Word Stack or A Pile of Thoughts

Out of the desert, there are many tales that seem to have lost their beginnings and whose ends are nowhere to be found. 

The Tua’Reg speak of a traveler, a man who came from a distant kingdom, possessed by a demon. Some say he was an exile, banished for his transgressions; others say he was nejef, a sorcerer, a conjurer of the mysterious arts, overtaken by the dark powers he consorted with.  None were certain, but the very old who claim they saw him with their own eyes remember the sensation of evil that radiated from the stranger, and the shadows that followed the wanderer’s steps. 

Though the tribe hid from him in fear, the elders soon learned that the demon had no intention of doing them harm, and came to the wanderer in pity.  He uttered no word, and drank their water and ate their food, and was silent for thirteen nights.

Then, as the sun rose, a sandstorm descended upon Tua’Reg.  The tribesmen took shelter within their huts, only to turn and peer into the darkness that had fallen. The storm howled and the sun was gone behind the furious veil of sand.  They heard the demon-possessed man yelling into the wind, and the women shut their ears against his spell. 

Silence fell, a black silence, the absence of sound deafening in its embrace.  The few who still watched saw the man falter, as the sand swirled around him.  Then all was still, the sand falling like rain around them.  In the village, all was still and dark, yet the storm whirled around them, as if a wall of sand encircled their world, shutting off both light and sound.  The men of the tribe crossed themselves, and watched and waited.

A woman came, walking out of the sandstorm as if emerging from the pool of an oasis.  Her hair was the color of night, her eyes deep and radiant.  In one hand, she carried a scarf of the sheerest black silk, and in the other, a dagger made from the light of the desert moon.  And in the silence, the men heard music.  The stranger, kneeling in the piled dust, looked up at the woman, and she began to move, dancing in darkness.  She danced to the ever-shifting rhythm of the desert sands, she danced to the song of the scorpions and the stars.  She wove a cloak of shadows around the demon-possessed man, and the music was silent, and the Tua’Reg found that the day had turned to night, and the sandstorm, the woman and the stranger had all but disappeared.

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