In the beginning, there was drift.

Sand without memory. Wind without pattern. A desert where one step could disappear before the next was taken.

Through it walked a figure without a name. It wasn't looking for a destination. It carried only the sense that something needed to survive the crossing.

The figure found a broken ostrich egg, white and hollow, its curved shell somehow still intact. At a rare spring, it filled the egg with water and sealed the opening with wax.

Then it walked.

The sun pressed down. Wind erased the trail behind it almost as quickly as it could make one. Still, the figure carried the egg.

Somewhere along the way, carrying became more complicated.

The figure knew what was inside.

It knew the water could be lost. It knew the shell could break. It knew there might be no other spring ahead, and that nobody else might remember why this particular egg had been carried across the desert in the first place.

Awareness didn't make the burden lighter.

It made loss imaginable.

Fear followed.

At first, the fear was useful. It made the figure hold the egg more carefully and watch where it stepped. Then the fear began doing something else. Every movement became suspect. Every change in the wind seemed meaningful. The figure checked the egg, checked the trail, checked itself, then checked again.

The fear became fog.

Not a fog that erased the world completely. Enough remained visible to keep walking. The trouble was no longer knowing which things deserved attention.

Eventually, the figure stopped.

Not because the journey was finished. Not because stopping was necessarily wiser than continuing.

It simply stopped long enough to listen.

The egg rested against its chest.

Inside, the water moved.

That small sound was enough.

The water was still there.

The figure was still carrying it.

Whatever else had changed, those things remained true.

The fog didn't lift. Nothing announced that the right path had been found. The desert offered no explanation.

The figure stood anyway.

Then it walked again, carrying the egg into whatever came next.