This short story is inspired by one of the videos I made of the figure walking alone in the dunes as the sun rose, as well as one of the seminal artworks of the Romantic era, Wanderer Over the Sea of Fog.
In the evening hours the sky and ground become the same shade of dusky blue, soft pillowy dunes blending with the horizon. Behind him, the desert stretches on, but to the west the dark cliffs loom. As soon as the golden streaks leave the sky he takes the opportunity to lie down and rest his legs. Ever since he left the village, he’s been slowly foregoing every custom he had been raised to rely on, those built for survival and cooperation. Working through the night, till his muscles gave out— he dropped that three miles back with the fruit seeds he spit as he walked. Now he finds a smooth patch and sits down. Leaves and fruits are enough to fill him up, for now at least. The blues grow darker, indigo suffusing the world. In every direction, he sees only emptiness, he might be the only human. He lies on his back by the stream, hearing the water rustle along gently, birds squawking in the distance, barely audible. The stream marks the end of these long sandy expanses he’s been traversing, soon he will encounter new people once more, and he will have to be careful, navigating their groups and their ways. Or perhaps he can figure out how to stay here forever, the desert where he is the only man alive. A village could never survive here, the food scarce and fickle, but he alone can stretch the tiny fruits and seeds for several days, all for the gift of this solitude. He turns on his stomach and stretches his arms out, one arm dipping into the creek, and the other dug deep into the cool sand. With both hands, he plunges as deep as he can go, enjoying the sensations trickling up his arms. Cool, soft, moist sand crushing into silky spheres in his fists. Icy water running through his trembling fingers, he drags his hand along the surface, using the water pressure to simulate miniature waves to paddle on. He’s getting tired now. Retrieving his arms back into the dwindling heat of his body, he regrets the sensory exploration — the night is long still, and he doesn’t have anyone’s body heat but his own. He allows himself to remember briefly, running around the camp with his brothers and sisters, shrieking as he threatened to hug them after his nightly swims. Huddled next to the fire after he successfully drenched them in his embrace. Somehow, the cold from his fingers has seeped deeper inside him — enough. Tomorrow he’ll find what he needs to make a fire, enough of these cold nights he pretended to prefer, all for the sake of autonomy. And perhaps he’ll finally try scaling the western cliff, sharp obsidian rocks that might provide a view of the ocean. He’ll get to the top right around midday, as the sun is blazing its hottest, and he’ll lie on those black rocks, collecting all the heat in his bones. That will be enough. He imagines his fingertips, still wet and icy now, tapping against the obsidian cliff, a sizzling sound from the burning heat it’s bound to have at noon tomorrow. He imagines what the ocean might look like, he’s only ever heard stories. He decides he’ll stay there all day, tracing the sun from its high point to a watery horizon he’s never seen before. Yes, in fact he’ll worry about the fire the next day. The days shall keep passing, he thinks, finally falling asleep.