We travel a further three miles that day, taking it in turns on the tricycle, before exhaustion claims us. I wait by the side of the road while Jade wanders off to find somewhere to camp, trying to find some shade under a shirt stretched across the handlebars. She is gone for nearly half an hour and I am becoming worried, but this does not stop me from falling asleep. When I wake up she is standing there, looking down at me, a strange expression on her face. Yet again I don’t know whether to be frightened or excited by this unusual, confident, aggressive woman.
We wheel the trike most of the way, but for the last few hundred paces we have to virtually carry it up the steep gradient. By the time we reach the small plateau she has chosen for our camp we are both exhausted, and sleep claims us before we can erect the shelter.
I wake up from a dream of cool water, innocent nakedness beside a waterfall, greenery and fruit growing all about. Jade is rubbing cream into my bare legs where the sun has found its way through the cotton of my trousers, which I see lying in a heap beside me. Before I am fully awake I see that curious expression in her eyes once more and her hands move quickly up to my groin.
Whatever stresses had been tempering Jade’s attitude to me earlier that day seem to have evaporated with the sun. Perhaps it was the tension of knowing what was to come, but feeling unable to tell me beforehand. Maybe the fear that we could have fallen into trouble leaving Malakki Town had distanced her from me; after all, she has been this way before. She is doing all this now as nothing more than a favour for me. Whatever the cause, she seems as happy now as she was last night.
The memories of the day, the trials of the journey thus far, the twinges from my chest cause me to remain limp, even as I watch Jade strip. But she works on me with her hand, her mouth, and soon we are making love under the astonished sky.
We drift towards sleep around midnight. I see a shooting star, but Jade says it is just another falling satellite.