This is the modified version of shifitng sands, sorry it took so long - I am just recovering from a period of illness.

Evil men used to run this place, evil men have always run it.  The elders disagree with me, nostalgia has blocked their senses.  Nostalgia makes you remember only the good.  I envy them, we all in live in fog but their eyes are glazed over with remembrance, despite being false and senile it gives them hope.  The younger have no such escape.

  The evil men spoke with good words and good intent, this disguised dark hearts.  Those words reached us, touched us and fooled us.  It was like they opened up our hearts and poured wine into each and everyone one of us, leaving us drunk on hope.  You would have supported them too.  When you live in a perpetual vertigo, living in the present is all you know, thinking of your past and future leaves you spinning and giddy.  When you suffer you forget the vain ambition of men with clever words, not because of stupidity, it’s just that living itself becomes a vanity.

Gnarled fingers, broken hearts and broken lives.  This is this countries only renown.
  The story of this place is sad and I have no regret in telling it but I do have hope and it lays with you my reader.  I hope these words outlast me, once I have joined the shifting sands, my final resting place, no stone will mark my grave.  I will join the faceless many beneath my feet but I will make you remember us.

  Unbearable heat beats down on me like a man with a relentless whip, lashing at my flesh yet leaving no scars, scars I wish I had so that I had some testament to my endurance.  The heat sears at the sand too- beating, slashing and biting at it, unlike me the sand is scarred, cracks appear for miles around.  That’s where I see them; the faceless many, blackened capillaries and tendrils forming bony hands, fingers – grasping and clawing at my feet.

The sea of desolation stretches before into infinity like blistered gold.  So much death in one place, waves of terror and horror used to wash upon me.  These emotions still beat upon me but I cannot feel them anymore, I wish I could still feel, still sense.  The horror of this place has made even living foreign to me, my beating heart, the noise of my breathing; they are all distant curiosities.  It is like watching life in a fogged mirror, you know vaguely the reflection but can only guess at the emotions the alien figure staring back at you is feeling. 

My name is Kiya.  I am sixteen years old and I am pregnant.  I only noticed after my bleeding had stopped – thinking I was ill at first, and then it suddenly dawned on me.  I have been hiding it from my mother, wearing loose clothing which thankfully is tradition for the women to wear in my village.  My bump is quite small.  Walking for forty five minutes to get away from the village for some time to think, I finally reach my destination.  It is an outcrop of rock with a tall dune leading to its peak.  I always come here to think; this time my thinking place offers no answers, just procrastination and fear.

I darkly entertain the notion of getting rid of it.  I have heard gossip which says it is quite easy.  Those thoughts retreat into the dark corner of my mind where they came from.  How can something born of love be so looked down upon?  When my village finds out they will kill me or at least banish me into the desert.  I smirk slightly at the irony – this whole land is an abortion- full of dirty and unholy things that needs to be expelled.
  My child is not one of them.

  I sit on my outcrop of rock overlooking the golden sand; I feel the harsh sun but also see the vast gold which stretches to the horizon.  For all its horrors I can see beauty here too, courage swells in me and I realise my unborn is beautiful, beauty amongst a landscape of inescapable demons.  Clutching my growing belly I despair.  The corners of my eyes water with tears.
   My tears dry quickly but they are still easily felt.
   I am grieving for two.