The wayfarer stood upon the hill overlooking the wasteland stolidy. The soil crumbled under his foot. Dark clouds gathered at a distance to herald the upcoming storm. The wind echoed, a calling for rainfall.

He was a bedouin, a vagabond, a nomad. He had no home, but he lived in The Wasteland. The rough wasteland had somewhat worn him out; his clothes were torn apart, with some patches here and there. He had no significant features; but the unkindness of the wasteland was very apparent on his rugged face. He roamed the wasteland, like a specter. It wasn’t very clear if he was actually a manifestation of the wasteland, like a warden or a different entity in itself.

The still aridness of the desolate wasteland was very deceptive, huge storms at a time would sweep the landscape and wash the soil. The rain would carry with it the huge monoliths of granite stone littered across the wasteland occassionally even.

The wind picked up speed and the nomad tread forward, enveloped by wind; but not before taking a sip from his bottomless canteen. One would think that a bottomless canteen would be a pretty effective at quenching his thirst, but his thirst was unending too; which meant he had an eternal problem of dry lips, with no lipstick in sight, particularly because lipsticks did not exist in this plane of existence.

The nomad had a destination too of course, as every traveler did; except the ones who didn’t. His destination was the same with every other nomad, which may or may not have existed in the first place. But some things are certain in some existences, and in this existence it was certain that every nomad ended their journeys at the same destination. The Time. Every nomad knew The Time existed, but no nomad knew where it was; which was the reason they traveled The Wasteland, seeking for The Time. But, contrary to the expectation, finding The Time was not an event coveted by the nomad, because he only knew to search and had not found anything before. The whole concept of finding something made him nervous. Just like how the concept of existing made nothingness uneasy.

As you can’t tell, the nomad liked talking about himself in third person cryptically. You can’t because he hasn’t spoken yet, and I, the only entity that has talked up to this point, am not the nomad. Because I don’t exist. At least in that plane of existence. I can tell because lipsticks DO exist in my plance of existence; in fact, I am using one right now.

Anyhow.

The nomad believed in a religion called The Narrative, which was a monotheistic religion with a deity named The Narrator. The worshippers of The Narrator believed that whatever The Narrative dictated would happen, as with most religions. This caused the worshippers to also believe that, since everything that was going to happen was bound to happen, the dictations of The Narrative HAD to be written somewhere. Some worshippers believed that this was a metaphor, but some seemed to genuinely think that The Narrator had his hard copy of The Narrative somewhere in his plane of existence.

The nomad was pretty religious and he felt like he had a firm grasp on the core concepts of The Narrative; not because he had a lot of time to think, time didn’t exist in the wasteland; but because he was pretty smart. He was smart enough to understand that concepts like unexistence of time might not apply to The Narrator, because the whole concept of The Narrator was beyond his existence; which was also a concept he understood. The time did not exist in the wasteland, but the place existed. The place was flowing, it was constant and it was firm. For the nomad, the place always flowed in one direction, if it didn’t he would just stop. This would be advantageous for him since he did not have the sligtest intention of finding The Time, which he would inevitably find if the place kept flowing. But he had made peace with this fact some time ago, and he learnt to embrace the curiosity that was the finding.

The nomad walked, and the place changed. The time stood still, because it didn’t exist. The Time did not exist as well, as what the nomad hadn’t encountered did not exist for him. It may have existed for The Narrator. Or it may have not, since the time existed for The Narrator. The Nomad didn’t care, he just walked. For him the wasteland was all that existed. He sometimes wondered why in The Narrative would The Narrator put huge chunks of rock in The Wasteland though, as they made walking harder and slowed the flow of The Place. But he thought The Narrator would probably know better, so he soldiered on. He didn’t.

The nomad was very knowledgeable as well, which did not make other nomads that The Narrator created kind of jealous because they had no motivation for The Nomad. In the wasteland, most if not all motivation was lost eons ago, buried under the broken soil. The Knowledge existed was very valuable however, even more than motivation, since motivation only meant a thing with knowledge; raw motivation was as good as chunks of rock for the Nomad. He took pride in his knowledge, for he had imagined other nomads without much knowledge. It must have been really dull leading a journey without much knowledge he thought, after all you would just wander until The Time came. For The Nomad, it was the knowledge that counted, even if you did not have much motivation.

To fit himself better to The Narrative, the nomad created a virtue called wisdom. He imagined that the knowledge and motivation together would create the wisdom, to which The Narrator agreed. Thus wisdom was created to be the only thing that could permeate the planes of existence. The Narrator made the Nomad covet wisdom, which he did. The Nomad wanted to be wise, and to be wise he had to obtain motivation. Luckily for him he had the knowledge to do so. Knowledge to obtain motivation, motivation to obtain knowledge; and he would be wise. The nomad thought that The Narrator would like him being wise, if he had a concept of liking. But then he thought, if the Narrator had wanted him to be wise, he would dictate so in the Narrative. He did. The nomad was wise. It was his wisdom that caused him to have this revelation in the first place. The revelation made him lose some of his motivation, which made him less wise. Him being less wise meant that he didn’t have the revelation, as the time did not exist in the wasteland and everything happened at once. Because he was less wise, he didn’t have the revelation, which in turn didn’t take away his motivation. The Narrator did not like where this was going, so he made the Nomad not wise. The Nomad was not wise. He was not wise enough to not understand that he was not wise, so everything worked out.

The Narrative dictated that the nomad should reach The Time, end of the Place. Which he did. To much of his surprise, The Time was not so different from The Place in the wasteland. If The Narrative hadn’t said so, he wouldn’t even have noticed it was The Time. Now, the nomad could ascend to the narrator’s plane of existence and they could have The Talk. But the The Narrative dictated that to be cliché. Also it would be impossible since passing between planes of existence proved to be very awkward for The Narrator. It would be double extra awkward since The Nomad was a puppet of The Narrative, which was the written by the Narrator. The Narrator found talking to himself would be kind of weird, which in turn caused him to wipe The Nomad out of existence. The nomad was no more, his clothes were no more and his bottomless flask was no more. The Narrator then ended the Narrative very anticlimactically out of shame.