The Spirit of the Gobi Desert
Discovery College, Nicole Woo, Fiction: Group 3
P
eople have asked me countless times about Gobi, and our memories together. I never
answered them. Many people have written stories like this, but all of them aren’t real. A
fortress that collapsed then turned into sand? Utter nonsense! Once a fertile land that got
ruined due to dust storms? Even worse! But now, it is time I unraveled the story, the true
story of the Gobi Desert.
Gobi Desertus was your average teenage Mongolian girl; she had long raven black hair that
was always tied up with a mint green ribbon, cheeks that turned a crimson red when she laughed,
a round nose, and thin lips. The fascinating thing that always amazed me were those eyes. Unlike
other Mongolians, her eyes were a pansy purple and seemed to come to life when she talked. Her
eyes were like a portal to her soul. Whenever she talked about something interesting, there would
be bright mauve sparks in her eyes, millions of tiny shining stars zooming around. Whenever she
talked about something sad, the purple on the outer pupil would darken, and the sparks that used
to be there would fade.
Gobi moved to the US (Arizona, to be exact) a few years ago. She was moving into the
house next to mine, where the Carters used to live. She saw me through my bedroom window,
dancing around in my pajamas (which consisted of an oversized Phoenix Coyotes t-shirt and
cotton shorts), listening to Imagine Dragons. My first impression of her wasn’t very good either.
I caught her looking at me through the window, and she quickly turned around. Smashing her
head against the lamppost and falling down into the muddy grass, resulting in her younger sister
Khara laughing at her. The most embarrassing part was, Khara doesn’t just laugh, she booms. The
whole neighborhood must have heard her! Although we got off to a bad start, we started fresh at
her welcoming party that the Porters across the street organized. We introduced ourselves to each
other and immediately became friends after that.
It was a miracle for us to become friends. Gobi and I were very different. She was a quiet,
girly person whereas I loved being loud, and was really sporty. Her hair was straight and neat, my
hair was unruly and frizzy. She had ballet lessons, and I had karate lessons. We were different in
every single way.
Every single day, we hardly parted. In fact we were inseparable, just like everyone said. But this
only lasted for a year or so. Soon, we started taking different classes. Then, I moved into another
neighborhood. After that, we only smiled at each other in homeroom, waved to each other in the
hallway, and chatted online. Like every common best friend relationship, it ends in a few years.
Although we were close, I knew there was something, a secret maybe, which she was keeping
away from me. She usually didn’t want me to go to her house, and there were a few times every
year that she wasn’t there. Every single day, I got more and more suspicious, and she got more and
more secretive.
One day when I was on my computer, I googled her name. Millions of sources came up, but
most of them were entitled ‘Gobi Desert’. Everything was about a mysterious desert in Mongolia.
Then, I searched up Gobi’s sister, Khara Khoto. The websites were about some sort of ghost town,
a kingdom, and an empire. Gobi… Who was this girl? Did she have some sort of story or a double
life like Hannah Montana?
