Near the center of the vast desert that spans the continent of Wa Madul, there is an oasis. And as the passage of time trickled through the god Freyn’s great hourglass, a town sprang up around the sweet waters. It was a desert place, a shifting sea of colorful tents and dark-skinned, sun-bronzed men and women.
A young man lived there. Born in the town, he had never left. But some mornings he walked to the edge of the trees and leaned against a rough palm trunk and stared across the desert with his arms folded across his chest. And some nights he walked out a few paces onto the flat, shifting sands and stared up into the vast gulf of the dark sky.
The stars twinkled — bright, alluring and impossibly far away.
One day, Faisal the camel trader came to this desert jewel, a man in flowing blue robes and a green turban with the jaunty feather of a peacock sprouting from the forehead.
The young man approached him. “How can I cross the desert?” he asked the trader without preamble, and the older man was surprised by the earnest set of his face.
Faisal considered the question, feeding a sticky date to the lemur who sat on his shoulder. “As one crosses anything, I suppose,” he answered after a moment, licking sweetness from one of his fingers. “By walking. Or, if you’re lucky, by riding one of my swift, well-bred camels.”
He gave the young man a hopeful look, but doubted he was a buyer.
The young man considered the pithy advice. “It seems a lot more complicated than that,” he persisted, furrowing his brow. “There are supplies to gather, farewells to make, swift camels to purchase, if you have the coin. And, as for direction…” He hesitated and seemed unsure for the first time. “Every direction looks the same, and I can’t be sure I wouldn’t wander and wander until I drop dead from exhaustion. The rest of the world seems so far away. In fact, I’m almost certain that if I set out I’d never arrive. And the desert seems like a lonely place to die.”
Faisal got the impression that this was the first time the young man had spoken his doubts aloud. And, despite his disappointment that he wouldn’t be selling any of his camels, the trader knew that he could do the youth a good turn. He gestured with a sweep of his arm. It encompassed not only the oasis, but the vast tracts of sand in all directions. “If you never leave,” he said, “will you not still die in the heart of the desert?”
The young man started and looked around. It seemed to Faisal that he saw the desert paradise with new eyes.
“You stand at the center of everything,” the trader told him. “You can only get lost if you walk in circles, forgetting your chosen direction. And you can only stay lost if you forget that every night, even the darkest, the stars shine down to provide direction. If you have a heading, every step puts a little bit more of the desert behind you.”
The next day, the young man left the oasis.
Face the vast impossible. Take one step forward, despite all fear. The impossible is smaller than before.