself flat on his face ion the sand.
"Pfft - AHMID!!!" He spat granules out of his mouth and scrabbled around for his glasses. Ah. His fingers closed around both the delicate frame opf his spectacles (which had broken a long time ago, but he kept for reasons of sentimentality) and something else.
He sat up. In his hands was a shiny blue-edged mirror.
For a moment Edward fought against the feeling rising in his chest. Then he laughed.
"I'm rich!" The yell broke from his lips as he carefully cradled the precious item in his fingers. "I'm rich, rich, rich, rich, rich!"
