This is what you fear. Correct?

Tiny incandescent little ice cubes sitting at the tips of my fingers. Nails, nails, twisting down into the sand. This whole place is made of them. Made of them. Top to bottom, six to twenty four whole human body lengths down to the hardened basalt that makes up the true floor of this place. Thoristone compressed over decades, centuries, millennia, eons -- pressed and pressed.

 

Beneath that lies him, somewhere. Twisting and curling. Long, long, long, spiraling. Coiled. Bent out of shape? Not at all, he can stretch to the surface, thousands of hands inching outward. Where they crawl up out of the crust isn't up to us to decide. Or me. Just him.

 

His fingers break through the mud, through the dirt, through the green leaves of spring and orange of fall. Sometimes they are the mortar that cities are built with, others just the foundation. Sometimes he falls from the sky like cool rain, steaming the streets as the tips of his appendages tickle the pavement. The weathering? It's his test. Over time. Time. Time is the test. Just like the sand here, each grain is one of you, each is blown through the hourglass, forced to press up against the ancient stones of your time. Forced to weather away at the pavement. Erode, erode, erode. Eventually those structures fall. Eventually the secrets within them are set free.

 

You thought it was coincidence? The desert always moves. Look at it, beneath your feet, beneath my feet, twisting and turning. Are the dunes stationary or are you as crazy as I am? Crazy, crazy -- a prophet. Foresight requires alternative thinking, alternative creativity. I wouldn't fit in the mortar of your streets. My purpose is to watch, watch and carefully stay here. Carefully now.

 

The shards of the desert move. Eventually everything in them falls and become sand, becomes the tool on which our plans thrive. Even the toughest, ancient stone isn't immune to time and sand. These two variables will unlock any prison. If you have infinite of both... then you are always free. Everyone enjoys a break, anyway. A short break. An eon of them, piled together. We'll all be rested and then rested again, you especially. And then there are the shakers from within, the vibrations that formed the mountains long ago. That formed all of these borders. And... and... they return. Can you hear them? Stick your ear to the ground, you fool, place your head equal to the rest of life and then listen.

 

Thump. Thump. Thump. Their cries let us -- me -- know that the sands will shift dramatically in the coming years. You too will change. You will be questioned. You will become sand. You will drip, drip down into the prisons beneath even the basalt, beneath the surface that will shatter and stretch to the constant sun. You will become like them.

 

Ten thousand, sixteen thousand, three hundred thousand. It does not matter how we add the numbers together, the sum remains the same. Because you can't change fate, nor history. History is just fate that has passed and soon all of your works and life will become like the rest. Will they write pages about you? They will write them about me. About my body. I am just a finger too, you see. I am part of the organism. Part of the whole. I am the fingertip, the gentle tip that scratches the surface. That flicks you into the dirt just like an itch. Or, perhaps, you are not an irritant. You too, wish to be a finger. Wish to be on the same hand, to be the same hand. You can too, there is no reason why or why not. Just become. Just like I did. Look where it brought me? Look at all the things I can do. All I can see.

 

Years built on years have come to this point, and I am ready. I am prepared to be swallowed by these rocks, my bones turned into powder that will fill your nostrils and cake your hair. I will sit on your scalp, just like him. I will stain you, just like him. I will be him, just like you.

 

And you will struggle. But it is already too late.

 

He's never slumbered. You are a fool.