Nomad, a parable

Aimless he seemed to go, though not straining left or right--but endless, endless, endless. On he walked. At times guided by vision, sometimes sound, and occasionally in those tight, damp places--touch.

More than once he traveled through the same place again, but few if any saw him return from whence he came.

They simply watched on, only half-realizing his presence. Unmistakable and hard to miss, but dreadfully difficult to notice. Perhaps embroidered on the fringe of their mind there was a pleasant scent... a warm spring breeze of sorts.

A memory, though, is usually all it was because the real presence of the nomad was so natural that only rebels and stock brokers took notice.

%

Was there one alone in the lands? None might say with certainty for while often two passed in proximate time too close to be one, or three passed too close to be two... yet their likeness was so akin that even politicians could not divide the few. And any time several were seen at the same instant... circumstances forbade certain proof. Desert weather may give hallucinations as much as far view and rain weather might impel even locals a course of safety pursue.

Of course unnature should say that a nomad who walks for centuries must have died. But legends of old rumor it is the same man walking thence as now.

%

Measured at 30 miles a day for the pace of an average man might yield two-ten by the seventh. But the nomad is rumored never to rest. Even so, with 30 for a day, a distance can be achieved. To the ends of the earth a nomad might reach well before the third year of wandering. But perhaps that is too small a feat for the nomad because rumor and legend are whispered of late that the nomad walks not to sea or shore but to the sun.