On a summer’s morn in an age long past, the air hung hot and still. At the gates of a great desert city born of the buried river’s oasis, two sisters, daughters of the desert king led a camel to the water’s reedy edge. As they stood, peering hard to the west, a golden dragonfly darted over the whispering waters. In its wake, perfect circles spilled across the cool dark pool.

Now it came to pass that the dragonfly dropped to the youngest sister’s amber arm, shivering there with flutters of its four wings. Her elder teased, “Make a wish, Naseelah! It is a blessing when a dragonfly graces you with a visit. Wish quickly – before it flies away!” Naseelah looked from the jeweled creature to the west where her father’s greed had taken him. She thought this: Bring him home. Drown his greed for gold and slaves. End this hatred we have for folk of the city of the sea.

The dragonfly lifted away, bearing the weight of Naseelah’s wish on its transparent wings. With a tail like a river reed dipped in gold and eyes so strange they saw not one world but many, the insect hovered in the quiet air.

Sunlight struck the earth at just the right angle. The full moon drew seas to low tide on far flung shores. The North Star dipped two degrees beneath the horizon on the sleeping side of the world. When these things had come to pass, the dragonfly beat its four wings and the air quivered. Nothing moved at first but two grains of sand. They toppled together, rolling over and over, down the ribs of a great dune. No one noticed but a small brown lizard and the camel’s flies.

Things changed in the night. The breeze born of the dragonfly’s wings grew stronger, drinking up the arid land’s moon cold night, feeding off the sun-baked sands. Whirling, whirling, the wind was a dancer with scarves of sand and a voice of thunder. Up she rose and twisted in the ancient land.

Snakes fled before her, their tracks drawing curves and whips.

Boys toiling in the desert day dropped their buckets and ropes to hide from the wind in the dark heart of an unfinished tomb.

One goat was swept away.