Clive's Chronicles III: The Cursed Campfire

The Sahara at night was a different beast entirely from the Sahara by day. Gone was the blinding, oppressive glare, replaced by a velvet-black canvas speckled with a billion indifferent stars. The air, which had been a dry furnace, now held a chill that seeped into Clive’s very bones. And the silence—oh, the silence! During the day, it was a vast, humming emptiness. At night, it was a living, breathing thing, pressing in, amplifying every rustle of sand, every distant shhhick of a scorpion's claw.

Ferdinand's caravan had made camp in a shallow depression between two modest dunes, a spot the old man insisted was 'lucky.' To Clive, it felt less 'lucky' and more 'conveniently out of the wind for a human, but still terribly exposed for a creature of his delicate sensibilities.'

A small, sputtering campfire cast flickering, monstrous shadows onto the sand. The other camels—Archibald, Kamila, and the perpetually grumpy Bartholomew—were already settled, chewing their cud with the rhythmic, almost hypnotic cadence of ancient philosophers contemplating a particularly stubborn existential problem.

Clive, however, was restless. He disliked the night. It obscured his hooves, made the already tricky business of walking a perilous ballet of missteps, and worst of all, it was when the thoughts came. The thoughts about dust mites, and the structural integrity of his humps, and the terrifying possibility that one day, he might run out of good things to ruminate upon.

“Honestly, Archibald,” Clive murmured, nudging the older camel with his nose. “Don’t you find this oppressive? The sheer nothingness? One feels so terribly…unanchored.”

Archibald merely snorted, a plume of warm, dusty air escaping his nostrils. His eyes, reflective in the firelight, held the calm indifference of a creature who had seen a thousand Saharan nights and found them all equally uneventful.

Jamal, the merchant who still harbored a slight grudge about the Earl Grey incident, was humming a tuneless ditty as he arranged his wares under a canvas lean-to. Ferdinand sat by the fire, stirring a pot of something that smelled suspiciously like lentils and despair.

“Can’t you just rest, Clive?” Ferdinand grumbled, without looking up. “You pace more than a frustrated poet.”

“My dear Ferdinand, resting is for the untroubled mind,” Clive replied, trying to imbue his voice with a tragic dignity. “And my mind, I assure you, is a veritable tempest of philosophical quandaries.” He then shuddered dramatically. “And, if I’m being perfectly frank, a chill. A profound, internal chill.”

As if on cue, the campfire, which had been burning merrily enough, suddenly flared, shooting a tongue of bright orange flame three feet into the air, then just as abruptly, dimmed to a pathetic, struggling ember.

Jamal stopped humming. Ferdinand paused stirring. Even Archibald, the embodiment of camel stoicism, lifted his head slightly, his ears swiveling.

“Did anyone else see that?” Clive whispered, his voice catching in his throat.

Ferdinand poked the dying fire with a stick. “Just the wood, Clive. A bit damp on the inside, maybe.” He tried to relight it with a bellows, but the flame refused to catch, shrinking further until it was just a red pulse in the darkness.

A sudden, sharp gust of wind, cold and dry, whipped through the camp, kicking up a swirl of sand. It was a strange wind, not the usual consistent desert breeze, but a single, focused blast that seemed to emanate from nowhere and vanish just as quickly. The air grew perceptibly colder.

Kamila, the anxious young camel, let out a nervous little whicker. “I don’t like it,” she muttered, burying her nose into Bartholomew’s flank. Bartholomew, in turn, let out a low, rumbling groan, which was as close to comfort as he ever got.

Clive’s heart, a truly magnificent and surprisingly fragile organ, began to thump against his ribs like a trapped drum. He imagined it was the ghost of a particularly irritable Bedouin, upset about the lack of good internet access.

Then, from behind Jamal’s lean-to, came a sound. Not a human sound, nor an animal sound. It was a delicate, tinkling noise, like tiny bells made of spun glass. It was beautiful, ethereal, and utterly out of place in the desolate Sahara.

Ferdinand snatched a small, rusted dagger from his belt. “Who’s there?” he barked, his voice suddenly sharp with command.

Silence. Just the persistent thump-thump-thump of Clive’s heart, and the soft, dry whisper of the sand.

Then, the tinkling started again, closer this time. It seemed to float over the lean-to, like a slow-moving, invisible cloud of musical motes. It passed directly over Kamila and Bartholomew, who both froze, their eyes wide with fear.

“It’s… it’s like a wind chime,” Clive stammered, his voice barely a squeak. “But there’s no wind.”

As the tinkling drifted past them, heading towards the edge of the camp, something else happened. A small, carefully stacked pile of Ferdinand’s cooking pots—clean and gleaming in the faint starlight—began to wobble. Then, one by one, they toppled over, not with a crash, but with a slow, deliberate clonk, as if an invisible hand was pushing them.

Clonk.

Clonk.

Clonk.

Jamal shrieked, a surprisingly high-pitched sound for a man of his girth. He dove behind his last remaining unbroken crate of dates.

Ferdinand, despite his outward bravery, was clearly unnerved. He gripped his dagger tighter, his knuckles white. “Stay together!” he ordered, glancing nervously into the deepening shadows.

The tinkling sound was now at the very perimeter of the camp, at the base of the nearest dune. And with it, something else emerged.

A light. Not a firelight, or a lantern. It was a soft, pale, milky-white glow, no bigger than a man’s hand, that hovered about a foot off the ground. It pulsed faintly, like a sluggish, ethereal jellyfish.

