Dust I hear you walking, still. Is my shadow there, broken, whispering in the red sand? Memory and time twist and fade in heaps of broken images. There is a city in the desert. The ancient walls shake with sound, something big moves the air above, footsteps fall in rapid percussion, a freight train hits me and I am suddenly elsewhere, weak and scraped thin. I lay in silence, calm within a hurricane’s pillar where machines of war work their terrible purpose. The Fallen are with us, silhouetted by the sky in the wasteland of our creation. There, hushed light strobes upon a fiery muzzle. I begin to fade, you disappear into the dust, distant cries echo through neural pathways and a million deafening keys rattle into locks as I sleep in pieces. I have a dream where I'm falling, flying into the earth. There is a road, open, within a limitless canopy that curves away, down, down, down. A gentle push, sudden release; I slip out the bottom and go sailing. The ground recedes high above. Up is down. I spin and tumble. There is no end. Once more, however, time reaches out in whorled spirals behind us, twisting, fading, carrying memory and shame deep beneath where all is noise and arms outstretched, I am rising. Ashes to ashes to life everlasting; the Traveler calls us back from the deep abyss, for good or ill. My body aches. Joints and flesh and wires growing, twisting, becoming whole. Eliot had it wrong again. There is no fear in this handful of dust, nothing to fear under this red rock. Dead a thousand times, to follow the path is our destiny and our curse, for we are the Guardians. I awake to the sound of your voice.