Always sand. But this sand will not shift with the wind, no matter how it howls.
And in full truth, the wind does not howl here. Cannot howl. The air is too thin, too meager, too lonesome at this elevation. It can only keen softly over the lumps and ridges of ancient exposed stone. Where the wind in the hot places howls its anguish, lashes the sand with its futile grief, the wind in this place cries and moans as softly as the oldest broken heart.
Wind, and sand, and cold.
I think there might be something approximating diurnal motion in the heavens, but I can’t be certain. I can detect only a perpetual gloaming, a dimness without even stars for reference, let alone a sun or a moon. Cold, creeping with the wind, seeping from the sand. How long have I been here? And who brought me here?
The cats, I think, know the answers to my questions. But I am too cold to excite their interest. One looked at me once, passing through my field of vision, but I could no more draw its interest than I could rub my hands together to create friction and the illusion of warmth. They come and go, seemingly as they please, although why they should please to come at all is far beyond me. Little sparks of flame seem to drip from their whiskers, without lighting the dimness or warming the frost. Perhaps they are not entirely here. Not ghosts, nor figments, but shadows of themselves, passing through other realms and reflecting in this place as through an aged mirror. But I am here.
And I think there is something else here, something vast and ancient and full of a kind of life. But as I think this, the thought evaporates from my mind like a whisper. It was only the wind, like an immense and prolonged breath. That’s what I tell myself: it was only the wind, whispering to the frozen sand.