And then, it began to drift back towards them. Slowly. Deliberately.

Clive’s every instinct screamed, Run! Flee! Gallop senselessly into the night! But his legs, usually so eager for self-preservation, seemed to have fused with the very ground. He was a monumental statue of fear.

The light drifted closer, the tinkling growing louder, sweeter, more insistent. It was directly in front of Archibald now, hovering at his eye level.

Archibald, for the first time in Clive’s acquaintance, looked terrified. His usually blank eyes were wide, and a low, tremulous groan rumbled from his chest.

“What is it?” Kamila whimpered, practically melting into Bartholomew.

The light pulsed again, brighter this time, and then, from within its gentle glow, a voice emerged. It was a whisper, soft and melodic, like the tinkling bells themselves, but it carried an unnerving, almost childlike quality.

“Are you comfortable?” it whispered. “Are you warm enough?”

Clive nearly fainted. He had spent his entire life yearning for sophisticated conversation, for poignant intellectual exchange, and this was what he got: a disembodied voice from a glowing orb asking about his heating arrangements. The cosmic irony was almost too much to bear.

Ferdinand, recovering some of his bravado, pointed his dagger at the light. “Identify yourself! Are you a djinn? A lost spirit of the dunes?”

The light pulsed again. “Just… curious.” The whisper seemed to swirl, like smoke. “So much… worry. So much… rushing.”

It drifted away from Archibald, towards Clive. Clive tried to back up, but his feet tangled. The light hovered inches from his magnificent, aristocratic nose. He could feel a strange, cool tingle emanating from it.

“You worry… about tea,” the voice whispered, and Clive felt a deep, personal shame bloom in his chest. “About proper serving temperature. About societal expectations for a… ship of the desert.”

Clive opened his mouth, but no sound came out. How did it know? Was this some kind of psychic ghost? A spectral tea critic?

The light drifted back to the centre of the camp, hovering over the pathetic, dying embers of the campfire. “This fire… it is not happy,” the voice whispered. “It wishes to burn brighter. To offer warmth.”

And as it spoke, the embers beneath it began to glow. Not just a little, but with an internal, vibrant luminescence that quickly burst into a strong, healthy flame. The fire crackled, spitting sparks, as if it had suddenly remembered its purpose.

The tinkling sound grew more intense, swirling around the now-vibrant fire. The strange light pulsed once, then began to ascend, slowly, majestically, up into the inky blackness of the night sky.

“Wait!” Ferdinand called out, mesmerized. “What are you?”

The light paused, hovering like a new, impossibly delicate star. The whisper drifted down, fainter now, laced with a hint of something that might have been gentle amusement.

“Just… a little reminder.”

Then, with a final, lingering shimmer, the light shot upwards, shrinking rapidly until it vanished entirely amongst the other, indifferent stars. The tinkling sound faded into the vast, consuming silence of the Sahara night.

The campfire blazed merrily, casting warm, dancing shadows around the camp. The air was no longer cold.

Silence descended, a new kind of silence now. One filled with the crackle of the fire and the rapid thump-thump-thump of Clive’s heart slowly returning to its normal rhythm.

Jamal slowly emerged from behind his crate of dates, looking utterly bewildered. Kamila was still pressed against Bartholomew, but her tremors had subsided.

Ferdinand stood by the fire, his dagger still clutched in his hand, staring at the spot where the light had vanished. His face was a mixture of awe, confusion, and a hint of sheer terror.

“Well,” he finally said, his voice a little hoarse. “That was… new.”

Clive, who had managed to find his footing, took a deep, shuddering breath. He looked at Archibald, who, true to form, was now calmly chewing his cud again, although there was a new, distant look in his eye.

“Archibald,” Clive said, his voice still shaky. “It… it mentioned my worries about tea. And societal expectations.” He paused, looking around at the now-normal desert night, the now-normal campfire. “Do you think… do you think it was a ghost who used to be a very particular concierge?”

Archibald let out a long, slow sigh. It sounded less like a sigh of indifference, and more like a sigh of resignation. As if to say, Yes, Clive. Even the supernatural seems to find your quirks noteworthy.

Ferdinand walked over to Clive, his expression softening. He reached out and scratched the camel gently behind the ears. “Maybe,” he said, a faint smile playing on his lips, “maybe it was just the desert’s way of telling us to enjoy the fire. And stop worrying so much.”

Clive considered this. He looked at the warm, inviting flames. He looked at the peaceful faces of the other camels. He looked out at the impossibly wide, now less-threatening expanse of the starlit desert.

He still didn't like the sand, and he still harbored a deep, abiding desire for a proper, perfectly brewed cup of Earl Grey. But for the first time, he felt a flicker of something new. A sense of awe, perhaps, or maybe just a profound bewilderment at the sheer, glorious strangeness of existence.

He settled down by the fire, letting its warmth soak into his weary bones.

“You know,” Clive said, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Perhaps a little less worry about societal expectations, and a little more appreciation for spontaneous, ethereal light shows. Perhaps that’s the true path to enlightenment. Though,” he added under his breath, “I still maintain that a good Earl Grey would have rounded out the experience perfectly.”

The Sahara, vast and indifferent, held its secrets close. But for one night, it had given Clive a very specific, very absurd, and utterly unforgettable reminder that even in the most desolate places, the truly peculiar could always find a way to pop up. And perhaps, just perhaps, that was enough to make one a little less of a fish out of water, even if one was still desperately in need of a good cuppa.