The bottle

1. The heat

The desert radiated the heat that it borrowed from the sun as that brown tanned skinny lizard crawled its head out of the sand. He looked above to the sun which was as bright as it could be at that afternoon. Then he looked down to the distant concrete highway that ran towards north. It was empty, for a while of course.

"I guess I should follow that road now," he said to himself as he moved his view to the pitched surface.

As his body came out of the sand, the brown scaly surface received the direct sunlight for the first time in that day. When his nose sniffed the sand, he recalled his family whom he had bid farewell just a week ago.

"Son, I will miss you," his mother's word rang in his ears.

With a gust, a small truck rushed in the highway sweeping the sands at the corners into the air. As it passed, a small rock like structure at the corner of the highway caught the lizard's eyes to wonder. He crawled with as much speed as he could towards the road. It was a milestone which read "Las Vegas, 20 miles".

"I'm in a right direction," his eyes twinkled.

The dream he had dreamed of was very near to him now. The blur pictures of sky scrapers, water fountains, hotels, and casinos that he had seen before on the posters, came up before his eyes. "One of the night's brightest spot on the earth" he remembered what some rangers had said while they talked about the city of casinos back at his homeland, Mojave National Preserve, just a month ago. Those ranger were the one, perhaps, who initially seeded this idea to visit that city inside his mind for the first time.

The fight later that evening was something that had disturbed his family for the first time. "You can't go there, Ricky," his father had revolted against his idea.

"But I want to Papa. What good we are doing here in this deserted desert anyway? I don't wanna spend my life here like you and mom did. I wanna live my life papa, yes I want to. And Las Vegas sounds perfectly the place for that."

Later that night his father, a wise lizard, had crawled to him as he rested under the bright shining moon. Below those stars his father told him that this desert was their home. He told that for the Mojave fringe-toed lizard like them, desert was the only place on earth where they were meant to be, and Las Vegas was not a place for lizards in anyway. But Ricky was a young lizard with hopes and dreams in his blood, who was only at his 3rd year of life, which was little greater than the quarter of the lifespan a typical lizard survived: around 8 years.

He tried his best to persuade his father that night about this dream he had, about how much he longs for going there, and how much he had a belief that Las Vegas was the place he could live his life on his own way. But his father was a stubborn one, he didn't agree. And the next day, Ricky had disappeared.

Ricky gulped as he recalled the conversation that night and as he read the words imprinted on that milestone. He gulped again, his throat had an itch for water. The scorching sun was at its best to make him thirstier. He looked around but couldn't see any source in the middle of the desert to quench that thirst. He wondered if he was in Las Vegas then to find water wouldn't had been that hard perhaps.

Amid his wondering a convertible mustang zooms by on the pitch road, giving him a gust of sand-wind. But as he turned to look, it had already covered a lot of distance as he could only see a toy like car from where he was. But something had dropped from it and had bounced as it settled to the edge of the road. Ricky tried to identify the object. It was a water bottle.

His eyes sparked up. He dashed towards it. The bottle was a transparent plastic one with a small amount of water in it. But the problem was its opening, which was small for Ricky to enter easily. But thirst makes beings do things that they have never imagined to have done in the first place.

He went towards the opening, and struggled to squeeze his body as much as he could. As his head was inside he flapped his legs rigorously, and with a gush he was inside the bottle. He took his tongue out, and plunged it into the water.

Tired and finally had drank some water he left his body to rest inside it for a while as he looked outside from the bottom of the bottle towards the horizon where the road met the sky. "How on earth these people make these things at the first place?" He wondered looking at the endless road. With that wondering he let himself rest for a while.

Few minutes passed away without notice. But it was already late when he turned towards the opening of the bottle in order to get out of it. He didn't realized but the opening had already melted from the high heat of desert, and worse, its neck has gone far small than it was before.

He tried to come out but he couldn't. As he was still striving to come out, suddenly, a car rushed by, swinging the bottle in the air with a hard throb on the ground. That bounce rang his head. As he shook his head to get a view he found himself in the middle of the road with another car coming towards him from south with a good speed.

The blood rushed in his veins. He had to come out soon of that bottle otherwise his dream would end with the crush of it below those tires. He gathered all his energy and stroked the opening with his body with a sprint. But it didn't work. The neck was going narrow with the heat.

The car was almost a few minutes away from him as he thought of rolling the bottle away from the road. But the position of it across the road was such that it could only roll in the middle; either away or towards the car. He decided to roll it away which was the only option left.

As he was to move his feet the car with its huge front deck came very close to him. He looked back and squeezed his eyes. With a thigh pitch sounds of brakes, fortunately, that car stopped just touching the bottle.

"What is it dad?" a boy's voice came out of it.

"Seems like I saw something on the road, Henry." A hoarse voice replied.

The left door opened up and a man with a cowboy hat, unbuttoned half shirt with a white t-shirt inside and jeans walked towards the front. As he saw the bottle with a flapping lizard inside he rushed towards it, and picked it up. With the bottle in his hand he yelled to his son what he has found, "it's a fringe-toed lizard, Henry. Seems like stuck inside this bottle." And he wondered, "But, how?"

Without waiting much he went back into the car with the bottle in his hand. He handed it to Henry who was dressed in a lot similar way to his dad.

"It's beautiful," Henry finally spoke after few minutes of drive towards north from the spot they found Ricky. After a while of inspection of the one inside the bottle, he spoke again, "Can we keep it?"

"Of course son, but until your mom don't nags about it?" His father smiled with his hands on the steering and eyes to the distance where a city emerged slowly to the view, "the dream city" of Ricky.