The sun boiled the blue ocean that attempted to quench the flaming ball but to no avail. The blistering rays melted the desert's golden sand into peach white shards of glass, smoothed and rounded by the untouched, finer sand below. The shards hissing and clacking at the wind that disturbed its morning. Slipping the sweet scent of cactus flowers and freshly baked and sugared bread through the soft ground. An old, comforting smell that awoken the old woman. Rising from her bed of the finest silks drenched in dyes that make the richest jealous, royal waves crashed into lava pits of reds that were burned by the brightest golds which were cooled by lavender purples and plump greens which grew on each plush pillow. A rough sheet that had seen better days covered a bed made up of the finest sand and fibrous wool from sheep to prevent the sands from shifting too far for comfort. She stretched as she stood and a soft rug embroidered with round beads, her old bones groaned in denial as they grasped a knobby, withered beach wood cane. The cane clacked against the polished stone floor as she crept down a winding maze of rugs that littered her sunken cave's floor with no theme whatsoever. There where all sorts of patterns that dizzied with all sorts of maddened colors but each where painstakingly hand made. As she walked she slipped off her nightgown into a sun bleached red dress with a large v slit in the front and a smaller one, barley past her ankles in the back, on the hips was stitched a stiffer soft gold fabric and tailed half way down the skirt, laying there as if she wore a bustle.
Sunlight warmed her pale skin as she reached the slanted mouth of her home. Stepping onto the boiled sand she pressed her heel down in a semi circle until it gently clacked against sandstone. She stared directly into the sun as if pondering its very existence. Turning her body toward the winds which carried now the smell of roasting cocoa beans. She walked on. Stopping only when her heels didn't click and clack on stone and pressing her heel down in semi circles while ever so slowly brushing the sand away. Her nose following the strength of the carried smells.
The sun baked her back but she barely cared about the heat. It had grown to be her hope over the years, she had complained about it like everyone had when they were younger but she later realized how good such heat and light was. After all it what the most important part of her favorite meals, without it ovens would take too much time to warm up and waste more wood and papyrus, taking away from afternoon tea time. Time hags like her would much rather spend chatting than getting up to check on their pastries and drying grains for beer making. Hags being the only class of women in the desert tribes trusted to make drinks for all ceremonies, holidays, and chief meetings, or just for lazy summer days like this.
She stopped when her cane swung and stopped, hitting very worn sandstone pillar that held a wood porch roof up and level with the flat stone one of the tiny hut. She brushed her fingertips firmly over the porous stone, holes that the sand had eaten its way through. She knew the cosy hut well, facing her would be a paneless window that peeked into a tidy, shelves stuffed to the brim with trinkets living room. Next to it would be the tattered cloth door, on the ground beside the wall the wood trapdoor to the only cellar in the whole, lazy, sun basking village. And behind it the gate to a wild, weedless garden with a small gum tree sapling thriving in the shade of a single, towering cocoa tree.
Her hand lead her to the tattered door which she then walked through slowly, feeling the cool, shaded air seep through the cloth to her head. Walking towards a couch covered in soft animal hides like hares and the rare foxes that hunted in the desert during winter nights, she sat down, resting her cane on the wood armrest.
Another old woman dressed in a simple tan apron covered in flour and a pastel dress sat across from her and placed a large silver platter full of jam and cheese covered danishes, big gold soft yellow crusted rolls powered in sugar, and two crystal mugs of steaming, golden tea smelling of cactus flowers onto a glass and wood coffee table in the middle of them, she chuckled softly, "You're late today, Fi, is your age finally slowin' you down, sis'tuh?"
Fi scoffed as she slowly took a pink danish, the warm flakey crust still golding, smiling, "Me? It's you who's slowin down, Su Lan, ya didn't bake while the sun was at its peak again!"