THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Six healthy camels strode across the scorching sand of a desert, nowhere special. Their riders rocking slightly in the saddles; still vessels emptied of their souls.
Up and down pounded the hooves, leaving little craters in the sand, blown over even as they were made.
The hot rising air creating endless thermals, the fuel for a hungry vulture or buzzard. The heat seemed like an opera, a monotonous story based on nothing special, but, to those that do not understand it, it is a marvellous way of life.
Still the hooves pound their way across the fine grains of sand. Every now and then a rock would quietly mosey on past not saying 'hello' or 'how ya doin''; not even a wave from the dark objects. With no contempt they sit and stare, watching life and death go past in any shape or form.
And if a rock could tell its story, what would it have to say. No one pays it any attention, it is the perfect spy; Except it has no conviction or sentiment it just sits and waits for the winds to blow and the rains to fall and to be washed away as nothing more than dust, dust to be stepped on by the hoof of a camel stumbling aimlessly through a jungle of air.
Even now the vagabonds, ruffians and god knows who makes off with their expensive possessions. Possessions not worth the four dead bodies slumped in their saddles, left to bounce on the back of an animal that will stumble aimlessly without the guidance of the superior being. But 'who is dead' the camel says under its foul breath. How then do you rate superiority it asks. And although the camel has laughed last for now, soon it too will perish in the sands of the godforsaken desert.
Then the vultures and buzzards will close in and leave nothing but bones. Before returning to the warm winds that power their wings.