The clouds harbored in the skies of the Wild West rarely put out. The wildlife had evolved to do without.
Lost in the desert, she stared at the cactus up close as if it were a maze. Her pupils danced up and down the space between spines–a familiar pattern, same old thing, like a game built for the entertainment of children. She traced her finger around the prickly thorns like children playing cops and robbers dodging the thorns like wild, wet streams of water guns ejected by the trigger-happy fingers of their friends–the innate betrayal of animals in defense of their fruits.
She was running from the laws of nature. Gravity kept her down. When she stood from the place where she sat on the red rock, a snake slithered by leaving a winding trail in the dust. She watched as the wind carefully swept away its path as though it had never existed. The evidence of the intruder was suddenly gone, lost without a trace.
Deserted dreams will wait for their dreamer to come back to them. She thought only a cowboy could take her there.
Outside of her mind, what was almost always a cloudless sky emptied to wash it all away. Blank slate. Tablua rasa.
He woke up from his wet dream remembering the dry desert before the rain and the girl looking for her cowboy in the desert. Only now that he was awake he knew he was she and she was nowhere to be found.