Even though time and space don’t matter in this world, the Fool ran into the Knight of Wands somewhere and sometime. The Fool found himself in a hot desert full of sand dunes. Up and down he walked over those dunes. It was like being lost in a sea of sand. He saw a snake swim across the sand.
He saw pyramids in the distance. He made his way towards those and found a figure standing alone wearily watching the Fool make his way towards him. The wind was hot. It was a man in a fur hat and decorative uniform. In his hand was a wand. He seemed out of place in this desert.
We have been left here, the man said, I’m not sure we are supposed to be here at all.
In the distance, the Fool could see a military camp with cook fires and men milling around.
Djinn keep swooping in from the east and taking men, the man continued, all that we find are bleached bones sticking out of the sand.
He could see dust devils twirling around in the sand all around them. He could feel the wrongness of the place. These men were from across a sea, and shouldn’t have come here. The man had a fear plastered grimace on his dirty face while his uniform was gaudy.
A dust devil came in from the plains and swept through the camp. Men screamed and scattered. The man turned and squatted down defensively. The dust devil picked up a soldier and carried him into the dunes. The Fool and the man ran over the dune towards the dust devil’s path. In a small valley between dunes was bones. They were completely picked clean. Some shreds of clothing blew away from the wind.
Just beyond the bones was a sinkhole of some kind. The sand poured into a funnel into the earth. A low moaning sound came from the hole. It was a sorrowful song that made the Fool feel a lump in his throat. It was such beautiful sadness.
You are the aliens in this world, the sinkhole said, we have been in the desert for thousands of years.
The soldier and the Fool looked at each other and back at the sinkhole.
What are you? The soldier asked.
We were the first, the sinkhole replied, we have become your myths, your religions, your nightmares. Some called us genies while others thought us angels or demons.
The melancholy song never ceased as the ground croaked its story. The Fool noticed that he always hears the earth cry this way, but it is always just beyond his ability to concentrate. Sometimes the world got quiet, and he would hear this low guttural moan that emitted from the very earth he walked on, but he always dismissed it as his wild imagination.
We don’t wish to be here anymore, the sinkhole continued, but we wait to be called back into the ether, the other plane. We eat your time, and sometimes we eat you if we hunger enough, but your time is enough. You kill yourselves off often enough for us to fatten.
You aren’t of this time, the sinkhole said to the Fool, I see no start or no end in you. You are a gift from the moon for this soldier and his fellow man to follow. It seems you have lost your way and need to go back to your journey.
The Fool knew this to be true and so he parted company with the Knight of Wands and the Many-Eyed-One. The Fool thought about how much man just doesn’t quite belong. He supposed he was supposed to help with that.