“Let’s stop here,” he pointed, “up on this rock.”
They clambered up to a large boulder to take a quick breather and take in the surrounding scenery. Scattered across their view were piles and piles of bulky, dust-colored stone, some stacked in almost precarious natural sculptures and some caught mid-fall down the mountainside. Thorny plants and shrubs, proving hardy against the difficult environment, thrived in little crevices between the boulders. Their spiny leaves and branches reached up toward the sun, which was currently burning a white-hot hole in the azure sky.
The two sat quietly for a moment, just taking it all in. Suddenly, their silence was punctuated by a distant sound.
“Did you hear that?” he asked. She looked around, scanning the rocks and trying to locate the source of such a bizarre noise. In contrast with the rigidness of their surroundings, this was soft, clean, and melodic, like the musical twinkling of--
“Bells. It sounds like bells,” she said. “but why are there bells in the desert?”
“Maybe this is how the desert people lure tourists into their traps,” he said with a straight face, followed by a teasing smile, “this is how we die.”
“You have such a wild imagination.” They stood, trying to hone two pairs of small ears on the direction that the twinkling was coming from.
“There ?” she pointed, and then looked toward the right “...or there ? It almost sounds like it’s coming from two different places.”
“Let’s go investigate.”
They paused every couple steps to listen again for the sound, and reevaluate the direction it seemed to be coming from. Not too long after, they were standing on top of another boulder when suddenly--
“I see it!” he exclaimed, “do you see that thing over there ?”
Tucked in a gap between larger stone, there was a small copper plate hung on a wire, swinging back and forth in the wind. With their target in sight, the two treasure seekers hopped and crawled their way over more rocks, closing the distance between them and this oddly placed musical object.
Upon getting closer, they realized that it was not only a copper plate on a string, but a set of windchimes-- five long, cylindrical metal tubes and two copper plates, fixed to a coffee-colored wood base. As the wind blew gently, the tubes clinked and clanked against each other, producing a lovely pentatonic melody.
“So this is what has been serenading us,” she remarked, satisfied at having solved the mystery. Standing on her toes, she leaned forward and swung the copper plate back and forth, releasing a louder and more frantic blend of notes. The sound echoed across the rocks.
“What a strange item to find while hiking in the desert...” she said. “I almost feel like we are in a video game, and that we have to collect this item in order to continue the quest!”
“At least it wasn’t a death trap,” he joked. “I’ve played enough games to be suspicious of such entrancing things.”
The chimes calmed from their earlier disruption, returning to their original swaying motion. They rotated slowly in the wind, and settled back into a gentle, musical twinkling.
“This is almost magical. I swear, stuff like this only happens in movies...” Reaching out to hold his hand, she said, “...yet here we are, and suddenly, life is like a fairytale.”
“Well that means it will end happily ever after,” he smiled.
“At least it wasn’t a death trap,” he joked. “I’ve played enough games to be suspicious of such entrancing things.”
The chimes calmed from their earlier disruption, returning to their original swaying motion. They rotated slowly in the wind, and settled back into a gentle, musical twinkling.
“This is almost magical. I swear, stuff like this only happens in movies...” Reaching out to hold his hand, she said, “...yet here we are, and suddenly, life is like a fairytale.”
“Well that means it will end happily ever after,” he smiled.
