Daring panted for breath and shaded herself with sweaty wings, wishing that she had thought to steal a water jug before making her big escape.
She'd been wandering around under the hot desert sun for hours with no sign of any civilization in sight, and from the position of the sun, Daring guessed that she still had an hour or two to go until sunset.
Perfect, she thought to herself. Just perfect.
She walked for about ten more minutes before pausing to rest. Daring was just about to start moving again when she noticed a cactus.
It wasn't the first cactus she'd seen, but there was a strange quality about this particular plant. Something about the color and shape just seemed... wrong.
Daring Do walked closer, curiously examining the cactus. It was a darker shade of green than the others that she'd seen and it seemed a little too symmetrical. She was trying to discern the species of cactus when she noticed something carved around the base of the plant.
Hieroglyphs.
Daring read them excitedly, translating as fast as she could:
Soft as a kiss,
Angry as a lion,
It waves through your mane,
And billows up sails
For a moment, Daring Do was stumped. Soft as a kiss? What was that supposed to mean?
And then the answer came to her: Wind. Of course!
But what was she supposed to do, blow on the cactus? She tried it, feeling a little bit silly. The ground beneath her feet shook for just a moment, but nothing else happened. She needed something stronger.
Daring flapped her wings, and the ground began to shake again. Encouraged, she flapped harder, lifting herself off the ground. The ground shook more and more, and began to move. Sand spilled every which way as her powerful wings blew wind towards them, and a doorway opened up underneath the sand.
Daring quickly flew into the doorway, glad to be out of the hot sun.
The passageway was dark and dimly lit. Hieroglyphics decorated the walls, but Daring didn't stop to read them.
She could recall the treasure map, seeing it in her mind's eye as clearly as if it was laid out in front of her. It had started in the lower east corner of the Arabian Desert, with a picture of a rock in the shape of a crown. There was a dotted line from that leading to a picture of a cactus. And the picture after that was-
A snake. A giant snake, right in front of her, with it's eyes shut, breathing in a slow rhythm.
It was sleeping.