Through the winding desert paths I followed my companion. Fatigue had materialized into the third traveler amongst us; the ever shifting positions of sand had caused a great degree of confusion to our pursuit of a direction and a purpose. We trod, thenceforth, with as much understanding towards geography as our ignorance of it, through vast repeats of the scorching earth. We listened closely to any indicators of novelty, yet our persistent failings revealed, so cruelly, the ironic repetition of our beseechment. It had not been long before we yielded to our weariness.

I emerged from my sleep to the callous thrashing of the wind, which, combined with the ever ephemeral landscape, had managed to create the illusion that I was somehow transplanted by its sheer force to another corner of the world. My vision had yet to adjust to the flaring sunlight before I saw, faintly, the movements of my fellow traveler. He was jumping up and down like an excited child and I supposed that he was trying to acquire my attention. So I progressed towards him, partially intrigued by the promise of anything to follow, what was, an extensive period of nothingness.

“What’s so funny here,” I remarked approaching him, “bored out of your mind?”

“Isn’t this remarkable?” he said.

“Yes, it is quite remarkable, as you put it, to have lost ourselves in this completely inhospitable wasteland,” I entertained his comment, “one can only marvel at what a grand predicament… o excuse me, position, we have found ourselves in. Remarkable, truly remarkable!”

He didn’t answer. Instead, his vision remained firmly fixated to what seemed to be something behind me.

“I never thought this could be possible. This is unbelievable…” he became wordless in awe.

“What is this?” I turned around.

“It stands as it always has been, it shines brighter than all else on this earth, does it not? How tall it stands amidst the leveled ground which surrounds it, how grand it is; what it represents, my friend, it towers over us, it creates us, and it will only envelop us with a totalizing embrace. Don’t scoff at my excitement, hear me: I’ve seen this, I’ve been here multiple times. Everything, every trace of my human will, are they not dreams, thoughts, auguries of this one thing?” he ardently explained, “and now I get to see it in person!”

The wind howls like an agitated specter, silent but ferocious. Beyond me is a vast plane of infinite solitude, a sight devoid of forms, only sand stretching towards the untenable horizon.

“Now let me show you around the edifice, shall I?” He smiles of contentment, or perhaps of a resolution to pain, whose level I could not resolve myself to fathom, “if only I can remember all its walls and crevices, its forks and passages, then you will share my exaltation, but alas, you’ll see its beauty yourself.”

He proceeded to advance himself as if through a door which intersects two worlds. He gestured for me to follow.

“I’ll remain here instead,” I said.

It didn’t appear that he had heard me, yet, before I was able to repeat myself, words, a series of them, sprang out from his mouth to the gasping air.

“Forgive me, for I have returned. Returned empty-handed, returned like a sinner. For how long have I witnessed you in fragments only? All these years I have been searching for you. Traversed through every path possible, dreamt through all notions of irrealities. Today I see you in your entirety, and o how all my questions find their answers!”

He uttered with such candor I resisted my intention to interrupt him. His orations, however, were growing increasingly intelligible. The sand began to tremble as the air swirling around us became more and more violent. The sky grew darker. There was something vile about his beseechment, something intolerable, whose force, although full of might, went against all confines of nature: and so the land awakened and the world rebelled. My head suddenly became too heavy for the rest of my body to bear, so I collapsed.

I awakened again to find no trace of my companion. I tried to call him, but it appeared to me that I did not know his name. However, in my despondency, I found a written note beside me. Written were these words:

Fierce storm descends upon the mound
where atop I once stood a disciple
swift wind recalls what past resounds
the weight of my affliction ample

Why weary hulls ill thoughts confound
faint dreams and visions total
beneath the sun words so profound
truth sorrow and vanity befuddle 

Hear, lest errors of my self compound:
For such scraps and ravage once deified
the ardent beggar be I finds jest replied.

So through the winding paths I once again traveled, in pursuit of an effigy of the past. Our thoughts we made to be our companions, and hence to live we dreamt.