Lion Head Mesa it's hardly sink or swim when all is well if the ticket sells

a thousand-eyed stare in this one.

qiao had seen it before. mostly in battle-gaunt men, but sometimes in women too.

she continued rifling through the muck. it was here, somewhere -- the hissing of the overworld's voices grew strong and then waned.

by a rock half-submerged in river silt, the voices grew to a deafening current.  qiao dug earnestly, as if she had forgotten safiya was there at all.

at last her claws raked something solid beneath the giving clay; she dug furiously now, extracting from the reluctant earth an object round and almost entirely featureless.

scraping the river-silt from its surface and revealing the age-worn bone below, qiao patted the skull's forehead and set it down besides her.

turning back to safiya as if there had not been a long stretch of time between them, qiao's gaze fell to the conspicuously absent eye.

so young to be a soldier. but she supposed that was why akashingo was dead; they were quick to throw their future into danger.

well, that and the haka she'd cast months before. an indulgent smile creased her lips. yes, that had been a powerful one. perhaps her strongest yet.

qiao. she placed a mud-ridden paw upon the skull. and this is my husband, kalgir.