Ill Advised

Having apparently learned absolutely nothing from her struggle to walk up a hill in the summer heat, Echo slowly makes her way across the vast desert, already beginning to feel exhaustion settle into her circuits. She had a feeling that this was a bad idea even before she departed, but for one reason or another, a bunch of other Amicabots and Nauticavas had decided to go out on desert explorations recently, and… well, it’s not like Echo had anything else going on at the moment. Although, why she decided ‘suffering in the desert’ was a better option than ‘being bored in a place that has normal temperatures’ is beyond her even now.

But, despite everything, the grey Amicabot has found ways to make it marginally less horrible. Travelling at night means Echo at least doesn’t have to deal with the worst of the high temperatures, and treats her to a spectacular view of the night sky. An endless expanse of stars stretches out above her, uninterrupted by trees, or buildings, or anything else that might typically break up the horizon. She almost wants to say that this view alone makes the whole trip worth the effort… except for the fact that night travel spares her from exactly none of the other drawbacks of being in a desert. 

There is sand everywhere. No matter where Echo goes, there always seems to be at least a thin layer of sand coating literally everything. Given Amicabots are quite advanced technology, it takes more than a bit of sand in the joints to actually interfere with the average Amicabot’s functionality, but that doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable to deal with. And unfortunately, while the scorching desert heat would absolutely punish Echo for her hubris, most likely forcing her to shut down until some other explorer stumbles across her and brings her in for a second round of repairs, it turns out the desert at night goes through very low temperatures instead; and the blue eyed Amicabot is only a tiny bit better at coping with those. 

The cold leaves her feeling far more sluggish than usual, and Echo hates every minute of it. She’ll admit, she much prefers it to the heat she’d have to endure otherwise, but she still can’t wait until she can experience normal temperature ranges again. Which… she’s frankly starting to think might be soon. Much to her irritation, Echo has found absolutely nothing of note the entire time she’s been out here. She’s seen a few desert critters, and plenty of flora adapted to the conditions, which she can’t help but find amazing in their own right… but nothing to write home about, not really.

An orange hue begins to creep up the horizon, slowly concealing more and more stares from view, and despite the stunning sight, Echo begins to feel incredibly uneasy. The sun beginning to rise means the temperature will soon follow suit, and she is in no way prepared for that. Her large, fluffy ears flick nervously as she looks over the area, in search of literally anything she may be able to take shelter in. The fact that all she can spot is a rocky outcrop not too far ahead of her does very little to ease her growing anxiety about the inevitable heat to come… but either way, it surely has to be better than absolutely no protection, right?

The grey Amicabot wills herself to keep trudging forward, even as she can feel her mechanisms begin to protest, even as the sand in her joints scrapes at her casing. With any luck, that outcrop will have some kind of nook or cranny that Echo can hide out in while she waits for night to fall again; but if worst comes to worst, she’ll just have to carefully follow its shadow as the sun blazes its way across the sky. Either way, it should give her plenty of time to plan how she’s going to make her way back out of the desert… Echo has this horrible feeling deep in her core that if she keeps pushing her luck for much longer, a day will come where she simply can’t find a shady shelter to bunker down in no matter how hard she looks.