Desert

Martin’s lips crack as he opens his mouth to swallow the blue egg. The hollow shell crumples in his throat. He gargles it out saving the spit. “Dud.”

The lazy field of yellow crystals, coarse bushes and bluffs, frequent bluffs, sprawls before him, too lazy to move. He sprints on a whim. “Two more hours,” Martin thinks collapsing his flesh forward with each step. He thrashes his arms, overbites his jaw and shrieks whenever the wind rains sand across his beard and into his armpits.

Martin has never wanted to plant a tree more. He imagines its heavy roots flexing around the sand, strangling mountain loads of it. “Two more hours,” Martin recalculates as he stares at his wristwatch. He’s been chasing a cactus for the past few hours, but time and distance adjust in Gobi.

Martin walks for two more hours straight for the third time. At the moment that the second hand swipes across the twelve, he stops. “Another bluff.”