The Oasis Leads to a Tangled Mess

Author’s Note: This is the thirteenth part of a series about Farren’s journey through a limbo world where everyone is trying to reach the peak of a mountain but have a rope tied to their ankle. Catch up by reading Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, and Part 12

Farren and Botha made their way through the desert. The sun sank deep into the afternoon’s sky and the heat the sand had absorbed through the day seeped into their feet. The two men were thirsty from their travels and traveled in silence towards an oasis Botha had passed before.
Farren let out the rope that he’d been collecting for many months now dropping it from his hand onto the sand behind him. He still had a few dozen rope balls following him. However, Farren still resented having to let out rope to travel. Despite it, he continued telling himself it was for a greater good. He was trying to convince his new companion that it was worth his time to pick up his rope and reach the boulder that was at the rather than dragging the rock all the way to the mountain he was headed towards.
Botha hadn’t been extremely receptive to this information. He was more focused on progress than anything else, but Farren had encouraged him to try backtracking. Botha slowly pulled in his rope wrapping it in disorganized balls poorly mimicking the pattern Farren had shown him. “Do you think it’s time to stop?” Botha asked.
Farren turned around holding a loose coil of rope in his hand. The two men had run out of sweat awhile ago. The dry breeze of the desert had more of a cooking effect than a cooling one. The sun was deep in the sky by now, and they would be out of daylight soon anyway. “Are you too tired to continue?” Farren asked.

Botha gave an indeterminate shrug which Farren had quit trying to encourage meaning out of days ago. Farren suspected continuing would lead to more resistance from Botha.
The two men began to set up a camp of sorts. They used Farren’s dozens of rope balls stacked in circles to build a small hut. The hut sheltered them from the hot day’s sun to keep them from dehydrating too fast. Farren packed balls around the majority of the first layer of the shelter when his work connected with Botha’s. They did this layer after layer, and eventually, they had a small dome made of rope balls.
They crawled inside, and the small bit of shade was refreshing. The heat from the sand was uncomfortable, but Farren knew it would keep them warm through the night.
“How much longer do you think we have?” Farren asked.
“Can’t be much further, but could be more. I’m not much of a cartographer,” Botha said as he lay on the sand to go to sleep. Farren had never met anyone else in this world who went to bed so quickly after a day of walking. Even accounting for the heat fo the day and weight of the man’s rope Farren was surprised by how quickly Botha settled down for the night.

Botha slept through most of the day as Farren milled around the small hut the men shared. Farren was beginning to wonder if he should be offended by Botha’s sleeping patterns. It was making it difficult for him to convince the man to continue following his rope on past the oasis.
Midday arrived, and the sun shone straight through the gap at the top of the hut. Botha sat up when that happened, Farren wondered if it was from not being able to sleep more or knowing that half the day was gone and they could begin to move again.
The two men sweat and walked in silence. They had shared all the stories they had the first few days, and Farren eventually got to the point where he was talking to hear himself speak. He didn’t like the sensation, so he found himself quite more often than not. As the afternoon came to a close and dusk began Farren asked, “What do you think about going the rest of the way to get to your rock?”
Botha gave a small shrug, and he dragged a bit of rope into his hand.
“I bet you wouldn’t have much. If your rock isn’t getting stuck on anything, it’s likely still in the desert. The desert’s not too big,” Farren said thinking of the distance he’d traveled to collect his rope but still not able to find his rock.
“Maybe,” Botha said nonchalantly, “but if it’s not stuck on anything, then I don’t have a reason to go back as your friends did.”
“Well it’s not getting stuck yet, but it’s not just desert from here to the mountain.”
Botha shrugged, and without a blatant disagreement, Farren found it hard to continue the conversation. The sun dipped behind the horizon after awhile, and Botha asked, “Do you think it’s time to stop for today?”
Farren could still see a little bit in front of him and decided to disagree with Botha since the man so was comfortable disagreeing with him. “I think we can go a little further, besides who knows how close the oasis might be. Botha’s only response was a heavy sigh and an even lazier wrapping of rope.
Farren continued on and as he did the sand got cooler and thicker under his feet. It seemed strange that the sand would cool that quickly after dark especially considering that he felt the air was just as hot as it had been only hours before. He puzzled over the air. Something felt different about it. He asked his companion, “does the air feel wetter to you?”
Botha shrugged and continued to slump along.
As they crawled to the top of the next dune, they saw in front of them a small patch of furry land. The dim light of the light showed no color, but they could tell that it wasn’t the same reflection as the monotonous sand they’d stared at for weeks on end.

