Night has fallen in the Sahara and, tucked inside her tent, an exhausted runner wonders whether she can keep going. She’s halfway through the multi-day Marathon des Sables, running across the desert in Morocco.
It’s her dream and she’s finally living it – except it doesn’t look much like a dream right now. Hazel is vomiting profusely and struggling with severe cramps. The organisers come by the tents with print outs of the messages each runner has received online over the course of the day while they were out running. The messages from friends in Aotearoa elevate and overwhelm her. They remind her of home and the tough path she had to carve for herself to find herself here and now, under the infinite sky of the Sahara.
Eventually, she drifts off to sleep, on the lightest sleeping mat she can find, which she’ll
