I thought Valeria was impossibly hot, when I first arrived there. The air, salt-heavy from the sea, was a choking miasma by midday. It took me a long time to get used to it.

Istahan, I soon discovered, is worse most days of the year. And the desert which surrounds it, the Barra, burns with heat. The scorching wind off the sands has the benefit at least of being dry. It makes your nose bleed, your lips crack, and your eyes sting from lack of moisture, but when you sweat in it you feel a bit of relief. You feel almost as though you’re accomplishing something.

Not so Mansoar. The city is paved, and as man-made as any other place I’ve been, but it’s still in the midst of a small jungle, on the rain-shadowed side of the Asha range. What the moisture lacks in taint of salt, it makes up for in quantity. I have never been anywhere so humid, so oppressively hot.

It’s enough to make a girl from the northern mountains weep, at times, but mostly I’ve gotten used to it. Looking out at the street today though, as the hot summer rain beats down on the cobblestones, I am struck anew by the strangeness of this place. The rain – which falls every day, like clockwork, in the afternoon – steams as it hits the sun-baked stone and brick. Falling water, water pooling, water rising back into the air, all mix together. The passers-by (the natives, the ones who are cheerfully, uncaringly soaked) seem almost to float. They swim as much as they walk, moving purposefully but slowly down the streets, following the rhythms of this place.

I wonder when I will learn that rhythm, or if I already have, as I lean my forehead against the cool stone of the windowsill. A bead of sweat rolls down from my hairline across the arch of my eyebrow and down, to drip from the end of my nose. The baby kicks, one sharp tap, before lazily rolling over. I cup my hand over my gravid belly, rubbing smooth circles on the tight skin. The discomfort, the heat, is so constant that the ache of it has made me numb. I thank the Gods that it won’t last much longer.

“Soon,” I murmur, not sure which one of us I’m reassuring. “Soon.”

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