Currents of air flow against me, carrying grains of fine sand scintillating against my arm, fine crystals caught on bristling hair erect from sensations. Sun-baked sand has a distinct scent, tantalizing as the taste of the air on my tongue—crisp, sharp to the senses. It feels both new and familiar, but from a different perspective. Bright, dull light with multitudes of shades illuminates everything, broken only by the deep sky, an ocean above contrasting the endless sands below it.

Everything feels... I'm taking in all the primary senses of the body while instinctual awareness lies semi-consciously just above my awareness, processing all the sensory input. It lets me know I'm human now, but I'm so much more than that... I have no memory of the before, yet I know... I have no memory of how I got here or how I'm inhabiting this body, but within myself, there is a knowing. This is a new start yet a continuation for me. I already have plans because I already have instincts directing me towards goals.

I take a deep breath, listening to the wind, cultivating my senses to the best of human possibility. Touch, temperature, pressure, depth, taste, scent, sight—all these tell me something about the world in varying degrees. Different perspectives of the same reality, taking in the world with myriad tools, tools that could be better. So I better them with infusions of energy and purpose, giving them new life.

I'm now a human being like all others on this world, but a human being can be so much more than what most of them are. So I better myself. Taking a deep breath, I cultivate the world energy into and through myself, sharpening everything within me that can be touched. I wait for the night when the stars show themselves, guiding me more precisely to my first destination: a place of power.

The track through the desert is full of wonder as I learn the rules of the world through the cycles and patterns experienced as days turn to weeks and weeks to months. The days become a furnace so hot my skin would be bubbling with blisters had I not been cultivating energy. The nights are so cold the sand clumps stick together and crackle with every step breaking them apart. The blood in my extremities would have frozen had I not been cultivating energy. The elements here are harsh, with very little living here. The sand crystals get finer and sharper as I get closer to a congruence of some sort, grains like microscopic diamonds. They cut and tear into my body despite my cultivation.

I bleed. For the first time I feel pain, which brings me to bumbling tears. I laugh at the discovery of emotions and how strong they can feel. I am close to the place of power. Ahead, blizzards of crystalline sand act as a barrier, cutting through the wailing air, causing my skin to quiver in sympathetic pain. Yes, that sand is definitely sharp enough to cut even me to ribbons, and yes, I will be dead if that thing disintegrates me. A modicum of fear enters my heart at the thought of the death of my body. I take a seat at the top of a dune kilometers away from the billowing sand blizzards but still close enough to feel the sting of sand piercing into my skin.

I sit and cultivate energy into my body, preparing to claim whatever well of power lies within that unnatural disaster ahead.

In my cultivations, I discover a light following the reflection of the shadow I left behind, bouncing off the desert, projected hundreds of kilometers away. That is a person, following me into what is clearly his eventual failure and death. His intention to just wander blindly into the desert until seeing something to follow to death is so clear that I know it immediately. I see his eyes, and they follow me, wasting himself uselessly against the desert, the heat desiccating his body despite the equipment cladding him against nature.

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What a waste of life... I don't know what to conclude about this discovery, but my immediate realization is that this human and I have no connections besides this flimsy vision of him seeing a mirage of me and following it. It is so flimsy a connection that nothing would come of it if I did nothing, and this man will die within days, decomposing into the sands as well he should. But I've become aware of him. He will die and be a waste, or I can use him to discover what I can do if I cultivate this connection. Better strengthen every tool I can get my hands on.

*

Desert Nomad

Deserts are solitary places where the elements play tricks on the mind to stimulate it beyond the usual humdrum of daily existence. Be alone in the desert long enough, and the mind and desert start playing a game with the most deadly of outcomes if lost and the greatest of rewards if survived. This is a game my people have played with the desert for as long as our memory of the desert has existed, a game that has become part of all Desert Tribe folk and the reason for our thriving. The dance with the desert, the walkabout, the journey into the golden horizon of the vast desert in search of desert madness.

I have been moving due north through the deep desert for... I don't know how long. I've been here through the heat hazes, blending the days and nights together, but I have two food boluses remaining, so that should be 28 days, chasing illusions and madness of the Deep Namid Desert, where few nomads return and fewer still remain whole. "Am I in the madness already? Who would know if not me? How would I even know if I was mad? Is it not madness to kill myself in this way?"

The eye sees a silhouette walking across the desert, getting further and further away with every blink of my eyes until there is nothing before me but dust and sand for my outstretched hand to grasp. Stumbling, I catch myself, going on my knees, swaying as I keep the exhaustion at bay. "Should be about—" food bolus is injected directly into my bloodstream. Everything tingles as the numbness goes away; a stitch I didn't know I was feeling stabs like a twisting dagger between my ribs. I sip the water from my rebreather to allow saliva back into my parched mouth. I can barely see the image of the mirage I'm chasing in my mind's eye, but I know it's straight ahead. With a grunt, I stumble forward, chasing the madness of the desert to wherever it may lead me.

I'm dying. Even as I stagger ahead, I know I am dying, so I may as well die at my best. What have I ever accomplished in this life? At least I leave behind a son; they will be better off without me. Good for them, choosing themselves over me; at least they'll survive the desert. Maybe my seed will grow into a tree someday. I laugh at my own thoughts in my own mind. Has the madness got me yet? My parched tongue sticks in my mouth, the twisting emptiness of my stomach a knot heavily pulling me down, blood pounding away in rhythm with spear pain in my skull. I know that I'm moving, but I'm not sure I'm still going forward. Am I wobbling side to side? I don't know how long ago I ran out of food and water because all my equipment is dead. I'm dead. Soon... the darkness comes out of nowhere and takes me.

I wake slowly, constricted, blind, dumb, deaf—a hand of death constricting tightly around my neck as my heart pounds in panic. No! I scramble and twist, shifting my bindings as everything shifts with me as I roll down a dune, seeing, breathing—or at least hacking as I cough a lung out, realizing I'm still alive. Somehow... I was buried in sand, my skinsuit in tatters, the only parts not purple with bruising covered in what remains of the fennec cloak. My gums are bleeding, my nose is bleeding, my eyes are bleeding from the grains of sand that have been seeping into everything, destroying my equipment and body the deeper into the desert I head. My last walk, my dance with desert madness, my funeral isn't over yet.

I take pained breaths, which kill me slowly without a rebreather filtering function. I can just lay here and die. There is no need to put myself through any more suffering, not like I could survive a journey back out of the deep desert, so my death is only a matter of time. Yet... this is the very last thing I'll ever do. This is my last fight. I have so much shame... I will die having given everything.

Slowly I get up, gaze at the stars to orient myself to the direction I've been heading. Slowly, painfully, I follow the trail of a mirage to find my fortune or death.