The Infinite Desert

Part I

Granular specs of gray wash themselves over the horizon. Swelling to dunes in the seas we wandered. If you are not focused with each step, you will wander over the only other living thing that sustains every Roamer. Thin pale grass pokes out of the gray sea by the length of your hand. Get lucky and you’ll have a drop of liquid that will shatter your thirst until the next cycle. Keep moving. Movement must constantly be sustained to survive.

In the stark white of day, we were lost together. In the pitch black of night, you would lose yourself. We have always stayed close together as we were taught by the Roamers before us. In the pitch black, our voices bonded us together as we settled to rest our bodies from the wandering of survival in the stark white. This is the cycle within the Infinite Desert.

Throughout the cycles, we have grown to many and been culled to a few with the rarity of the pale grass. Our life experience is all we have to pass on. Elders transfer their entire lineage experience down to the youngest of us. When our size shrinks, all of Roamer life experience concentrates to the few left to conserve and grow again to spread the Roamers across the Infinite Desert in our endless wandering to survive. This was all we knew. Until the day of the fractal eclipse.

For the first time pitch black and stark white were both before our vision. The gray desert eroded before us as all and none split our world in half. They began to merge. Sprouting inside each other. Alternating pulses of white and black encompassed us in tessellating waves of the duality.

The waves were growing. No, they were shrinking. No, waves grew from waves shrinking away. They pulsed faster and faster. We could not run. Our bodies frozen within the waves. Fully entranced by the fractal eclipse. Unable to escape. Confined within its magnification of a color spectrum melting away all we knew. Our vision went black.

It was not another cycle. Eyes throbbed. Lungs empty. Body parched. Prying each eyelid open shot stark white beams in. Then I saw it. A new horizon that separated the Infinite Desert from the stark white sky. Oh, the relief when my eyes were shut. The calm I felt in the pitch black. The color couldn’t be real. My eyes must be ruined from the eclipse. I laid for what felt like two or three cycles with my eyes shut. I pried open my eyes again to grasp at a blade of pale grass within my view. As the sand released its grip on the grass, clear liquid flung into my eyes. The pain vanished. The color didn’t.

I was one of the first to regain their vision. We gathered as much pale grass nearby that held clear liquid to relieve as many Roamers as possible. Still, many of us withered in pain. Splitting up to forge for more grass was the only way to ensure the survival of all. This began the breaking of all our traditions. For the first time in history the Roamers were not united as one. It took many expeditions to find enough grass for us all and even longer to return with the liquid droplets still hanging from the blades we found.

The Roamers were united as one with our vision restored. The specter stood in the horizon. We all saw it. The cycle had not come. We all felt it. For all the cycles the Roamers had survived through, as many, as few, nothing matched the eclipse. No life experience passed down held information of the color spectrum we saw. Of the color we still see. Our bodies began to groan. We had to move on. Find more pale grass. We could no longer be frozen from our experience. We wandered towards what we did not know.

Pale grass sprang into bushes from the gray sand as we crossed the dune seas. More grass than ever known or mentioned. The abundance of blades and droplets igniting all the life experience I contain as the separation of the Infinite Desert and stark white sky enveloped our view. Coarse dark sapphire bricks rose out of the sand eroding the sky. There was an opening in the wall. The dune seas continued beyond as pale bushes sprung up, blooming into fields flowing with green whispers.

I would not have believed it had I not touched it. Had we not eaten and rolled around in the vibrancy. The opening was behind us now. The green grass mimicked the dune seas as its density increased along the dark sapphire brick walls that continued inside. Glowing red bulbs floated from the lush grass-covered ground. The flowers radiated soothing scents in the air the closer we were to them. With no cycle, we could not tell how long we had been wandering past the wall. There was no opening to the Infinite Desert behind us.

Tall white lines expanded up with speckles of yellow dancing around them. The forest brought us shade and rest. It was as if the cycle had come but the stark white was still above us since the eclipse. Our bodies collapsed from our journey since recovering from the eclipse and every Roamer passed out under the speckles of yellow dancing above us. When we awoke there was no forest.

No shade. No grass. No flowers.

Only gray sand and the dark sapphire walls. Behind was the opening that led to the Infinite Desert. Before us were two walls split by a third in the center, forking two paths into the continuing desert.

---