“Is that the oasis?!” Farren asked full of excitement.
“Suppose so,” Botha said as he sat down on the top of the dune exhausted.
“We could make it there by tonight. Your rope leads right to it.”
“Maybe, or we could just sleep here for the night and get there in the morning.”
Unexcited about Botha’s suggestion Farren continued walking. As he wandered his way down the steep side of the dune, he noticed Botha was still behind him. In only a few minutes they were at the oasis with cool grass beneath their toes.
“Think we need to build a hut?” Farren asked as he rubbed his hand in the grass he’d taken for granted in all the forests he’d traveled through.
Botha shrugged and wandered towards the water. Farren laid down, and the comfort of the grass compared to the hard sand carried him off to sleep quickly.

Farren woke up knowing something wasn’t quite right. He’d slept well for the night but now it was early morning, and he had a kink in one of his arms from the way he’d been sleeping. Farren tried to roll over to ease the pain, but he found he couldn’t move. His drowsiness quickly left him as he realized he was stuck in one position and bound by rope. He went to cry out to figure out what was going on. However his mouth was also full of rope, and he was unable to enunciate. “mrt mr mrll” was the only thing he could get out.
Botha was looming over him, “I don’t know what you’re trying to do to me, but I’m catching on. You dragged me back through the entire desert to this oasis that I left to keep making progress towards the mountain, and we get here only to find out that it’s empty.” Botha’s eyes were focused on something far in the distance. “I don’t know what you did to get so much rope, but You’re obviously up to something. Maybe you want to distract everyone you meet so you can claim whatever is on top of that mountain for yourself. Or you’re a demon trying to keep me locked in this hell forever. Either way, I’m on to you. I haven’t trusted you for days now. I would have just told you to follow my rope to get to this place, but I didn’t trust you with it. Gods only know what trickery you can do with it.”
Farren looked at the man above him with wide eyes. Unable to speak he just looked around in horror. Farren knew he couldn’t die in this world, but he wasn’t sure what Botha might do. The man had already come up with more creative ideas than Farren ever could. “Mr mrdn’t mr rt” Farren mumbled.
“You don’t believe me?” Botha said as he took the bit of Farren’s bonding that was free in his hand. He dragged him across the grassy land.
All the sand that was below the grass gritted against Farren’s skin as Botha dragged him. For a man who went to sleep early and always wanted to make camp so soon, Botha sure had a lot of strength. Then Botha quit dragging him and roughly rotated Farren to face the thing Botha was staring at.

A vast tan pit lay in front of him. The sand was darker than what they had traveled on, especially towards the bottom, but none of it had water in it as Farren had expected. “It was full when I left. You think it just all evaporated as soon as I decided to come back. You were behind this. I know it.” Botha shot him a cruel look. “You wanted me to go back to my rock, and I’m not sure why but I’m not buying it anymore. I barely believed your story, to begin with. But I’m not just going to ignore you and move on like these other people you’ve allegedly met. I’m going to do the rest of the world a favor and tie you up real tight so that you can’t go tricking anyone else into leaving the mountain. I wonder if that Teeko guy or the girl you mention ever truly reached their rock. Or if they were just stories, you tell to get others to follow your misguided ways.” Botha gave a shrug that showed he definitively didn’t care one way or the other.
Farren stared at the pit in the sand as he heard Botha walk away. Had the desert sun made Botha crazy? Farren wondered. Did the desert sun made me crazy? The world wouldn’t let them die, but Farren had already lost his mind at the bottom of the sea once.
Farren could only wiggle around as he heard Botha moving behind him. Every time he rotated enough to get a glimpse of his captor Botha would come over and turn him forcefully back towards the empty pit. As the sun rose in the sky the hole in front of Farren became dryer. Farren sweat through the morning but as the sun rose his sweating stopped altogether. The only information he could glean from his short glimpses at the man working behind him was that Botha was messing with Farren’s rope.
The sun began to fall from the sky, and Farren felt tired he knew he had to get some moisture to survive the day. There was nothing in the pit where the oasis was supposed to be, and while the sand below him wasn’t bone dry, he wouldn’t be finding any help there. The only thing with anything that resembled moister was the grass that his face pas pressed against.
In desperation, he took a bite of some. It wasn’t as refreshing as a glass of water, and he wasn’t even sure if it would work. It’d been so long since he’d needed to eat anything in this world that the sensation of chewing was strange to him. He bit a little more grass off and while he didn’t feel renewed it was something he could do to defy Botha who was still working behind him.
Soon the afternoon passed, Botha had quit working a while ago, and Farren didn’t know if that was because he had completed the project he was working on or had died in the process. Farren slowly wiggled around to see the man before the sun disappeared from the sky.
Botha was laying on the ground asleep or dead Farren wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was that Botha had made a massive knot between all the rope balls that Farren had collected. It wasn’t the unintentional knotting of carelessness but instead the deliberate, malicious knots of a mad man. If Farren ever got free of the bonds that held him, ones made from his own rope, he would have to spend a long time unknotting the mess that Botha had made.