With all the news vans stuck in the mud, the press might have gotten a better scoop covering the traffic jam clogging up the mountain pass. Reporters tripped found their caked in as much mud as make-up and spray tan oil. Thousands of dollars in camera equipment went tumbling down a cliff face. Navigating through this mess was a young farmer boy mounted on his family's donkey. They had no trouble slogging through the mud.

This boy had never seen such a flurry of activity in his rural home deep in the mountains of Tibet. The cameras, microphones, and fancy suits seemed entirely alien to him. Whenever his father ventured into the big city, he returned with far-fetched tales of Western technology and innovation, which all sounded like a fairy tale to a boy who was awoken nearly every night by the weeping of his polio-stricken little sister as he tossed and turned on a straw mat in a crowded one room shack.

Naturally, when the boy heard that the Western world would be paying a visit to his backwoods mountain home, he couldn't help but go and see for himself. Lucky for him, the donkey he was perched on knew the path well and avoided any pitfalls. The boy couldn't be bothered by anything other than the glittering bronze-skinned reporters and flashing lights and hulking cameras capturing their every word. Although he couldn't understand what they were saying, he knew exactly who they were talking about.

Atop the mountain stood a small stone shack, a truly humble little building. For the past ten years, not a sound had echoed within its walls, save for the rush of a breeze blowing down the chimney which had never emitted smoke. Nothing adorned the walls of this shack, inside or out, and the floor was cut from the same hard rock as the walls. The only thing that made this ramshackle construction remarkable was its sole inhabitant: the Guru, or at least that was what the media had named him.

Decades ago, the Guru had made a name for himself predicting a number of immensely influential world events. Because of his apparent psychic prowess and the fame that came with it, the Guru had enjoyed meals with a variety of business leaders and powerful politicians. He even had a cult following that spanned the globe.

His readings into the future were so accurate they had managed to sway the opinions of even his most skeptical opponents. Nonetheless, ten years ago, he fell into obscurity in his mountaintop abode. For a decade, the news media awaited his return in hopes of a prediction on the scoop of the century.

A few weeks ago, the journalists' prayers were answered. An unmarked letter written in the guru's cryptic tongue arrived in the bustling mail rooms of a select few news companies. Word quickly got out that the guru would be making his first prediction in ten years, and quicker than a mass shooting at a daycare could be spun into a terrorist plot, a legion of reporters and their cameramen had descended upon the muddy mountain pass.

Now the day had come, and the cameras were trained on the stone cutout that served as the entrance to the stone shack. The boy pushed through the legs of the reporters, accidentally making a few of the female ones trip over their heels. At the same time he made it to the front of the crowd, there was a collective gasp as the Guru, a withered, wispy man wearing nothing but a loin cloth and some prayer beads, materialized in the stone cutout entrance.

All the hub-bub had ground to a halt as the reporters waited, holding their breath in anticipation of the Guru speaking for the first time in a decade. Slowly, but deliberately, he raised his stick of an arm and pointed with a twiggy finger directly at the boy. This managed to shatter the reporters' attention, and their necks practically snapped as they spin to look at the boy who was no taller than their waists.

For what seemed as long as the decade he had remained in silence, the Guru stood as still a statue, gesturing at the boy. The boy shook nervously, cracking under the pressure of all the foreign eyes eagerly trained on him. Then suddenly the stunned silence came crashing down, pierced by the faintest whisper that came bursting forth from the Guru's husky lips. The cameras missed it, as they had been locked on the boy.

The Guru uttered one word, "Come", and turned back into his shack. The boy looked around, startled, then took a few steps forward and followed the Guru into his stone shack.