It was as it always had been. His bare feet moved along the blistering rocks as if he were born to them. No sharp stones cut him, the heat did not burn them, and no thorns scratched them. This was his land. He was the land's.

The wind came off the plateau dry and constant, keeping his old cotton cloak whiping and churning in the air. It was a perfect day to begin his trek -- the sun was clear, without any hint of obscuring cloud. The stones were hot enough to cook flesh by now, as the sun reached directly overhead. The heat of the glaring eye above was taken in by the black rocks, and radiated back as burning heat.

He didn't notice. His feet weren't made of flesh, despite their supple appearance.

Southward, he was headed, towards Marmara. There, he had decided he was going to catch the ferry to Rhodes, and then to Athens. He felt it was closer, there, to something that called to him.

Looking up, once more, to track his course, he gazed upon ribbons of light that danced and shifted about. A giant web-work of brilliant light that only he could see. Only he could feel. A giant web-work that knotted and wove above him, spiralled down, and touched his hands and forehead. Always touched him.

Out there, at the ends of these lucent streamers was what he sought. The rest of himself.

Another hour passed, though the passage of the hour went barely noticed. He does not tend to think when there is nothing to think about.

But, something there stops him. Standing atop a jagged incline -- cut by rock and wind -- he felt a pull from below. Down there, in the long-dried river bed was something calling out to him. As he drew closer, moving carefully amongst the rocks, he felt -- and then saw -- a rivulet of light lash out from the ground and dart into his chest. And stay there.

It was a distant feeling. Loneliness. Obsession. Pain. This feeling attached itself to him, for it could not find the one it was meant for. And it had been here oh so long.

Hands move sand and debris aside, cutting down below the surface, to find the source of this call.

And in that just-past-noon sun, a hilt is revealed. Just the hilt; the blade long gone. No, not gone, but broken. Snapped just above the delicate braided metal and engravings. It must have once been a truly beautiful sword. And officer's sword from some interminable time in the past.

As his fingers brush its surface, it sings to his mind. Flashing images assault him. Jumbled, out of sequence snap-shots of violence and war. Faces unfamiliar scream in pain as this sword cuts them down. And then the swordsman enters his mind. Standing tall, proud. Arrogance upon his features, and something more. Something terrible.

But it isn't the feelings that stop Sakir, it is the face. He has seen that man before, not long ago. How can a man live so long?

The hilt impresses itself into his mind, and he already feels his feet moving to its rhythm.

It wants to go home, and it knows the way.

Posted by Martin at November 18, 2003 10:53 PM