Ursula's Epic Search

There is a peculiar quality to the desert.

It's not that everything you see is all golden and shimmery, although it can be, or that you'll die if you don't carry your own water around with you, although most people do. It's not even that every living thing within a hundred miles has teeth and claws and will bite, claw, or maul you without provocation.

No, it's something more subtle than that.

I first noticed it when I saw a man walking through the desert. He was covered in dust, but his clothes were clean. He looked like he'd just left one of the cities to go on a picnic in the country. Then I noticed that there were no footprints in the sand around him. No animals came near him; he didn't seem to notice them staring at him from their hiding places. He was just...alone. And clean. And thirsty.

That's when I started noticing it everywhere—the silence of the desert, the loneliness of the desert, the emptiness of the desert. The small things hidden in plain sight that were suddenly revealed for what they were: how the heat shimmers between dunes make it look like there are other figures standing there for just a moment before fading away again; how a lizard skittering across my path makes me think for just a second that it might have been a lost child; how even though this dune looks exactly like every other one I've seen since I began my quest to find my brothers, I know that this one is different somehow, and now I'm wondering whether I should turn back after all and return home without them...

The first time I'd turned back had been three days earlier.

"I've been asking everyone," I said to my mother, "and no one has seen them."

"You haven't asked everyone," she replied wearily. "Now go."

It wasn't really a conversation-it was more of an argument over who had lost more sleep over their disappearance over the past year and a half, which my mother won by virtue of her being awake during daylight hours as well as nighttime ones (nothing unusual about her sleeping schedule; she's just always been an insomniac). But now she was asleep again and wouldn't be awake for another seven hours or so (she sleeps like someone who never sleeps-she's amazing), so I slipped out of our house into the soft early morning light outside, feeling heavy with weariness myself but knowing that if I stayed any longer my mother would wake up anyway and order me to go again.

My two younger brothers Alonzo and Carlos had left home after my father died last year-they were only eight years old at the time, but they remembered enough about him to know that he wouldn't have wanted us to cry all day long over his absence because he believed in moving forward rather than dwelling on what is gone forever; plus they'd heard our mother talking about how men are supposed to protect women and children-even though they couldn't really fight yet they knew they mustn't let anyone hurt us while they were gone because their father wouldn't have wanted them to fail at their duty like that-so off they went into the world to find adventure and glory so they could grow up strong enough to take on whatever enemies might threaten us later on down the road when maybe we needed protection again someday too. It was brave of them (some people even called it stupid), but also foolish-and our mother tried to stop them from leaving but it was already too late before she realized what was happening-so now here we were together trying to find them again as fast as possible before something terrible happened! It was clear what that terrible thing would be: getting eaten by something huge and terrifying!

So here I was trekking across deserts looking for them (without any grownups along because *gasp* children shouldn't be allowed out in dangerous areas without supervision! *double gasp* children should not be allowed out in dangerous areas at all!). Whenever someone told me they hadn't seen my brothers within the past month or so ("Oh sorry kid! You probably don't want to hear this but I haven't seen anyone pass by here for months!") I thanked them politely and moved on in search of someone else who might be able to tell me where my brothers were instead (still polite!). Eventually I had hoped to reach some kind of city down south where people kept track of strangers passing through their lands (anyone who travels through cities knows how helpful those people can be!). My mother hadn't thought that far ahead yet when she sent me on my journey (I guess she figured things would pan out somehow!), so she didn't know where we might end up eventually if we ever managed to locate each other again (maybe somewhere near where those three rivers meet up?). So until then—or until one of us found our brothers—we'd remain separated! We'd have to hope we'd run into each other eventually!