9: To the Dunes of Kpli (4/End)

“You’re no whisper, trickster,” I spat before I did entreat: “These are tests… Or is this all a sun-blind dream?”

But the shade could not create, could only dare repeat: “Too much so. I will not stay.” She wavered in the heat.

My mind still stuck fast between bare confusion and fear, my body split free and flew toward the call: KpliKpliKpli!

Testsfaithmemories all collided as I drew ever near. Not-Ajand made no sound, but I knew her by her leave.

The red sand met my hand and spilled into my soul. Relief and panic hit me, my heart breaking as if brandished.

She was waiting for me at the top, hand outstretched, cold. She smiled when I tepidly took it, then she simply

vanished.

I took my place among my brothers that day.

I remember that sunrise, it’s truest song.

Just as after I had asked Ajand, “Why won’t you stay?”

I awoke to the dunes of Kpli

and she was gone.

8: To the Dunes of Kpli (3)

The third test loomed like the crimson horizon swelled. My trepidation solidified like a stone in my person.

Not-Ajand limped as if weak, but founded me a well. Her echo bounced back: “Intense… I think I will worsen.”

I could not tell if the shade really was only a mirror, or if it was whole and used Ajand’s voice like as a record

As we neared Kpli, I vied to know the truth clearer: Could my shame, this shade, and Faith be but a ripcord?

“What would you have of me, Spector?” demanded I. Long suffered, my patience and politeness frayed.

Not-Ajand tilted her head. “Intense… Look me in the eye.” They were old words old Ajand had already made.

I looked in her scarlet eyes anyway

and I saw the truth in those rolling dunes.

A reflection? Yes, but also, in some way…

The red devil animating her could not be rebuked.

7: To the Dunes of Kpli (2)

In the valley of lovers, I ventured only under starry night. The cacti were my cups, their spines stabbing my palms.

Of my truths, I had not thought, but brooded in dull fright. Kpli deserved my respect; it’s ghosts, my psalms.

The sand clung to my face, scouring me red under-hood. If other travelers were to pass me, would they see me?

Or would they know me as one of their own understood–another shade in the land of shades, drowned in dry sea?

This, my second test, as the land of Kpli still called: My feet and my eyes betrayed me as they settled on a road.

Not-Ajand asked from whence, an echo of recalled: “Why would you ask me that? What are you owed?”

I did not know how to answer her before.

I did not know how to answer her in the wind.

I could only keep trudging ever more…

my heart still as sore as it had been back then.

6: To the Dunes of Kpli (1)

“Intense,” she said, insisting I was neither good, nor bad. She left soon after, but I never forgot Ajand.

Kpli called me, as it calls us all, and I went glad. Grown apart from child-things, I sought truth in sand.

Coiling together as continent-sized lovers, the red grains waxed and waned as a great wave.

Ajand in the daydream, beckoned as another. Said she, “Intense… Too much so. I will not stay.”

An illusion, it was. Her lines called up as flesh. When the whisper faded, so too did the shade’s shape.

Kpli’s secrets required more than professed. Banishing a shadow of my past would be the first test of faith.

Do you believe those things you read?

I concede your hesitation, your need.

Even I question the strange things I have seen

and, moreover

I question my own sanity…