Starglow Basin el espíritu verde

His vision swirled as he stumbled over bones half-buried in the desert floor, the creosote bushes casting eerie shadows in the searing heat.

The shape of a woman appeared in the shimmer of the air, her form ghostly and wavering, melding with the jagged silhouettes of the saguaro cacti. Her eyes were dark pools, filled with an inscrutable void that seemed to beckon him toward some unfathomable end.

Dancing after her; steps stuttering. Ven aquí, chica. Ven a bailar conmigo. Thiago’s breath came ragged as he reached for her, the mirage fading with each desperate step, leaving only the crushing reality of the sun-scorched wasteland and the hollow echo of his own madness.

Each time he reached out, the vision slipped away, but the green kept him buoyant, a gentle anchor in the drifting sea of his hallucinations.

Niño leans back in the scant shade of prickly pears, watching the apparent inaugural voyage of one coywolf.

He rolls up leisurely from belly to haunch to toe, staring at coyote man. Expressionless. Hard metal, until his lips roll to reveal big yellow teeth.

“¿Qué dijiste a mí?”

Thiago’s gaze jerks to Niño, the green still thick in his mind, distorting the world into strange shapes and shadows. The vision of the woman vanishes, leaving him with the stark presence of the coywolf. He squints through the haze, fighting to hold onto reality.

His voice emerges, rough and jagged, like gravel being ground. No... no dije nada, he croaks, a mixture of defiance and disorientation clinging to his words. His eyes shift warily, as though the phantom might yet return from the desert’s unforgiving embrace.

The drug's grip makes him twitch, his movements erratic and strained. He tries to shrug off the encounter, but the unease is palpable. Solo... hablo con el viento, he mutters, his voice low and hollow, keeping a wary watch on Niño as if the air itself might betray him.

The wind. A snort.

No posturing from the hound. Didn’t need it to stake authority here, entirely still and yet greedily lapping at slacks of power loosed by the other man.

Nothing personal; life’s a pecking order. If a man thought you were weak, you’d have to kill him before he kills you.

But he knew this one.
Not sure if Thiago recognized him, now. He’d been elbow high when he tailed it from Guanajuato. Things got sticky soon as los jefes moved their operation.
Decided he’d rather be a working dog than a stray mutt.
But why was Thiago out here?
Where was Carlos?

“¿Qué? No quieres bailar conmigo?" He flashes the teeth. Big like corn, takes a step out of his blue shadow and into the face of coy-man.

Los espíritus dijeron... Thiago began, his voice trailing off as he abruptly closed off. Few understood the reverence he held for such things, even when the green had clouded his thoughts. He swayed on his feet, humming a fragmented melody that reached Niño's ears, but his words were lost in a drugged haze.

Bailaré contigo, jefe, he declared, his swagger brushing too closely against Niño as if he were a mere illusion. But when he leaned in, his voice dropped to a desperate whisper. ¡Me quedé sin! ¡La medicina, oh dios, el verde! ¿La tienes, sí? ¿Está Juárez aquí? ¿Él puede hacerlo?

His breaths come in shallow, ragged gasps as he hovers near Niño, his proximity more desperate than deliberate. The sun blazes down, casting harsh light across the desert expanse, the heat making the air shimmer and distort.

Hound’s still as ever. A cobra with his hood flared. Learned that bit from Soto.

“La desesperación te debilita, Thiago. Los jefes te oyen cantar así y te harán comer tus propios testículos en la cena."

Ignores the question.
Answer was obvious.

What wasn’t obvious was if the dog would lead him to their operation.
They needed runners, not addicts.
Wasn’t the dog’s decision to make. But Thiago was looking like a liability.

A spit. A grunt, then:
“¿Donde esta Carlos?”

He stared vacantly at Niño, his mind clouded, grasping at fleeting fragments of lucidity. "Carlos?" The name was a ghost to him, slipping through the cracks of his consciousness. He shook his head, a slow, deliberate motion that seemed to pull him further from understanding. No, no, no, he muttered, the words falling into the void, failing to grasp their meaning.

Then a spark of recognition flickered in his fevered eyes. Mi hermano está enfermo. Por favor... necesitamos comida o medicina. Señor, por fa...vor..

The plea was mechanical, stripped of its humanity, like an old, worn-out plea he had used before. It was a dead script, a rote performance for strangers that had lost its original intent. His eyes, wide and bright with the fever’s shine, were fixed on Niño, but they saw nothing clearly.

Thiago pulled himself back from the edge of his delusion, his voice emerging from the fog, tentative and fractured. Me dijeron que encontrara al jefe. ¿Sabes? Dejo de cantar, tú ayudas. ¿Sí?

You can put sorry words in a thug’s mouth, don’t make him any less of a thug.
Niño grew up with these men. Idolized them, at one point or another.
And he wouldn’t think twice about letting them rot in the desert.

Only reason he tugged his snout in a gesture to ‘come’, was because they were requested.
By name, apparently.
Niño didn’t let the jealousy show. He sure as hell wasn’t asked by name to join the naaghai cartel. He’d clung stubbornly to the de toro brothers like a pimple on their ass cheeks that wont quit.

Los jefes would decide if Thiago and Carlos made themselves expendable.
The hound was just here to his part of the job.

“Conseguir Carlos.”

Thiago’s gratitude spills out in a frenzied torrent, a sharp contrast to the oppressive calm of the desert. He babbles, his voice a stuttering mess of relief and confusion.

¡Sí, sí, lo haré, lo encontraré y lo traeré! ¡Gracias! ¡Oh, gracias! Dios mío. he exclaims, his joy mingled with disorientation. He shuffles in place, a grotesque dance of manic relief and fractured reality. His laughter is thin and hollow, a brief flicker of mirth in the suffocating heat.

With a final glance over his shoulder, he turns his back on Niño and stumbles away. His mind races, a jumbled blur of thoughts and half-remembered directions. The world around him warps and sways as he seeks out his brother, his purpose now a single-minded drive to find Carlos. His memories are a fractured mosaic, the specifics of Carlos’s location slipping through his digits like grains of sand.

Thiago moves with the desperate determination of a man who has lost everything but hope. He lurches forward, his steps uneven, the burning sun casting harsh shadows that dance mockingly in his path. His need for the medicine that will save his brother drives him onward, even as his mind falters and the desert swallows him, shadow and all.

Boy tongues the tips of his teeth, watching thing one go forth to collect thing two.

There’s no hostility. But there’s no connection, either.
That’s just how it works in the cartel. You get too attached to something, you have a weakness. You're easy to extort. In the case of Thiago, he had Carlos and the green.

The hound’s teeth clench. Just watching all this lunacy go down…

He needs a bump.