He had been walking since before he could remember, and before that he had escaped.<\/p>\n
There had been dunes of fine white dust and shattered stones lining desiccated river beds. He had passed passages decorated by impossible fossils, decaying wooden signs and roughly hewn markers proving undeniable theses and directions, and a skeleton proving that he was not the first to go this way. He had known that the way would be long before he had escaped. He had known that the way would be hard, unforgiving, and unrewarding until its final end. He had known that there would be many minor ends, each one foretelling failure and a pointless abyss. He had known that he would have to walk a long way, that he would have to carry himself by sheer (and crass) effort, but had underestimated the accumulation of detritus in his heart, nor their weight (measured in a will to succumb).<\/p>\n
Sometimes he looked down, and sometimes he looked forward, and sometimes he looked up, and sometimes he did not know where he looked, or he looked far away and inside, to fragments of memories and imagined fantasies that rewarded his parched cravings. Now he woke up, and there was one foot, and then another foot, and then again and then again. Now he woke up and saw a cactus before the horizon, marking the centre of dried crater, its shores built of hexagonal salt crystals.<\/p>\n
He had forgotten how to pause the shuffle of his feet, but inside his mind, he stumbled. The cactus could be a harbinger of water. He had no knowledge of meteors or alien plants. The cactus could be a banisher of water. He had no knowledge of runes and paleohydrology. But these things were possible. Inside the sheared dimensions that projected his thoughts, maps were drawn and discarded in such rapidity that all that was left was a blurred impression of something that was missing. Like an amputated arm reaching for a glass. Like the lonely bed of an old widow. Like the happiness he had never known in childhood; like false memories of something that never was.<\/p>\n
The arguments in reason’s courthouse were conducted in soft whispers and flashes of signalling hands and fingers. The judge remained silent beyond the din of unperceived instigations and insistences, and the faces of the jury were all his own. From the back of the room, his master rose and spoke, a single clear, composed and pure syllable, unadulterated by doubt or indecision. This<\/em> was the right choice, and this<\/em> was the final verdict. The judge looked blandly on, unimpressed or hard of hearing. The jury looked worried, concerned for the accused or concerned for themselves.<\/p>\n The shock of certainty expelled him from the realism of the dream, knocking him back from one premise to its predecessor, until he was once more a man walking on sand. His master’s voice continued to echo inside him, but now its image was divorced from context, and appeared arbitrary and aggressive.<\/p>\n He continued to walk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" He had been walking since before he could remember, and before that he had escaped. There had been dunes of fine white dust and shattered stones lining desiccated river beds. He had passed passages decorated by impossible fossils, decaying wooden signs and roughly hewn markers proving undeniable theses and directions, and a skeleton proving that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[159,90,121,114,106],"tags":[117,140,110],"metadata":[],"class_list":["post-812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-blog-posts","category-out-of-the-darkness","category-story","category-the-traveller-is-the-journey","tag-buddhism","tag-doubt","tag-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1153,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2017\/05\/11\/r-yona-at-jeta-grove\/","url_meta":{"origin":812,"position":0},"title":"R Yona at Jeta Grove","author":"Pala","date":"May 11, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: The short story below was found in Shai's Google Drive notes and is clearly incomplete. The Brain Storming section at the end of the narrative alludes to the continuation of the story An apocryphal Braisa, non-canonical and existing only in Arabic: \u201cRabbi Yona was lost at sea. Can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1115,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2017\/10\/02\/noodles-and-lunar-fruit\/","url_meta":{"origin":812,"position":1},"title":"Noodles and Lunar Fruit","author":"Pala","date":"October 2, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: One of Shai's special skills was writing short stories in a style used by famous authors. The two short stories below are a reflection of these attempts. The first written in the writing style of the American-British novelist and screenwriter, Raymond Chandler[I] and the second in the writing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1645,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2005\/07\/06\/the-eyes-of-the-dragon-br-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":812,"position":2},"title":"The Eyes of the Dragon (BR)","author":"meanwhile","date":"July 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The Eyes of the Dragon\u00a0by Stephen King One of King's earlier novels, this story is more of a fantasy than the horror he is best known for. The book's setting is in the kingdom of Delain, where King Roland reigns. Quote: Roland the king was neither the best nor the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":816,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2016\/09\/16\/an-attempt-at-seeing-creation\/","url_meta":{"origin":812,"position":3},"title":"An attempt at seeing creation","author":"Pala","date":"September 16, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I am small and the world is great and beyond my comprehension right now. This at least I can say without doubt. But here is a dream. Once there was a fish in a fishbowl. There were pebbles on the ground, water all around, a toy castle, and a filtration\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":771,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2015\/11\/24\/tawdry-enraptured-mincing\/","url_meta":{"origin":812,"position":4},"title":"Tawdry enraptured mincing","author":"Pala","date":"November 24, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"In a mute house behind a lethargic door on a shelf dressed in dust sits a box. To the box was a key given to a girl who swam in the ocean and chose to sleep in it too. In the box was a tawdry ring given by an Aunt\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":803,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2016\/03\/15\/walking-home-from-the-doctor\/","url_meta":{"origin":812,"position":5},"title":"Walking home from the doctor","author":"Pala","date":"March 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"David was a historian at the institute. The machine had been cold, like the look on his father's face when he cried. The noises that erupted from it felt uncoordinated and overeager, like the dreams where he could not stop\u00a0running and falling. The nurse had been friendly, like the voices\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/padotI-d6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812"},{"taxonomy":"metadata","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/metadata?post=812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}