Miró nuevamente el mercado vacío y ya no sintió la desesperación de antes. No era un mundo extraño; era un mundo nuevo. Y, al fin y al cabo, todo lo que él quería era exactamente eso: conocer mundos nuevos. Incluso aunque jamás llegase hasta las Pirámides él ya había ido mucho más lejos que cualquier pastor que conociese: “¡Ah, si ellos supieran que apenas a dos horas de barco existen tantas cosas diferentes!”. El mundo nuevo aparecía frente a él bajo la forma de un mercado vacío, pero él ya había visto aquel mercado lleno de vida y nunca más lo olvidaría. Se acordó de la espada: le costó muy caro contemplarla durante unos instantes, pero tampoco había visto nada igual en su vida. Sintió de repente que él podía contemplar el mundo como una pobre víctima de un ladrón o como un aventurero en busca de un tesoro. “Soy un aventurero en busca de un tesoro”, pensó, antes de que un inmenso cansancio le hiciese caer dormido.

(fragmento de "El Alquimista", de Pablo Coelho)

He looked around at the empty plaza again, feeling less desperate than before. This wasn’t a strange place; it was a new one. After all, what he had always wanted was just that: to know new places. Even if he never got to the Pyramids, he had already traveled farther than any shepherd he knew. “Oh, if they only knew how different things are just two hours by ship from where they are”, he thought. Although his new world at the moment was just an empty marketplace, he had already seen it when it was teeming with life, and he would never forget it. He remembered the sword. It hurt him a bit to think about it, but he had never seen one like it before. As he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief or as an adventurer in quest of his treasure. “I’m an adventurer, looking for treasure”, he said to himself and he drifted into sleep.

(from "The Alchemist", by Pablo Coelho)