Once a mountain disregarded you over the horizon, it would suddenly bear down its cragged footpaths upon you, almost as if challenging you to climb up on it. Not through his efforts, but through this movement of thick air like sliding glass panels did the boy discover that the figure was walking toward him. And as this excited him, and he quickened his tread, he did so because he had learned more than just that it was coming. He walked fast, fast, too fast for this heat, and too fast for his lethal thirst. The panels constantly taunted them closer, then slid them apart, the mountain bearing down. And when he shouted, he shouted to an echo that beat off the sliding mountain with a greater bass than that of his parched throat, and he shouted because his ear would have to suffice for his lacking eye, for the sliding panels had slid in with them, by degrees, night. And his hope was that his ear would catch her voice, where her gaze had been caught by his sight.