Wayfarer

A bland landscape stretched far into the horizon. A gray plane, of a gray so uninteresting it felt like staring into a void, the essence of nothingness. The dusty ground was barely distinguishable from the sky, whose color was nearly identical, making the horizon a faint limit you easily forgot as you looked forward. Only an occasional band of a dust cloud appeared as it slowly moved overhead, hinting at an actual sky and not another bland, solid surface.

Nothing felt out of place; nothing picked one's interest so that one would look at it. The ash and dust were the same here as they were a few meters away, and nothing on this gray world looked like it could spark interest in any way. This emptiness called, however. The utter lack of anything pushed one to contest its very concept: there must have been something else; there needed to be something else. A world where nothing even exists makes no sense; no one would want to accept it. Why gaze upon something if there isn't anything to see at all?

While the gray sky was fairly even, one could see, if he looked carefully, the flat clouds sliding over the ground. Low. Dry. They weren't vapor clouds but consisted solely of dust. More and more dust, sometimes falling back on the ground in a dry rain, which one would want to avoid at all costs. This kind of particle stuck to the skin and would have given anyone a grayish look if they spent more than a few hours in this ghost land.

No sound could be heard but the faint wind, sometimes blowing up a few grains of dust and making the most gentle sound. But a new sound could be heard in the distance: a repetitive tap, a low wave shattering the eerie silence reigning over this world. Marking the limit between heaven and earth, a green dot. A blast of color, defying the very concept of this landscape. This green dot kept growing as time passed, detailing itself before finally taking a humanoid form as it moved closer. A young woman was walking. She was draped in a green dress, a perfect color. A green free of any dust, of any grayness. Somehow, the unforgiving dirtiness of the air had spared her dress, put off by an unknown but powerful force.

The young girl was walking with a gentle yet quick foot, not deviating from a seemingly imaginary line. She drew a vector in a place without any direction—a straight line in a messy world. Her eyes were emerald green like her dress, and she looked straight ahead, far into the horizon, but nothing made the point she looked at any different from any other one could see. She clearly had a goal in mind, but what? When one looked more carefully, a hint began to appear: a faint trail, a path of dust barely lighter than the rest, forming the perfect line that the green girl was following jealously without looking any other way. It was wide, somewhat, but where was it going and what did it lead to, only the girl might have known the answer. Regardless, she remained mute, always keeping her eyes on the ground to follow the trail, sometimes looking up to the horizon to see the same gray landscape over and over again, each kilometer identical. She never took her eyes off her goal for long.

Later, she was still walking. Anyone else would ask themselves countless questions about the distance that had been covered and how much time had passed since she first appeared over the horizon, but all usual metrics lost their sense here. Time was an illusion; distance a masquerade completely made up to prevent one from losing his mind and thinking he didn't make any progress. All the dusty dunes were the same. How could anyone tell if they weren't circling back to where they were minutes ago? Even the track didn't help. The path was simply too perfect in such a way that nothing told you if this section was any different from the others you had seen before. It would take anyone a lot of effort not to go crazy in this place, but the girl looked perfectly sane. Her gait was straight, her eyes were determined but rational and constantly alert. She breathed calmly despite her rapid walk, hinting at strong endurance. Her shoes were dancers'. She might have been one in another world or time. She might have been the smile of countless people as she graced their sight with carefully considered swings and spins, warming up countless hearts. She might have been able to put on an unforgettable show. But nobody was dancing anymore in this grim world. Everything had fallen still.