Salt on the Earth

By: Karsol

I was brought to a rift between two worlds; a valley devoid of shade and light where no plant grew nor animal roamed. Some may call the places between this realm Caelum and Infernum, others Gan Eden and Gehinnom, and still others Elysium and Hades. To me, Heaven and Hell.

The place was a desert that reached beyond the horizon, if there ever was one. There was no sun nor moon, and the sky was clear; beyond the stray wispy clouds were stars twinkling in smoky nebulae moving against the unchanging twilight. The cold and misty wind carefully sculpted the peaks of dunes taller than the bell towers I lived in, built upon uncountable grains of chalk-white salt that composed these timeless wastes.

I did not know how I ended up in this place, nor how long I had been here. A single blink brought me from a simple quotidian life to a sentence of eternally shifting from peak to glistening peak.

I walked. Each step dug into the sand and into my bare feet. Every time I looked back to where I came from, I only saw a faint trail of my footsteps slowly blown into a dune forming downwind. Whenever the wind picked up, a cloud of salt would be lifted off the ground and pass through me, catching itself in every strand of my hair and every crevice of my body.

Why am I here?

Who put me here?

When can I leave this place?

These questions gored in my head as I treaded through the shapeless salt dunes. My mind would drift along streams of thoughts before landing on these delicate, yet unbreakable strings of words.

The first person I came across was a man who held a long spear as a cane as he walked. His curly tawny hair fluttered gloriously along the frigid wastes, though his scrawny and emaciated form barely dragged itself across the salt without tipping over and falling down a dune into a trough below. I only looked on from a distance as he tried picking himself back up, leaving deep pink splotches on the ground where his legs rose from. He did not look up at me, nor did he seem to mind the cuts on his legs. He merely walked along the edgeless heaps as he struggled to open his wrinkled eyes and mouth.

A glowing figure appeared behind him as he shuffled. It traced each drop of blood that stained the ground and burned it away. It did not harm the man, but it blew from its form a violent wind that carved a trench behind them. And endlessly, as loud as if that figure stood beside me, it spoke thus:

Ἀλέξανδρος, son of Phillip,

conqueror of the known world

all empires knelt before your feet

those you slaughtered, their gold you won.

Weep, you monger; find your empire

shattered and razed beyond your grave

few shall praise you with their lyre

and fewer still your conquests shall.

Ἀλέξανδρος, why declare

yourself a son of Zeus?

Think yourself a god and find

yourself a mortal ruse.

I heard them constantly and continuously for an eternity before the man and that thing disappeared beyond the shifting knolls. I did nothing but turn away from their distant silhouettes before continuing.

I walked until I came across the largest salt dune I could find in my sight: its shape was constantly being battered by the wind to expose the pale brown surface of stacked limestone blocks. It stood before me as a great edifice that stuck out from the otherwise flowing sea of salt and wind. It was then that I saw an old woman draped in a long silver cloak that made each grain glitter when it shifted underneath the surface.

“You know this?” The old woman spoke.

I tried to find my voice. “I’m afraid not.”

The old woman simply stared at the cracks of the stones. “This was a tomb to a ruler of antiquity. For he thought himself a god amongst his people, his greatest work sits half-buried within this realm.”

I saw the salt blown away from the structure; it was a pyramid, no taller than the dunes around it, which still covered the base. “Was he at least a good ruler to his people?”

The old woman stood silent for a few moments, before turning slowly towards me. She looked no older than my mother; her hair was a mix of white and black, and her eyes shone like a ruby. She closed those gemstones and gave me a wry smile. “Who lets his people toil decades for such a vain enterprise? Would an ant build a mound for itself?”

I looked back at that herculean stack. That pile of stone and fatigue. Battered by each gust of wind. When I turned back, that old woman was gone.

Long after my only encounter with that old person, my legs began to ache. It took a million steps for my knees to fail me and I felt the coarseness of the salt grate against my face. I let out a sharp wail before doubling over and slamming my back against the ground.

The sky was clearer than my first gaze on it. Each star glowed every brilliant color, each star a shade more vibrant than the last. My turbid breaths slowed to a calm, rhythmic pace. Each exhale blowing with the wind.

Why am I here?

Who put me here?

When can I leave this place?

“You show yourself through those questions you pose,” a voice spoke to me. I turned to see a young boy staring at me.

“Who are you?”

“Now you’re talking about someone else?” The boy’s face was blank, unchanging. “So many I’s in your head right now, I’m surprised you could fit another person in there.”

I fell silent.

Silent.

“You were put here for a reason. Made to walk the surface of this place for a reason. Showed those people for a reason.” The boy’s voice bellowed, and a sphere of wind surrounded him, taking those tiny crystals with him.

Those grains of salt riddled my face, drew blood from each inch of my skin. I could barely open my eyes as I struggled to find the boy in that storm.

“You have been warned. Stray further from me and I will grind you down into the grains of salt you feel in your cuts.”

And I woke up.

I was back. I was in front of the audience, on my proverbial soapbox. They looked on as I took a step back from my podium and took a seat, catching my breath.

I am a dense person, I will admit that as smart as I am, I have no clue as to what just happened.

They say that when a person is judged after their time in our world, they are sent to a place that best fits what they have done in their life.

Maybe I might find that out soon enough.