At the last moment, he jumped.
Falling through the night, his whispered prayers were swallowed in the howling winds; he could not even hear his own voice.
Then fire burst upon that dark heaven as the strange ship erupted in flames. He felt the heat of the explosion wash over him as he tumbled through the empty sky.
Below, the desert stretched out in endless dunes. No Bedouin encampment or any sign of life interrupted; only the silent sand.
The heavy loneliness of his heart seemed at odds with the weightless experience of freefall, and yet, as he plummeted to the earth, he felt a sort of harmony between the two as though one fed the other. If his heart was broken, it was a sort of beautiful brokenness, and he was free.
He pulled his cord and felt the alien engine rev into life. A sudden thrust propelled him forward, and he sailed over the shadowed desert, a shooting star in the night. He had nowhere to go, but maybe God would be kind to him now and he would find a home, someplace to land, just over the horizon.
Behind him, the broken ship fell to the earth in a jagged jigsaw whose pieces would soon be lost under the dunes.
Tale Told 