I was accustomed to the intense heat, but that morning it seemed to me unbearable. Perhaps because I was looking forward to completing my goal. I get like that when I’m excited, which fortunately seems to be happening more sparsely as time goes by. It was early in the morning and I was walking barefoot in the scorching sand, but that hardly bothered me. From the day I’d left my village at the northwest of Abydos, I’d been walking tirelessly, day and night, through the desert, my mind focused solely on my journey, my driving purpose.