• The wizened, ancient young man stood there on top of that dune. With a practiced ease he stamped his staff and spoke to the winds of fortune. “Why, if may age is youth, is my name bitterness? Why have I only regret and indecision for companions? What terrifying gentle and careless flap of butterfly wings unleashes this howling storm upon me that leaves me with only this deluge of memories come unbidden?” He wore the dress of the old times; of times when danger, death and violence were near at hand. He dressed as if humanity had not evolved ways to deal with lack of water, of harsh sun and biting wind. As if humanity had not tamed the wild.
    Perhaps this was because he lived in some out of the way place, hidden and cut off. Perhaps he was too poor to afford these miracles. And so in the fashion of all humans everywhere, in the fashion of those more civilized, more advanced...cultured they pitied him. What a poor unfortunate! They said. He’d not experienced the amazingness of the thingamajiggy, the elegance of the boodlebeep, the ease of the ginnyhoop. These things that made up their daily lives were alien to him…he was alien to them.
    And everywhere he went he left behind these thoughts and one more. It took time but slowly it grew. Surely it wasn’t because…he scorned them? Because they made men soft in the body and head and was making their soul a mushy, awful substance with no worth. Surely not that. No. No. He was to be pitied.
    The wind held no answer in its howling, screaming. It just passed over, and around, and through his very bones. Tiredly he took a step.