The Cowboy

The Cowboy had heard rumors about snow. Folks said that up north, come winter, small soft crystals of ice fell from the heavens, blanketing the earth with the cold stuff. Never having seen snow himself, the Cowboy imagined that the fine white sand around him might have been something like the snow. The white sand stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see, and much further than that. Unlike the cold snow, however, this sand was baked hot by a scorching yellow sun. The white sand reflected the light from the sun, rendered the cowboy's wide brimmed hat uselss. The reflected sunlight on the groud was almost as strong as the sunlight in the sky, and there was no keeping the intense light out of his eyes.
It was equally impossible to avoid the heat. The Cowboy was traveling through a desert, but it also may have been an oven. The Cowboy's plaid shirt wasn't the best garb for the heat, the absorbant material soaked up his sweat, making it impossible for the Cowboy to cool off. However, it was either that or be burnt black by the sun.
Perhaps the Cowboy should have taken his cues from the animals, or rather, the lack thereoff. What few sand snakes or desert rodents that were able to survive in the harsh desert stayed underground during the day, prefering to go about their business in the relative cool of the night. Did the Cowboy know of the foolishness of his endless traveling? He travelled by both day and night, only stopping for rest for the hour before sunrise.
The Cowboy had lost his horse sometime before in this mad quest. He had dutifully, though not unemotionally, neatly stripped the hide, and cut sections of toughened meat off of the horse. He had roasted it over a camp fire, burning away the last of the cow chips we had brought with him from whatever had come before this. He had trusted his sure-footed stud horse, but when the time came, his empty stomach dictated his need to survive.
Now, he barely noticed his constant hunger. Food was hard to come by in the desert. Meat was scarce and edible plants were nonexistant. We drank what water he could drain out of the sparse cacti. As a result, he had lost a lot of weight and had become pockmarked with what any mariner would have recognized as scurvy marks. In fact, he had become so emaciated that his own mother would not have been able to pick him out of a line up, if the rouge Cowboy had ever even had a mother.
If the Cowboy even noticed his wasted condition, it is hard to say. He was so determined to follow through with his nameless quest that all other matters were put to the back of his mind. He took care of himself enough to survive, at least on a short term basis, and constantly pressed on.
However, at this stage in the journey, the Cowboy had lost almost all sense of direction and purpose. The Cowboy must have surely known what his quest was about when he had first taken it up, but now he only had some vague notion of what it had been. Surely it had been some noble quest, perhaps it even was a quest that would decide the fate of the world. In his own mind, the Cowboy was sure his mission was part of a battle to keep evil forces at bay, a knight of the legends of old. Whatever his true mission had been, it must have been important enough to keep the Cowboy going ever onward towards this quest. Even after the heat and hunger drove it from his mind.
Up ahead, far in the distance the Cowboy saw an oasis, in truth it was only a mirage of an oasis, but its all the same to our Cowboy. In delerium, truth and illusion are one in the same, and to one as thristy as the Cowboy, it is preferable to experiance the hope that illusion brings. He stumbles along the the harded sand, towards hope. He sees it clearly: the palm trees swaying gently in the wind, the cool, crystal clear waters protected by an underlayer of growth and playful animals enjoying the cool respite. He sees this all, not knowing that he is not seeing further than his own mind.
The Cowboy reaches the water. He kneels on the ground before it, praising the Gods, in all their glory for such a wonderful gift of nature. Slowly, he extends his arms out, steady as a rock, and cups a handful of the water. He feels a sliver of pain run down his arms as the wet infiltrates his cracked, dry hands. But he does not flinch in pain, nor does he move at all. He allows the first handful to fall from his fingers as a sacrifice to the desert sands that had brought him to this place. He reaches foward, mind and body, for the next cup and notices with some amusement at the fish playing beneath the surface. The water bends the light, causing the fish to look misshapen. He dips into the water and brings his head down towards his hands. Like a thristy dog, he laps up the water. He lets it run through past his lips and over his tounge, noting that he had never in all his years tasted something so angelic.
When the cowboy had drunk his fill, he curled up underneath the shade of a great palm tree. As he drifted off to his final sleep, he though passionately and thankfully for all the grace and good that had been provided for him. The cowboy's eyes closed and his breathe stilled and he lay, with the hot sun blazing at the sky's zenith. He appeared, in the golden sand, as a majestic, flayed king and the carrion eaters as his court.