I saw another half covered in sand, then another not far away from the other two, and another just two steps away from that. Like a trail breadcrumbs they led me away from my straight path. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t help but walk to the next brightly colored corpse. The farther I went the more frequent they became, the flock staying together even in death.
The sand, I realized, had changed colors. It had gone from the a dull tan to an bone white. Mixed in were small bones of what must have been birds from other pilgrimages. How many times had a flock of them been sent out to fill a desert valley with bone. Ironically, I realized the next storm would likely take most of it back to his home. It was a grim place to walk, but I kept walking. Overheated, dehydrated, and confused, my journey wouldn’t last much longer. It might as well be spent following whatever it was, instinct or some divine power, that was leading me at this moment.
Whatever it had been that made me leave that straight path, I will bless it for the rest of my life. Moments before I gave up again, I cleared one last dune. What I came to see over that dune brought tears to my eyes. It was the first green I had seen in days. The oasis was in placed in the middle of four large dunes that blocked the harsh winds. The water was trickling out of a worn stone fountain in the center that must have pumped it up from an underground spring. There were trees lining the water’s edge, but none had grown higher than the dunes as if they knew to grow taller would topple them.
I sank to my knees and drank all that I could. Once I calmed down I laid down by one of the trees to rest. When I finally got a chance to sit and listen, I heard bird song. Above my head in the trees were the rainbow colored birds. Those that hadn’t died had reached paradise and were nesting and pecking at fruit above my head. One of them dropped a fruit in it’s attempt to eat it. The fruit landed almost on my lap. I ate it gratefully and even thanked the bird I was so elated. It tasted sweet, unlike any fruit grown in the basement farms of the city. I hardly finished before I dozed off.
As I opened my eyes the first thing I realized was I wasn’t alone anymore. The second thing was that the man standing in front of me was standing on the water not in it. The third and most shocking was that it was Gabriel. He stood with his back turned to me in long white robes that reached his ankles, he held a bird on his fingers as it sang its tune.
“Gabriel?” I asked. He turned to me with a soft look on his gaunt face.
“ I was hoping you would wake soon Christoph.” He began to walk forward leaving no ripples in the water. “We need to talk.”
“How?” I tried to ask, but he was already speaking.
“You weren’t the only one to take a journey in these few days, mine was just shorter and much easier. Perhaps yours will have a happier ending. All my life I was groomed like I tried to groom you. I was determined to help the world, and the best way to do that was to become a priest. To sacrifice myself in order to become a Shepard to the people of our doomed city.
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