This desert was a perfect example of all uninhabited regions—enormous, stretching to the horizon, boundless in every direction.
The sand looked blindingly white beneath the scorching sun. There was no water, no life, only faint mountain ranges emerging along the horizon, too hazy to make out through what looked like smog.
Occasionally, a plant called "Ghost Grass" would tumble past in the wind like a hollow ball. It was said that thirsty people who stared at it would gradually fall into dreams, nightmares, and death.
Getting lost in the desert was something that had happened long, long ago. Later, as people arrived, more and more gravestones appeared beside the road. They served as markers, pointing out the way, because the buried path beneath the thick alkali layer had once been a highway. Passenger coaches and Bukhas had both traveled this route.
Later, the world rolled onward, and this world was emptied out.
"Bukha was actually a type of horse-drawn carriage. Passenger coaches were covered wagons with four horses and four wheels, while a Bukha was a single horse pulling a two-wheeled cabin—or a sleigh, the sort of sail-sleigh dragged across the desert."
A one-eyed man walked beneath the blazing sun, dressed like a Western Cowboy. He spoke without a care beneath the brutal heat, despite the fact that most ordinary people disliked opening their mouths in a place where even the air could scorch their throats, especially when they did not even know where the next water source was.
He was only reminiscing when the creature on his shoulder, which resembled a tar-black Bean Sprout, asked what a Bukha was. So he explained it in passing.
Like all Cowboys, he wore a belt around his waist, with two guns hanging loosely from it. Their silver bodies gleamed beautifully in the