Wahid rode at the head of his caravan, his robes unblemished, his horse adorned with silver. Behind him, camels swayed under the weight of his goods—silks, spices, fine glassware—all bound for distant markets. His men followed, obedient and tireless, their eyes watching for bandits.

He was a master of this; he’d built his fortune from nothing, bent men to his will, diverted rivers of wealth to his garden of pleasure.

Wahid imagined the next conquest—a caravan twice this size, ships heavy with goods, his name revered in the courts of kings. He could see it as clearly as the dunes before him—then a gust of wind drove sand into his eyes.

He blinked hard, swore under his breath. At first, he figured it would only be an inconvenience, but the wind did not settle. It stirred, then climbed. The dust vengefully needled into his eyes yet again. The horse grew uneasy. Wahid clicked his tongue impatiently.

The wind continued to rise, howling across the dunes, carrying a wall of sand. The sky darkened. Men shouted. The camels brayed, broke formation, disappeared into the storm. The world collapsed into chaos—sand filled his mouth, his lungs, turned his own breath against him. His men were gone. His horse staggered, then fell.

Wahid pressed forward, blind, choking, his feet sinking into the ever-shifting ground. He wrapped his cloak around his face, but the wind still found him.

Then, through the blur of dust, he saw:

The cave.

Inside, there was a fire, and the faint smell of dried meat.

And an old man—his body frail, his breath shallow, but his eyes bright. A hermit.

Wahid knew him.

As a child, he and the other village boys had thrown stones at this man. They would see him at the well, gathering water in his clay jug, and mock his strangeness and silence. They called him a madman, an ugly fool, an omen of misfortune. When their stones hit him, he didn’t even turn his head. He simply collected his water and left, fading back into the desert.

Suleiman.

Wahid collapsed by the fire. He didn’t speak at first. He warily drank the water Suleiman offered, worried that he’d catch whatever affliction plagued the hermit.

He stared at the flames.

Slowly, his breathing steadied. He took stock of himself—his body intact, his mind clear, though a great fortune was probably lost to the wind.

“The storm took my caravan,” he said. “I nearly died.”

Suleiman coughed, nearly losing the battle against his own phlegm.
And then—he laughed.

A thin, wheezing laugh at first, but then deeper, fuller, until his whole frail body shook with it. He turned his head toward the mouth of the cave, toward the storm outside, and laughed as if it were an old friend.

And then—he wept.

Tears streaked his sun-worn face, vanishing into the silvery pockets of his beard. His body curled forward, his mouth contorted, his breath shuddered. He laughed and wept together, as though the distinction between the two had vanished. He turned back to Wahid, eyes wet, and with a feeble hand, gestured to a mirror leaning against the cave wall.

Wahid hesitated. But something in him—rage, curiosity, some dark, bitter hope—made him look.

He saw himself.

His swollen face, his bloodshot eyes, the raw lines of suffering etched into his skin. He looked like a man stripped of everything but breath. But Suleiman was still laughing, still weeping, as if Wahid’s reflection was the funniest and saddest thing he’d ever seen.

Wahid’s chest tightened.

“Stop it!” he snapped.

The hermit gave him nothing but more laughter, more weeping.

“Have you lost your mind, you miserable old wretch?”

Suleiman’s breath choked, his eyes swimming with something vast.

He pointed again at the mirror.

Wahid looked again. But now his rising fury twisted his reflection.

A rush of blood made his head nearly burst with indignation. A moment later, his hands found Suleiman’s throat—thin and brittle as dry reeds. The old man only struggled to draw breath, a sound that could have been another laugh, another sob—before his body went still.

The wind outside howled louder. The fire guttered.

Wahid sat back, breathing hard, his hands shaking.

He turned to the mirror.

And he saw Suleiman’s reflection.

The hermit was dead, but his slight grin looked like a crescent anticipating a full moon of laughter, as if the joke had only just begun. His eyes, though empty, seemed wet with unshed tears.

The cave walls began to feel impossibly tight. The wind screamed like an implacable toddler. Wahid stumbled away from the fire, away from the laughter, away from the weeping, away from the mirror, back out into the storm—

It was the last anyone had seen Wahid.