Breathlessly and yet hopeful, she runs and runs till the sky splits open and a mysterious voice speaks to her. It doesn’t seem like she understands what is being said although she never really was good at paying attention whenever spoken to. She trips then falls onto the dry soil leaving a scrape on her left knee. She pays no attention to the physical pain and quickly wipes the blood with the back of her hand. She does not cry, she prefers to keep walking. As she walks through this unfamiliar place crowded by hollow trees and gulping in strange smells she suddenly feels the pressure to be worried. She does not know what a dream feels like anymore now that dreams have become harder to distinguish from her real world.

Three hours and twenty seven minutes later she becomes weary and lays her restless body on the brownish ground spotted with dark green patches of grass. The air is warm blowing a cold breeze across her tanned colored cheeks. A delightful pattern is made with the rough­ness of the grass around her frail body. They hold her tightly to the earth. She is too weak to resist the comfort. Just lying there, she rests her left cheek on the cold gravel and briefly closes her eyes. She only closes them enough to see the sun set and realize another day has been wasted, another day has gone and will never come back. She looks upwards and thinks calmly to herself that the cynicism of time being wasted is simple; “one gives and then turns to the asking and then returns to the giving again. And he who increases the asking will one day be disappointed and then who knows.”

She wonders if she’ll ever find the flying Ostrich she sees in her pale dreams. She thinks that she will know more about this Ostrich if only she could close her eyes one more time, if only more time will be. It has been eight days since she has seen the back of her eyelids. She is now too scared to fall asleep to miss the view of the flying Ostrich. She forces her eyes to close all the way but before her tired oval shaped skin could touch the bottom of her eyelids she hastily takes a handful of soil and throws it in her face. Her eyes burn and forced tears run down her dirty cheeks leaving a trace of a wet line per cheek. She is aware that she desires a good night sleep but she is not sure if she is allowed to rest.

She sits up crossing her legs, one long leg on top of the other. She looks up to the purplish sky and tries to remember what she might have heard and if what she might or might not have heard will help her find this Ostrich. She thinks she heard a deep voice say “it’s not the Ostrich that you should find. Its egg is what you shall seek.” The tone of the voice sounds familiar but she ignores and continues. She is in a rush. Too tired. She thinks she might have misheard only because she does not know what an Ostrich looks like, she only could imagine. She does not want to fail. Maybe she was hallucinating knowing that she hasn’t slept or eaten in days. All she could think about is where and how could she find an Ostrich in the middle of her neighbor’s town? A deer perhaps, maybe even a bear but not an Ostrich.

Ignoring the egg she possibly heard from a voice in the sky that might have been part of her sleepless nights, she got up very slowly and began to walk in the dark. She comes across a shadow. Perhaps it was a horse but not a camel, she thought. She now searches for the shadow of the horse with two humps. Impossibility is the word she finally thinks of when she cannot find this invisible shadow. She wants to forget. She must be away from it all. Putting aside the Ostrich, its eggs, her dreamless dreams, the voice, and her restless body, she continues to take the direction of no sign and to no destination point. She walks to migrate in this far away place she wishes to call home. Maybe if not a single thought or worry is ever projected then possibly time will be easier to manage then she’ll finally wake up or go to bed. Another worry lowers her head closer to the ground. Another thought she cannot afford to contemplate.

She is exhausted now and the ninth sunrise is on its way. She tumbles upon an odd box and gives it a long stare. She watches the dust disappear into the fresh sunlight as her lips blow weak air attempting to clean some of the dust off the old wooden box. Food someone has deserted, she forgets that she is hungry and picks up whatever her trembling fingers can grasp but she does not eat any of it. Some chocolate and wine will attract the Ostrich and its wings, and it will bring me its eggs, the shadow of the horse and its two humps will follow and perhaps the mysterious voice from above will like to join, she whispered to the old willow tree waiting beside her. Her slim fingers wrap tightly close to one another and seem like they can snap at any moment.

She waits for somebody, for something, anything, but knows that the tension of waiting will only ache her feet and time will be wasted again and again and again. Nothing will come forth if she continues to stand there holding sour wine and melted chocolates, nothing will happen except for the fact that she will feel the bleeding blisters carved in her ankles. They will hurt so much that she will no longer stand. She will soon feel numb.

She waits. She feels her blisters. She drops the bottle of wine and releases the box of melted chocolate. She surrenders then wipes the plumps of dust that cover the corner of her lips. Both, her ankles and her patience give up. She no longer feels her wounds. She is numb. She has been numb for a while now. Even her lungs know that nobody is coming, nothing and no one is coming. Her lungs are also drained and slowly surrender to the confusion of the position she is in. They stop pumping. Her body gives up. She falls. As the broken bottle cuts her delicate skin she closes her eyes and waits some more. The color of her bleeding feet mixed with the wine is the color she imagined the Ostrich will appear in, someday.

They are coming. They are coming. They are almost here. Their footsteps are muted. They never come. Her eyes are closed.

They, who might or might not come, are known but are kept a secret. They have covered their howdahs with coverlets of high value, the fringes of which are red, resembling the spilled dark colored wine. Howdahs, huge saddles covering warm flesh that holds the burden of the sleeping forest, it cannot conceal anything and hide it forever. Nothing is ever too small.

She lies dimly on the dry leaves between the rusty barks of ancient trees and realizes that she had not known that ‘forever’ is a long time to wait. Her wrists are naked and do not own numbers of time with strokes of hands. Numbers cannot help her. Also, she had not known before that the word ‘never’ is so sad. Perhaps the voice she once heard will renounce that beckoning for tomorrow. Perhaps the Ostrich will find her lost words and bring them back to her country. Then the people of her country shall not be obliged to gaze at numbers and doubt their dreams or count the days of tomorrows.

She wakes up in the same room again. It was nothing but a dream, again. With tired hair covering her face, she slowly walks away from her bed towards the loud window. Louder, louder, and louder her room fills until the window seals and finally she hushes the streets. She walks through the hall way and forgets which door leads to the outside.