The Temple of Shifting Sand

It was a strange day.

I had woken late in the afternoon, with a most peculiar lightness of being. My mind and heart were not weighed upon with the usual baggages of daily life. I felt free, and in my freedom I felt a powerful urge to wander.

My house had been built only a few years before, in a newly-zoned estate far from the city. It was quite a long way from the local village, which itself was a long way still from the city centre, but there was a sense of peace and tranquil solitude afforded by the location, which was what attracted me to it.

That was clearly going to change, however, as with the more time that passed, the more the developments took hold and changed the appearance and character of the surrounding areas.

What once was a beautiful dry bushland was now a series of rolling, naked hills adorned here and there with piles of landfill, and construction materials, and vehicles, and heavy machinery.

It was here that my wandering took me, on that strange day.

I was exploring the large area of cleared forest. Some wooden frames of houses stood here and there, on their concrete foundations, but the rest of the expanse of land was empty.

I approached a hill, and, passing some excavators and piles of timber, looked over the crest into the dip below.

I was amazed to see a huge sandy desert spread out before me in the late afternoon sun. There had never been a desert here before. I looked behind, and there were the skeletal houses, the clearings. I ran eagerly down the hill to investigate.

I wandered in this desert, and before I was aware of it, all familiarity had vanished from the land. I could no longer see the estates.

However, what I could see looming before me was a colossal stone complex, casting a deep shadow over the sands, as the sun prepared to set.

There were three buildings, arranged symmetrically, in an arc.

The building in the middle was by far the largest. Between its immense pillars was a large statue depicting what I supposed must be the temple’s patron god. It was a likeness of a tall, muscular man, with a beak, and an eagle’s talons for feet, and two great pairs of wings. In one hand he carried a flail, and in the other, a crook.

I entered between the pillars. I seemed to be the only one here. I was accompanied only by the hollow voice of the wind whipping between the buildings.

Inside, the temple was a long, open hall with a soaring, gilded ceiling.

Uncounted rows of pillars held the ceiling aloft, and atop each pillar was a large crystal sphere. Each sphere contained in itself an entire world.

The galleries between the pillars were filled with sands blowing in from the desert, and the dunes shifted through the hall endlessly.

My final memory of this place was of crossing the dunes between the pillars, gazing in awe at the magnificent hall of worlds, knowing that I was in the presence of great power, and great wisdom.