Pythros awoke in a puddle of sweat as the harsh sun beamed over him. He had fallen asleep after leaving his group the night before to walk alone to his favorite secluded spot. The boy rested on the edge of a dried creek with barely any water left. He buried there a small chest full of belongings and writings to keep it safe from the thieves in Hedona. He pulled out the brown box and dusted off the dirt to reveal the shining copper and lacquered wood. There was a carved insignia of an eye that always stared back at him on the top lid with other intricate designs and patterns that wove around it. Pythros unhooked the latches to lift the lid and removed an empty parchment stacked on others that were filled with words. He began writing journal entries ever since he first arrived in Hedona, which helped him to reflect and process his flurry of new experiences, emotions, and thoughts from his newly discovered perspective.

He sat on the dry terrain and looked down at his faint reflection in the water. Pythros stretched out his arms, signaling a yawn, and right after, he pulled out his quill to begin writing:

I lurk through the catacombs of the despairing night and quashed in the darkness is my very own existence. As I gaze in the pond for which I know exists, I see nothing. For an infinite realm of imagination and thoughts become finite and distilled in the construct of my mind. I become lost in this deep and darkened night, as there is nothing. But as light appears before me and casts my reflection in the rippling water below, a new realm of experience arises. The appearance of my body changes, yet ‘I’ remains untouched. I am beginning to understand that one must know themselves to truly know anything else, including nothingness, for how else can one know nothing as something?

The Endless River flows through the curtains of my mind.

He finished and stacked the freshly written parchment back into the chest and hid it in the same buried spot. He continued to stare at his muddied reflection in the water below.