i have a short story that i'm writing (for class). i've tried to avoid anything actually happening, to bring it in to just the tiny, internal moments in the scene. other than that there isn't really much to say, so here is the first draft.

Carson was lost. He'd tried turning back to follow his own tracks, but based on the way his shadow and the distant mesas, his only means of reckoning direction moved, he had a pretty good idea that he was just moving in a figure eight across the sand. He wasn't really sure how his tracks could endless circle in on themselves. He had to have gotten out here somehow, and so the tracks should lead him back to wherever that was, eventually. He was rooting for that theory, but the argument was over when he found what looked an awful lot like a set of his tracks following another, older set of his tracks. He was going in circles alright, or a figure eight anyway. An analemma, he'd heard the shape called once, by a guide he'd met in a cantina who'd been talking about navigating by the sun or the stars. Apparently it was the shape the sun traced as it moved around the sky over the course of a year. Must be some wind had blown over a section of the tracks that actually lead somewhere, leaving him there tracing out little analemmas in the sand while the sun paced its own through the sky.

If the rays beating down on him was any indication, his tribute was not appreciated. Sometimes it felt like the sun was right over his shoulder, but other times the way the heat haze shimmered around him and the horizon curved around in every direction made him feel like he was trapped in a snow globe, sans the snow. He was at the bottom of an ocean of hot air pressing down on his shoulders, wandering in circles inside a sphere, and no wonder he couldn't get anywhere when someone kept shaking every damn thing up.

He'd shot his horse. This was not an easy decision to make. No horse meant he wasn't going to be getting anywhere quick, but without anything left for the horse to eat, and a very limited supply of water, it became a choice between watching the horse starve or dying of thirst together. Now he'd given up on riding into town, any town, and without having to share the water he could still hope someone would find him before he died of exposure anyway. Even on foot, he kept on walking. He'd come around to the idea that it might be nice to find a patch of shadow bigger than the one cast by his hat, so he put the sun to his back, hoping his shadow would keep him pointed in a straight line. There was a mesa more or less in that direction, and that should cast plenty of shadow for him to stretch out on and lay down, and more besides. He'd build a house there, dig out a well and never have to leave the shade again.

These plans sustained him for long enough that the house had grown from a roof over a dirt floor to a building the governor himself would have been proud to call home, and the well was a full-blown spring, filling a swimming hole. While the ideas got bigger and bigger, they never seemed to get any closer, just like any desert mirage, but when desperation set in and the ideas shrank back down, they sure did seem to be moving further and further out towards the horizon. Now all Carson wanted was a nice full waterskin, but this was about as close to his grasp as a solid gold governor's mansion.

He'd had to rip up his shirt to cover up his head after a surprise gust of wind gave him a sandy slap in the face and stole his hat. Maybe it was the same gust of wind that wiped up his tracks, but why any gust of wind had it in for him, he couldn't guess. The snow globe theory, which had started as a fancy at how the sky seemed to curve around him in a giant dome was seeming more and more likely, although by now he'd been out in the sun for a pretty long time. His waterskin was basically empty now, and for the last few days he'd been stretching it out by spacing sips from it with nips from his hip-flask, trying not to get too drunk to keep what remained of his sunbaked wits around him.

The whisky was gone, probably the same place as his ability to stand. Carson had dragged himself to a quirk of the dunes that almost cast a shadow and picked that as a place to die, since it didn't seem likely he had much choice in the matter at this stage. He'd never really paid much attention to sand before, but now it was his whole world. Briefly forgetting himself, he reached for his waterskin for a drink, and was as surprised as he ever had been when a drop of water collected at it's nozzle. He was filled with terror as it dangled there, but surface tension held it in place. Light passed through the drop, and it shone like the brightest, most beautiful pearl and reflected the whole world back at him. He'd heard how drowning swimmers saw their lives flash before their eyes in the water, and Carson saw his life reflected in the water, as he brought it his lips and drank the tiny trickle of water. He'd never tasted water so sweet, he'd never been so refreshed.