His eyes were shut against the terrible desert sun, but light still broke through. He didn’t know how he got in the desert; sometimes he suspected that he never would. It seemed unimportant now, irrelevant to the search for water, the need to find a refuge from the burning desert sun. The endless, cloudless blue sky showed no signs of civilization, the only things to break the solid hue of the horizon were the cacti that littered the landscape.

Still he felt a strange sense of renewal. He’d been somewhere else before this, somewhere different. When sleep finally comes he’ll hear laughter and a gunshot and when he wakes he’ll be surrounded by miles and miles of sand and rocks and desolation and still he’ll walk on.

Walk on into the sunset, and when the sun comes up it’ll be at his back, chasing him over and over again along his endless journey to his reward.