The Trail

Chapter 3 | Trapped in sand

If you've never spent time caught between two boulders as the only protection from a raging sandstorm before, let me tell you a thing or two. At first, it's a relief to have found cover. But after a while, when your body starts to grow stiff and cold and all you can hear is wind and sand, you start to question wether it might not have been better to just let it get you.

Then comes the part where you question your sanity. I do that a lot these days. Question things. In this very moment I had started to think that I might be stuck in purgatory, waiting in line to pass over to the other side. I imagined that the two gigantic rocks were my holding cell in wait for wraiths to come and bring me across.

There was no clue as to how much time had passed or how much longer we would have to wait. All I was left with was the howling wind together with the grain bouncing in under the rocks. In the distance, I could hear the ominous rumbling of thunder approaching.

I tried to switch into a more comfortable position while still keeping Juniper, that now lied down, pressed against my chest. Once again, she had found a way to save both of our lives. I slowly stroked her over the ridge of her back, eternally grateful to have her as my companion, before drifting on and off into a restless sleep. It was as if my mind was woven into a dark, malicious fog. Whenever I opened my eyes it was as if the stone moved, pulsating with the storm. The flat surfaces increased in size, pressing against me, only to expand into infinity.

In one of my conscious sequences I was no longer holding Juniper, but a lion. It threw its tail before switching shape into a boa constrictor. It slithered towards me, moving up my leg before wrapping itself around my chest, squeezing until I thought my insides would explode through my head. Juniper gave up a deep growl through the shirt that I had wrapped around her head. It slithered away, with a dispraising hiss, through the gap between the stones.

The gap grew to the size of a valve and then shrinked again only to turn into the size of a pinhead. The head of a giraffe suddenly appeared through the slowly expanding gap, watching me with its big, dark eyes. It blew sand out of its nostrils before blinking once, waving its long eyelashes that began to dissolve into sand. It ran down its delicate face, until there was nothing left but a pile of dust. A mild breeze pushed it outside, making it float across the ground before it disappeared through the gap between the rocks.

I then went back into my half asleep, half awake state before I woke up after what felt like an infinite period of time. At the sound of another strike of thunder I flew up, hitting my head against the solid stone that kept me sheltered.

I noticed that Juniper had broken free from my embrace. The distance between the rocks and ground was just enough for her to stand as long as she kept her head down. She shook her head as she tried to remove my shirt from her head, clawing at it with her paw. I leaned forward, carefully not to hit my head a second time, before I removed it from her head. She blinked a few times in order to acclimatize her eyes to the dim light before she squeezed passed me. The elegant dog then peered her head through the opening, which we had entered through hours ago. The roaring wind could no longer be heard, only the rumbling sound of thunder every now and then. Juniper glanced at me before she slipped out through the gap.

It was time to get moving.