A hot gust scoots her hair. The anthropologist glances toward the window, quill poised over her letter home. Dragon's Sigh, the Melahrians call these winds.
Dearest, I am among barbarians, she writes, thinking of her fiancé in cooler climes, who believe a simple breeze is a promise from their lizard god that He will return.
And yet shouts rise from below. Trembles, earthquake-sized. Darkness falls. Another sigh slaps her, fiery. Staring out, she sees the sky's become a maw. With fangs. She leaps up screaming, hair already burning. Sees her letter curling black, the last words she wrote.
I love
Author bio: Rhonda Eikamp lives in Germany, but is originally from Texas, where summers do get hot enough to set your hair on fire. Stories of hers have appeared or are forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet and The Journal of Unlikely Cartography. Catch her blog at http://writinginthestrangeloop.wordpress.com/ .
Sigh is part of 101 Fiction issue 4.
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