The turquoise sea gently lapped the yellow sand of the beach, and as it did, sand quietly slid back into the ocean, clouding the waters.  The scents of the sea wafted lazily in the air, and seabirds drifted just as idly through the warm and moist ocean breeze.    Tall palm trees stood near the water’s edge, swaying softly.  From time to time, the birds perched atop these, but mostly they glided peacefully in the currents of warm air coming in from the ocean.  As these birds squawked in their musical fashion, their sole accompaniment was the serene and reassuring sound of the ocean’s blue-green waves massaging the beach.  One by one, the birds swooped down from the sky to examine the only thing of interest to be found on the beach that day: a strange figure, wrapped entirely in a long and rumpled light blue cloak.  

As the peaceful waves continued to lap the light blue figure, the birds began to peck at it, thinking they had found some food.  However, Kashatar Alpana was not yet ready to become food for the birds.  Slowly, he opened his eyes, which stung from the salty water.  They closed again, in exhaustion, and then he opened them once more.  Gradually, Kashatar became aware of a sensation of sharp pinching on his back.  His eyes still unaccustomed to the light, he rolled over quickly.  As he saw the seabirds, he began to irritably gesture them away, but his arm was stopped short by the cloak in which he was wrapped.

“Off me!  Away with you!” snapped Kashatar at the birds, still squinting.  As they scattered, Kashatar pulled the cloak out from under himself, and rolled over so that he was on his knees, with his palms on the wet sand.  On all fours like this, Kashatar stared at his own shadow on the sand beneath him, letting his eyes adjust to the bright light.  When all was clear for him to see, he raised his head into the glorious sunlight of the day and gazed towards the ocean, and then to his rear. Behind the beach, sand dunes rolled back as far as the eye could see.  What was he doing here?  Kneeling there in the sun on the shores of this distant land, his whereabouts and how he got there unknown, watching the clear waters come up to his waist and then withdraw again back into the ocean, Kashatar felt like a newborn child.  He remembered nothing of the past and he cared nothing for the future.  As the ocean breeze moistened his face and the water cooled his legs, his world was at peace. 

 After he had stared into the ocean’s waters for several minutes’ time, Kashatar woke himself from his reverie and looked up and down the beach.  As before, the palm trees swayed gently and the birds sang their melodic song, but Kashatar’s head throbbed painfully and he could not appreciate their music.  Turning to look at the desert dunes behind the beach, he realized that they now looked huge and threatening, yellow mountains under an endless sky.  The winds of the sea were blowing against the face of the nearest dune, kicking up a small screen of sand into this deep blue desert sky.  Still, Kashatar made up his mind to walk from the beach to the nearby dune and survey his surroundings from there.  But as he roused himself and began to walk froward, he saw something on the dune crest that he had not seen before: a small red feather sticking up out of the sand.  As Kashatar watched, however, the feather began to rise higher into the air, and he soon realized that it was not just one feather, but actually several, all arrayed together on some sort of headdress.  The wearer of the headdress was ascending to the crest of the dune, and the feathers continued to rise until their wearer was more visible.  Kashatar gazed at this strange figure, and as it finally reached the dune’s crest, he could see that it was a man on horseback, wearing a wooden skull mask which was decorated with the red feathers he had seen before.  The man’s chest was bare, but painted with some strange sort of dye, and he held the reins of his horse in one hand and a wicked scimitar in the other.  Although Kashatar could not see it clearly, the man seemed to be holding something else as well, a sort of pipe whose end was sticking out of the hand he was using to hold the horse’s reins.  Tattered cloth pantaloons covered the man’s legs, but he had neither a belt nor a sheath.  A man who carried a sword but never had need to sheath it was surely cause for worry.  Although  Kashatar did not recognize the man’s clothing as the uniform of any king or nation, he knew instinctively that this was someone to fear.

 The man finally halted his horse, and began to survey what he saw before him.  It was at this moment that he saw Kashatar, dressed in his light blue robe, looking forlorn and bewildered, which indeed he was.  The man laughed viciously, turned around in his saddle, and yelled something unintelligible into to the unseen vastness behind him.  He then grasped the reins of the horse with his sword hand, and the hand that was holding the strange pipe raised to a position near his mouth.  As he sped down the dune face, kicking up sand behind him as he raced upon his steed, he screamed a battle cry of great fury and intensity, one which struck fear into Kashatar’s heart, where he had thought it had no place.  He heard a sudden strange sound, and felt a stinging pain in his right arm.  He looked down, and saw that a small, colorful dart had pierced his skin.  Feeling even weaker and dizzier than before, Kashatar stumbled to the ground, and fell forwards onto the dry sand.  The hot sand burned his cheek, but it was a not a sensation he was to feel for long.  The last thing Kashatar saw before fatigue overcame him was the man in the skull mask riding wildly towards him, and red feathers, hundreds more, climbing to the crest of the hill.