Phoenix Maplewood first star I see tonight

@Ruona

All his life, Dusty had been nocturnal.

The Red Desert, where he’d been raised, was a broiling oven in the daylight hours. They hunted in the evening, right as the sun was going down. They, and every other predator in the basin. The buff-colored cat that stalked in the shadows. The night bird, a black phantom against a starry sky. These things could kill them.

Other things, they killed. Fat, orange snakes still warm from a day of sunbathing. Lizards and mice poking their heads out of their burrows. Long, rangey hares — some of them almost as big as the flower eater — and thrashing, tough, plated centipedes. These things were all for them to eat.

It was different, here in the great north. The sky was occluded day and night by mountain and tree and clouds. The rocks never got quite as warm as they ought.

And the nights were lonely. Quiet. After Dusty had finished his hunting, he would lie in the tall grass with a not-quite-full belly and look up at the moon. He’d think about the racket of his family’s scream-songs. He’d think about tussling with his siblings or tossing stink bugs at one another. He’d think about the cold, gray dawns he would spend in a warm puppy pile, with Dad and the flower eater watching over them or else sprawled out in similar repose.

The nights were very, very lonely out here.

So he looked up at the moon and sang a scream-song by himself — something that was not quite a wolf’s howl and not quite a coyote’s shriek — hoping that someone, anyone might answer. He would even welcome the company of the flower eater, but for the first time, Dusty thought he might finally have shaken his stalker for good.