Time seemed to play tricks on him in the deprivation of the sandstorm. It seemed as if he'd been walking for days, then it felt like he'd only been walking for minutes. With no way to tell time, he was set adrift in a sea of his own speculation. He had no idea if it was night or morning, or even afternoon, because the heavy wind-driven sand blotted out all light. If there were any light to blot, anyway. He had already been tired before he started out, so his physical exhaustion was no marker on time. Fighting against the wind and the sand tired him even more, and his exhaustion added to his temporal vertigo. Tarrin could go as long as he wanted without sleeping, just as he could sleep any time he wanted for as long as he wanted. Because sleepiness never entered the equation, he had no stick by which to measure his exhaustion.
The deprivation of senses, other than the loud howl of the wind, left him in a curious state of reverie. Most of his thoughts focused on that girl in the inn back in the city, and the strange feelings she incited in him. It had been a very long time since he'd felt those things. It had been a long time since a complete stranger hadn't caused him to fear. It had been so long. He didn't quite know what to make of it, but he was relatively sure that it wouldn't be that easy. He figured that his tiredness and his long isolation had caused him to want company, even to the point of quelling his feral impulses. And the young girl was probably the only one who could have gotten that close, the one person in the inn that did not in any way present an openly intimidating or aggressive appearance. She was a young girl, and Tarrin's human memories told him that young human girls were very rarely dangerous in a physical sense. They may have a tongue like a razor, but a slap from one of them did little more than sting. Because she did not seem threatening, Tarrin had allowed her to get closer than he would have allowed anyone else.
Her getting close to him wasn't the core of his quandry, however. It was how she made him feel. When she handed him the scarf, he felt things that he hadn't felt in so long, he wasn't entirely sure what they were. His entire life was dominated by suspicion, fear, and anger now. Very few positive emotions managed to get through it, aside from his love for his family, friends, and his goddess. The girl had caused him to feel… wanted. That was the only way he could describe it. She had given him her scarf, but she had also given him her trust, and her smile, and her attention. It was something he didn't expect, nor did he expect to feel good about her attention. To his own shock, he hadn't reacted to her badly, though she was a complete stranger. That was the first time that had happened with someone other than a Were-cat since he left Suld.
He just couldn't explain it, he couldn't forget it, and he couldn't let it go. He played it over and over in his mind, his surprise when she handed him the scarf, the surge of impulse to fight or flee… then it just, went away. That was all. His defensive instincts just disappeared, washed away by the realization that she was being kind to him. That had to be the last thing he expected, that was why it took him so long to understand what she was doing.
Mist had changed. Could he change too? He doubted it, at least not so quickly. Part of him didn't want it. In this mad game he was playing, he needed his feral nature to help keep him alive. After all, there was nobody he could trust out here, nobody he would trust. Absolutely everyone out there would turn on him if they knew what he had. Maybe even that girl. Most likely, the combination of the long isolation and his weariness had subdued what he considered to be his normal reaction. The girl's smile and her gift had helped ease the lonely ache in his heart, an ache for his sisters and his friends. That had to be why he reacted to her in such a positive manner.
He did find hope in the exchange, hope that he could lose some of his harsh ferality. Despite needing it, it did cause him pain. It hurt to be afraid all the time, it hurt to drive away people that, for all he knew, wanted nothing but to say hello and chat a while. People that would probably make good friends, but for the fact that they were strangers, and that made them suspect in his mind. He accepted what he was, and he lived with it, but he did not like it. He did not like finding it so easy to kill, and have no regard for the lives of those around him. He did not like seeing the fear in the eyes of those that met his. It was why he had tried to change, at least before all the chaos in Dala Yar Arak ground his attempts to a screeching halt. He wanted to be more like Triana. He felt just a little hope that he could do just that, but it would have to be later, when he wasn't in so much danger.
When he finally noticed light coming through the sand, he stopped and tried to figure out if it was morning or afternoon. If they'd been walking for minutes, or hours, or maybe even days. He'd been lost in thought, only responding when Sarraya told him he was drifting off course. He noticed that the wind was starting to lessen. "Sarraya, we're coming out of the storm," he called to her over the lessening wind. It had gone from a ear-splitting shriek to merely a loud groan. "How long have we been out here?"
"I'm not sure," she shouted back to him. "At least several hours."
"That light means it's daytime, so it's been longer than that," he called back. "Maybe morning?"
"Like it matters," she shouted ruefully. "Are you feeling alright?"
"I think I have sand just about everywhere, but otherwise fine," he told her.
The going became noticably easier as he walked. The wind stopped trying to knock him over, and then walking against it became easier and easier as moments passed. He didn't have to hold on to the cloak anymore, letting it go and flexing a paw that ached from holding a tight grip for a very long time.
After some time of walking through the decreasing wind, he realized that it no longer howled. It was merely a gentle breeze, and the features of the land were beginning to become apparent to him as the dust and sand in the air thinned out. Most of it was caught up in the sandstorm, and he noticed curiously that it wasn't piled up all over the ground. The ground looked windswept to be sure, nothing but clumps of some short, wiry grass that kept the soil from being picked up, but there were wide swaths of bare ground, eaten away by the wind to form gentle bowls in the earth. Some of them were fifty spans across. He'd walked through a few of them, so he knew that the bottoms of them did tend to collect dirt, dust, and sand as the wind eddied within them. Visibility improved progressively moment by moment as the sandstorm's back edge passed over him, until the sun shone through the haze and he could see nearly half a longspan ahead. The breeze dropped to a whisper, and there was a curious silence under the ringing in his ears caused by hearing the ridiculously loud wind howl in his ears all night. He stopped, then turned around to see a black cloud of swirling shadows broiling behind him, moving away from them. He lowered the scarf from his face and took off the visor, sneezing once before letting out a relieved sigh.
"That's something I'll be sure to tell my children," Sarraya laughed as she came out from her hiding place in his hood. She sneezed a few times, then put a bit of her gossamer gown over her mouth. "I hope the dust settles," she complained. "It's getting into my eyes."
"It has to settle eventually," he told her. "I get the feeling it's going to be in the air for a while, though. Look how high up it goes." He pointed up into the murky sky, caused by the dust. It reduced the sun to a pale white disc that struggled to illuminate the ground beneath the cloud of dust. "Be glad for it, Sarraya, and don't hope it settles any time soon."