Writings of an Earthling

Tara was an explorer at mind and body. She could not stay still for even an hour. She had a constant longing to find something new, do something worth living life for. She did not believe in afterlife or pre-life or any of that, but she had a strong sense of who she was, the real her. She believed she was her body, the collection of her atoms configured in a particular way that no one or nothing else would ever be. She was a unique thing, that will never be, after she is absorbed back by the Universe. That fateful day, Tara was hiking up a mountain she had visited several times before. It was not very high or challenging from her perspective, but it was her favorite mountain, maybe her favorite place on Earth. The summit. There was something about being up there, completely alone. Completely lost. She never returned the same day, so she would go ready with her tent, sleeping supplies, water, her food bars and all the goods. She loved to camp at the summit, watch the sunrise, then hi

They say the desert was created millions of years ago after a huge asteroid struck the Earth and sprayed debris all over the planet and threw the wind patterns awry. Everything in the area was blown away or killed. But one tree remained intact in the middle of the desert. The tree still stands today in the desert. Or so the story goes. No one has ever seen it. The folklore is that one who can find it can get exactly one wish fulfilled... The traveler was lost. He had thought he knew the area well, and could cross it before the day ended. It was not his first day in the desert, but today felt different. The sun was about to set, and he was starting to hear strange noises that made his spine tingle. He could never get used to those sounds. He needed to find the tree, and he had less and less time left with each passing day. He had grown up hearing stories about how people had entered the desert and never returned. Setting aside all trepidations, he mustered up all the resolve he had

2016 One summer evening, as the Earthling is wandering around the beach, she finds a bottle buried in the sand, probably washed ashore along with the shells. It is still wet outside - it could have been brought to shore recently, or the ocean had been running over it for centuries, she can't tell. The Earthling is young and educated, but not a learned scholar or linguist, so she does not recognize the lettering outside the bottle. Nor can she, when she takes out the contents, figure out what's written on the piece of - paper? leather? It's written in a completely unrecognizable script. Then, with a not so sudden recognition she has still not found a way to explain, she can read what's on it effortlessly. By the time she is done reading it, she cannot hold on to it any longer. Her hands tremble in a spontaneous manner, and she tosses into the ocean the writing, as well as the bottle. The two fly and roll away into the ocean, carried away instantly by the recedin