The Crystal Carpet It’s a vast ground, all around, with no sense of scale and no signs of life. As I cross it, crack after crack, dusty winds push me away from reaching out to this shimmering white stroke of land at the end of the horizon. As time passes by with countless steps, it still feels as if I were standing where I started. Eventually, it is there, in front of me, too sharp to walk on and too bright to look at — the crystal carpet as my ground. It’s all about the step, careful and tense, feeling that alien friction and every single particle of its substance. As I slowly walk across it, my feet start to sink and are washed by the cold salty water, deeper and deeper, until I can’t reach the ground — I am floating. Back on the shore, watching the water draining down my body. All that remained, in a fraction of a blink, so grainy, so thin, was a crystal carpet on my skin. It cloaked my body with no time to fear, just like this shimmering white stroke of land at the end of the horizon I captured to remember.