A thing. I don't know what it means.

[pegkerr]

A woman in the middle years of her life looked up at the sky on a day that was like all the others, and yet not. She ground the flour to make her bread, and yet the bread had no more flavor than dust. She tended her children, but they wandered away, and she realized suddenly that they did not really need her in the same way that they did in the days when they were babes at her breast. She had friends, opened-hearted and true, but something plucked at her own heartstrings, stronger than any tie she had yet known. She held a hand to her brow and looked out over the desert, where the heat rippled over hot and barren sands, where it is said that one might walk for days and never see another human. The sky was lemon yellow at the horizon. The ashy taste of her bread told her that her time had now come. She scooped up handfuls of water and patted them until they were shaped like eggs, clear and yet hard as stones. These she put along with strips of dried meat into a bag of woven grass. She left the door of her hut without looking back, and walked into the desert, haven and home to none but the pitiless scorpion.