Writing Exercise # 5 Jonathan D. W.

Sands of light The light of the day was just reaching its final retreat when we reached the first signs of civilized life. The way going was all dust and cross-wind, but ahead the increased elevation seemed to make the place immune to that grainy, desert violence. “Those houses could be clouds,” I told my lumbering companion. The sand-bleached stone in a miasma of shimmering heat making me doubt my eyes. “If they’re clouds then we’re birds and if we was birds we’d be Dodo’s,” he mocked, the old man’s back bent with age and exhaustion. He never even looked up. How could he not even look up? Here is what we had traveled so far for; enduring punishing heat and deprivations most men a quarter of our age could not bear. Even our horses had failed the test. Strong, well–bred mares when we started out, they had grown emaciated and lost their sure footing and needed to be abandoned before they abandoned one of us. It took something out of me when we had to do that so Barge did the deed. He seemed to mourn too for a few extended seconds, but once he turned his back they were left with all of the other facilitators and entanglements of life that we had been obliged to part with along the way; this left my sentiments a little more calloused than I had ever imagined they would, but I doubt Barge thought of it that way. “What’s done is done; why set-out if you don’t intend to enjoy the arrival,” he would say. I was a lot more haunted by the people who had aided us along the way than I was the horses, but somehow the horses stole some of the expected exultation and added a touch of bleakness. My back probably hurt as much as his did but I refused to miss one image, one first, salient impression of this place. The place of our birth it was, and neither of us had seen it since we had first learned to ride. Since then, it had taken on a symbolic, almost mythical nature. Through the years we would trade stories about what it had been like, and we had to fill in so many blanks that the truth must bear little to no resemblance to what existed in our heads. But we didn’t care. The villages were assembled in diamonds that directed the coarse winds away from the courtyards and toward the wind and sand depositories. These were used by artisans who made smooth glass ponds that absorbed the heat in the day and released it gradually at night when the temperatures dropped. “Look Barge, it’s just like we remembered it,” I said, pointing with an arm that looked smooth and young in the heavy sunlight. “I see ‘em,” he replied with garbled enthusiasm. We had reached the broad manmade canals that ran under every house leading down to the sea and that provided coolness and an ideal place to wash in during the long, crisp days. “Can you see anyone?” he asked, still watching whatever was before his feet instead of the mystic cluster of villages that were revealing themselves to us with every tortured step. “See how they’re covered; not like you said.” I pointed out how they were over-cased with a slightly arched stone that served to keep the waters cool and act as a safe means of transport of soldiers, civilians, and goods in the event of a siege. First and foremost, it was conceived with the idea of security: form following function, function following the vernal elasticity of our minds. Barge was ahead of me. This was a bad sign. Perhaps he had greater endurance but his back was as good as the tattered leather horse whip that only seemed to distract my old girl, when she still was, and as such he always crept while I could still hike. I was so enthralled with comparing the true image with our memories that I hadn’t noticed the loose string of pain in my left lower thigh that had slowed me so. I paused and cursed the heavens. Above, the sun seemed flat an as wide as the horizon. “Hold up old boy, you’re too happy to finally take the lead.” I didn’t want him to think me weak. “You’re gonna fall and I won’t be there to help you to your feet,” I said this even while knowing that Barge never fell. His back was shredded but his legs were as strong as his petrified Acacia walking cane. We were old and fought harder than anything to hide the toll of our age but I fought a lot harder than he. If only I can get under this cover to the water and cool my legs, I thought. “Hey, do you remember how we used to get under here?” I asked, afraid to even bend my leg lest I should crumble like an old pile of dust that used to be something. “We used to get under there?” he asked, apparently forgetting the way we used to hide from the gangs of boys who would make us dredge clams for them on our way home from school. We would see them lounging around with their horses, wearing their linens like they were regal, and practicing archery by shooting almonds off of trees. A canopy of trees covered the streets with skinny leaves and branches that shot up to the sky like the arms of priests. Barge and I used to get paid to sweep the streets clean of almonds and dessert drift. Now, the streets were full of green and rotting nuts, but there were no snide equestrians to hide from, only a sun that was much closer to the ground than in the mountainous city where our parents emigrated too in hopes of escaping that very heat. I looked up ahead and Barge had continued for about 6o meters, then stopped. He was standing in the doorway of a high walled house the color of untainted butter. There was an official looking seal on the large, double-wide door and a row of windows on each side that were all on the second floor; there was none on the first, only a fractured stain like that of a bathtub ring. “What caused that do you think?” he asked. I didn’t hear him because of the distance but I knew his gestures well enough to see what he was asking. Tears welling in my eyes from the stinging in my leg and the shame of being bested by Barge, I slammed by right foot into the edge of the canal cover to distract my brain and it worked just enough to let me get going. Once I did it felt like one of those injuries that couldn’t get any worse so I trudged on.