War of Glory

Man in the Storm

   Few clouds spotted the night sky with the millions of stars filling in the black space behind them. The moon, an everlasting source of light, shines upon the land. A slight breeze sweeps the area, pushing the dotted patches of grass to their sides and causing the desert sand to stir and release the daytime heat it trapped between its grains. The breeze quickly turned into a wind, and the clouds changed course, heading for a smaller one that stopped as if time was paused.

   The clouds connected together like pieces of a puzzle, and bright white lines appeared where they connected. The wind continued to gain speed, blasting towards the center of the clouds, picking up clumps of dirt and bringing them up on its ascension to the clouds.

   Suddenly the white lines shot to the center of the clouds, then blasted the ground with a firm blast, shooting dirt up into the sky. The light disappeared and the clouds floated away back to their original positions, continuing on the paths of roaming the sky. The dirt began to settle back on the ground, revealing through the haze a man lying in the middle of a black ring that was left from the blast.

   The man rolled over in the dirt and released a course cough, clearing dirt from around his face. He pushed himself up off the dirt and placed his bare feet below him. After twisting his back both ways, he looked down and realized the only thing covering his body was a layer of loose dirt. He brushed it off and looked around without any sense of direction. He looked up at the moon and began walking in its direction, constantly looking around at his surroundings.

   After hour of walking, the desert haze reveals a small mound in the distance. The man takes another look around him and takes off on a brisk run towards the hill, not knowing what to find. Soon he came to the hill, which is much larger than he thought. He looks up towards the peak, and notices a worn path to the top. He begins climbing the path quickly, hopping over rocks instead of going around them. After deciding to go around a larger rock that he couldn’t simply jump over, he noticed a split in the path. One continued going up towards the peak, while the other shot off to the right, and into a small cave. The man looked up and looked right, and turned towards the cave.

   He approached it carefully, not knowing what would be inside. With the moon on the opposite side, the cave was dark and looked like it had no end. The man took a deep breath and walked in with his hands out front feeling for anything. A few steps inside and he could already the back wall. He shook his head and turned to walk out, but his foot caught something and he fell to the ground. Panicked, he grabbed whatever he tripped over and threw it out of the cave into the light. It landed hard and slid into a rock, where it broke apart into several pieces. The man walked up slowly, only to reveal he had tripped over a skeleton and ruined a dead man’s eternal sleep. He kneeled down and gently took off the worn leather pants that protected the bones, and put them on. They were a little loose, but after tightening the drawstring they had become a perfect fit.

   He placed his hands on his hips and took a deep breath, looking out towards the land, but something caught his attention. An orange smear was racing across the desert. The man looked at the moon and the angle at which the light was traveling, and realized they would intersect exactly where he had woken up at. He instantly took off in a sprint down the mountain and back towards where he had woken up in the dirt. He had no idea what the light was, but he figured good or bad, it would give him some answers.