A huge red rock stands like a lone wanderer resting in this yellow desert dotted with brave little shrubs. A true lone wanderer comes to the rock and finds an old man sitting in the shades of this huge boulder. He is surprised to find this man sitting on the warm ground, eyes closed, prostrated in a meditation. Before he can decide what to do, the man opens his eyes and smiles at the wanderer, who carries only a bag on his shoulders and a walking stick. He is a young man, face all sunburnt, well-built, but a little exhausted. The young man approaches, greets with a slight bow, to which the seated old man nods. Then the young man asks where the Blue River was. He thought he knew but the river remains elusive.
The old man asks how he knew about the Blue River, or rather, who told him where to look for it. The wanderer said a man named Starburst at an inn about a day's walk from here told him. The old man thinks for a bit and tells the young man that the river moves constantly, therefore, to tell you where it is would always be a lie. The young man is puzzled and asks how a river can be moving, unless he meant that the water was moving. No, the seated man says, he really meant that the river changes its course constantly, like an active snake searching for a shade in this merciless sun. The river is alive.
Then how do you find it?
The old man smiles and looks at the young man in the eyes, and says, "It finds you."
The young man is tired, and he sits in the shrinking shade beneath the boulder. He asks the man sitting in a cross-leg position how the river would find him, if what he says was true.
"You will it, you call it," the old man says.
After some moments of thought, the young man asks why that man at the inn would lie to him. The old man chuckles and says that he was sent by the River. The old man tells him that he needed to understand the river won't allow itself to be found so easily. It plays a game of progressive difficulty with anyone who is thinking about finding it. The first is sending you in some wild goose chase in the desert.
"Then if you persevere, the river diverts you to this rock to look for me," says the old man in white linen. The young man looks at him intently and says, "Don't tell me that you are the river." The old man smiles, but does not burst into laughter. He shakes his head slightly and says, "We are friends. I am one of its many guardians. The River wants to be found, but not so easily. You have your own motives for finding it, and the River will find out what it is before you have any chance of finding it."
The young man protests and says his so-called motives are just fascination by the legend of the Blue River.
The old man shakes his head a little, and then he finally says, "That's for the River to decide." He then warns the young man that there are many other people he will meet that will help him or deliberately distract him from his quest, and that some are so malicious that he might end up in a lot trouble, possibly fatal ones. But mistrusting those who will help him an be even worse.
"Your task is to find out how to get the right answers from those you recognize to be friends and divert away from your foes," the old mans. At this point he looks at the newly puzzled face of the young man, and then the old man assures the young man that whether he should believe him would be a up to him too.
"Now, if you don't mind, the shadow under this boulder is about to make room for just one person," he says.
The young man understands, thanks the old man, and goes on his way in the desert.
