The Other Oasis

  I walk alone in a desert. Where is my oasis? I have lost her. Another oasis shines like an emerald in the distance.

  “Don’t go. Please, don’t go,” she cried as I went out to chase the emerald of the desert.

  The oasis walks away from me with each step. My heart doesn’t harden; I persist, I take another step. “It will all be alright in the end,” I tell myself. I dream about what I will do when I reach the other oasis. My throat aches, and my lips crack like the ground beneath me. “I will drink from its cool and clean water,” I tell myself.

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  “We have everything here,” she said to me. “Water, fruit, and you.”

  Blood has caked my feet, for I can no longer walk. I fell on my knees. Every moment spent resting, is wasted. There’s no rest for someone like me. I must walk and walk until I catch the emerald. I submerge my hands in the boiling sand and stand. But for a moment, I look back, and see nothing but the heartless desert. I take a step back but stop myself. I have come too far to turn back now.

  The sand comes together and forms a giant dune, rivalling even the mightiest of mountains. But some sand leaves its dune to find a bigger, better one. Will it ever find one? Or will it forever roam the endless desert all alone?

  “I will always be there for you,” I said to her. What have I done? What have I done?

  The day turns to night, but I continue to tread through the desert, and now, the oasis doesn’t run away from me. I thought I finally had it. It finally came true. The emerald, trapped in my hand. But when I touched its shimmering leaves, it disappeared. It was all a cruel joke played by the desert. An illusion or maybe a hallucination of my own creation. I fell, and the clouds began to cry.

  “I will wait for you till eternity,” she said.