They turned to sand

These people turned to sand. I saw them – the way their color drained as they were trying to stop the girl. Their arms reached out to her but it was too late. The girl moved to her rhythm, clapping and tapping inside the unlocked van. Their arms went rigid. Their bodies, suspended in their moves, crumbled like old clay vessels. The wind picked up those mounds of sand and took them up to the Holy Mountain in tiny spinning whirlwinds. I don’t think it was the girl’s fault. The girl appeared in town when she was still a baby, wrapped in her mother’s faded pink T-shirt. The woman settled on the corner of the cafe on the central square, stretching out her sand-covered hand. “Got any change to spare?” she asked the passers-by. “I just need diapers for my daughter.” “Such golden eyes,” people would say about the baby. “The child seems so active.” The baby’s arms and legs stuck out of the T-shirt, twitching and shaking in one rhythm. A handful of sand would fly upward with every move. Already…