The Sands of Silence

Don’t let him get away!
The words are electric lights in your head, zapping the darkness into crystal clarity.
He's incredibly rare, a speciman existing entirely to you and only you. Everyone interprets him differently and sometimes he's not even a man; he's been known to exist as a woman, a dog, cat, oasis, a helping hand, a saviour in this wasteland connecting nothing with nothing.
And then this man, this striking silhouette of a guy in profile with a guitar slung casually over one shoulder, appears before your blistered sight and just seeing him makes the pain ebb away.
Of all your belongings, it's the camera you treasure most. With it poised in your hands, you snap away hoping the silhouette isn't just another mirage. They say spending too much time playing in the sand softens the brain, weakening one's sight, but this man is too real to be false; his silhouette the darkest existence staining the horizon. He is a permanent fixture. Just like you. Your camera. The sand. His guitar.
You smile at the instrument. This is the solution to your puzzle. The man exists because his guitar exists, and his guitar exists because the melody is there, written in the sand saturated wind which sticks to your lips like bitter sugar grains and hardens your hair.

The Sands of Silence

To anyone else though there is no sound, no melody, no song. Not even the wind can penetrate the sun-baked silence which is stale like month-old bread. Their ears aren't receptors to their environment; they see only sand and are deafened by it.
But you, you are different. Flicking through the photos on your camera, you are overwhelmed by the bleached exposure: sand upon sand upon sand. There is no man.
Instead there is a melody, a song playing especially for you.
And when you look up, the silhouette is there, solid in black, with a guitar slung casually over one shoulder.