The desert was a treacherous place. It would lull the traveller in with the constant, often softly blowing winds, which made it sound as if the sand was constantly trickling all around you. Every dune looked as if an oasis would be right behind it, only to mock you with the cruel realization that all it was ever hiding was more and more sand, forever shifting, forever blowing, forever stretching out to all sides as far as the sun's light could reach.
Not everything in the desert was deserted, however. Travellers would try to cross it to places like Samarkand and the realms beyond, bringing the most precious wares on the long trek with them. It has been said that a single trip to Karakorum or one of the other cities of the East, would give you riches that would last well until the end of your life. And so, many a fool undertook the dangerous journey and many a fool's journey would end in the desert, for it was a cruel and hostile place in which mortal beings were not meant to set foot.
There were sand-devils, dervishes disguised as djinn and ifrit, mocking and wailing and laughing at every faltering step the foolhardy would take, screaming and cheering their failure and death while feasting on their corpse. And there were even darker things which only came out at night, when the freezing cold descended over the dunes. They were things that would steal your soul, driving you mad so that you would wander the sands forever and ever as a ghost, a mere shadow of your former self. For such was the nature of this place, that it abhorred and hated all life.
How she should find anything growing in this desolate place, Nilgoon did not know. Every direction looked the same to her. Every path and footstep was erased by the perpetual winds and before long, even the sun seemed to be everywhere all at the same time. She struggled, stumbled and fell from one dune to the next, soon calling herself a fool for having fallen for such an impossible task, which would surely lead to her demise one way or another. She was lost and confused. Not only did she not know which way to turn, she had also lost her way back out of this horrible place, where the wind and the voices in the wind, all sang about her death.
But die she did not, for the fruit of all life had wondrous properties indeed, just as Irsiyah had promised. She would not thirst, hunger or grow weary, nor would she be hot nor cold, but instead wander endlessly, in sweltering heat and freezing frost, across infinite stretches of sand, praying every morning and night to God for guidance, while meditating over her fate. And verily, after many days and nights of walking and praying, she finally had a dream, a dream that she was flying. She was speeding weightlessly across the dunes, barely above the ground. She quickly traversed across ancient, forgotten roads, across pillars half buried in sand, across the bones and skulls of unfortunate beings long dead and forgotten until she finally came to a great rocky expanse, where in the shade of several large, monumental boulders, there grew a tree.
It was a tree so delicate and frail, its leaves so tender and lush and its limbs so lithe and full of vigour, that she could not believe it would grow in such a place as this. And neither was it a tree she had ever seen; its bark was smooth and almost white, its leaves were of a shape she had never even heard of and it seemed as if it moved, almost by itself against the wind and the sand and the heat and the cold. When she awoke, she found herself lying directly beneath that very tree, its leaves rustling of their own accord above her, its limbs bending down as if to caress her face. For such is the greatness of God.
