“Traveler’s Tale” / A Memorable Fancy #206

I told them what I saw – a sandy wall of huts against a hill, I, in rags, robbed by camel-thieves, stoned by their urchins. The tribe kept me in chains where chieftains lived on loot from travelers lost like me.

But I escaped, left a guard for dead, dug with my hands for desert’s wet, reached home, related simply what I saw, then slept and bathed for days.

And then I heard from clacking jaws and flicking tongues that I had seen a golden tower shining high upon a diamond hill, centaurs and djinns, the Prophet fed by doves!