He spent two days at the way station. This was a single room made of corrugated metal, but there was shade there, and he enjoyed it as long as he could. He usually had no shade.
He now stood outside this metal enclosed room. The sun, which never set, hung perfectly above his head and cast only a minimal shadow directly beneath him. He had long since left any beaten path behind. His instincts were driving the direction in which he would be moving.
The barren desert spread out before him like a universe of heat. He was only in the direct sunlight for a few moments and tiny rivulets of sweat were running together at the base of his chin forming a bead, one of the million that his body would create this day as it had everyday since he was born.
He was completely naked now. His skin long since accustomed to the sun’s radiant whipping. His skin was leather-like. It had turned from a pristine white to the darkest brown many years ago. The only way that it could turn any darker was if it was set afire.
He stood, with his hands on his hips and looked East, his light eyes straining with pain from the reflected sun. The heat coming up from the ground created a fog-like impression, although he knew there was no moisture contained within this optical illusion.
He stood alone, and breathed deeply. He slowly inhaled. He slowly exhaled.
He wondered what it would be like to see another human being on this plain. He wondered what they would look like. He wondered what their voice would sound like.
He stood alone and looked East. He saw nothing but his loneliness awaiting him. His loneliness, his constant companion, was beckoning him on. The only thing that kept him moving was an unknown force exerting pressure on his soul.
He took the first of the thousands of steps he would take that day. He continued creating this path, his path. He turned briefly to take one last look at the way station, but it was not discernable any longer behind the wall of wind blown sand that had suddenly erupted from the ashen desert floor.
He walked blindly within this sandstorm with his eyes closed. He didn’t need his eyes to maintain his sense of direction. Grains of sand pelted his body and they felt like molten pins being driven deep within the few points of tender skin he had remaining on his body.
He continued on, knowing that each step could be his last, but also knowing that he could not stop. He became exhausted and started to hallucinate. As the daylong sandstorm raged around him, he was shown a vision.
He was shown that he would not simply die when his end finally came. He was shown his body levitating above the sand being pulled into a cyclone of sand and wind. In an instant his body and soul will be pulverized into a million grains of sand, becoming one with the desert. He will exist nowhere, yet exist everywhere at the same moment.
His eyes opened for the first time that day. The desert was still. The sun had returned.
He stood, facing East, wide-eyed, and shaking as a man shakes when he is told that his first child was still-born.
In one of his greatest moments of clarity, he understood upon that which he was treading.
He suddenly realized that the grains of sand swirling around him in the windstorm were the pulverized souls of all the others who had come before him but who were unable to fulfill their destiny.
He was continuing their journey.
The trek that they could not finish.
The crusade they had left unfulfilled.
He was walking on countless numbers of pulverized souls.
One day he would be one of them, swirling lifeless in a sea of heat, never truly being able to rest.
Even in death the sun will beat on him, and it will never set. He will become a part of the sandstorms. Fragments of him will pierce, and become embedded in the skin of others on their journeys.
As within his own eyes, parts of him will become embedded within the eyes of others.
He continued walking and with each new footfall his understanding grew.
