Captive of a Desert Heart: When Fate is Foretold in the Sands, Love Defies All

In a sun-drenched expanse that spanned boundless miles, majestic dunes undulated like golden waves under the expansive sky. Stony ridges rose in the distance, strewn with ancient boulders cast aside by long-dormant volcanoes. Deep shadows pooled among the dunes and rocky outcrops as the sun dipped toward the horizon, casting an ominous veil that hinted at lurking darkness.
As the sun touched the golden surface, painting the dunes and rocky terrain in stark black silhouettes against the fiery sky, a falcon emerged. It soared gracefully, its wings slicing through the cooling air. Spotting its target, the bird descended sharply, alighting on a rock that jutted from the sand like a sentinel. The woman is vaguely aware that this creature is staring at her; his beady eyes have lined her up as his next meal.
The sunset blinds her, and her eyelids are so sore it is agony to move them. Aware that her face, neck, arms, and hands are blistered, when she tries to move her head, a sharp stabbing pain slashes across her forehead. Her ankle is throbbing, and memories of the morning slid through her mind; she remembers twisting it when dancing, before the attack, before they were taken as captives. She had trouble keeping up; she recalled that she kept stumbling and falling further, her captives had probably left her for dead.
Looking around in the setting sun, there is nobody other than her in this vast desert. They must have left her to die. Bracing herself against the pain that hammered her temples, she forced herself to sit up; the desert sands seemed to spin around her. She cried out in pain, and the Falcon on the nearby rock echoed her cry. He was still looking at her with his beady eyes; she suspected that he had never stopped looking at her; with what little energy she had left, she waved her arms. Still looking at her, he cocked his head as if he was listening for an instruction. Her voice was hoarse, but she managed to tell the creature to go; he suddenly spread his wings, and it was then that she noticed the small leather ties on both of his legs.
With a pounding heart and feeling as though she would faint, she rose to her knees and watched as the Falcon rose into the air and hovered above her; with incredible speed, he then swooped down, and she found herself crouching down arms around her head in self-protection, and then she heard three distinctive whistles, and realised that these whistles were meant for the Falcon. Somewhere out there in the desert, the falcon master was calling him to return; her pounding heart felt as though it was going to burst out of her chest; she didn’t know if she should be happy that there was another human nearby or terrified, she knew falconry was a popular sport in this part of the world.
With an exhausted feeling of fatalism, she sat down on the sand. She did not have enough voice to call out; the effort of telling the Falcon to go had taken that. Across the desert, she could hear the whistle again calling the Falcon, who answered, flying upwards on its large graceful wings, a majestic image against the flaming colours of the reseeding sunset. Below the Falcon, she could make out the hazy outline of several riders on horseback; as they got closer, she realised that the horseman wore cloaks; stones were shifting and falling down the embankment beneath the hooves of the giant horses.