Ocean's Breath Plateau oil lamps

This got away from me.

With hidden amusement, the panther noted the way that Raiyuk arranged himself. This mimicry was to be expected, as it was how young men learned — but he looked to Chakliux to see what he thought of it, too. They came from different cultures, and Dutch was not sure how much peacocking seal hunters were afforded at this age.

But it seemed that the other man's pride in his son warranted such confidence, mimicry or not. The panther hid another smile at the seal hunters' expense, suffused with affection for all who resided in this place.

He wished he could stay.

"All kinds," he said to Matteo, and to Chakliux and the rest, he said, "A desert is a place of sand and heat. There is no water, there. There are no mountains. There are no trees. It is only red earth and scrubland, and white Navajo sandstone, and deep ravines in cracked canyons, in some places.

"I came to this place with the bounty hunter, Slow West," he explained, glancing to the seal hunter man, who would know this name. "The son of the man Kentucky Bourbon, and of a coyote woman called Güera, and of the companion of Bourbon, who I only knew as the flower eater. I was not allowed to speak to this man. I was discouraged from even looking at him."

The panther was still not sure why this was, and he hoped it would be as hair-raising for the seal hunters as it had been to him, skating back from Bourbon's snapping teeth.

"There were not many wolves in this land," he told them. "Only Bourbon and myself. The rest that I met were coyotes or halflings. For this reason, they called me long shadow when we were out upon the sands; I was the tallest. I was the heaviest, too, and the one with the thickest pelt. The others that we met had fur as short as the fur of your face all over. Slow West shed his great silver coat and turned the color of white sands. I shed some, but the sun beat down on me, and the sands burned my paws 'til they bled, and my nose and my ears grew cracked and red. It took me some weeks to get used to the heat."

He paused for effect, here, a smile growing on his face.

"And then it got hotter," he went on, his voice low. "The well where West's family made camp dried up. We moved on to the next one. This well, too, dried up, and I asked where we would drink, and West said that he did not know. That we would have to go lookin'." For this, he used to the strange, twangy accent of the desert creature. "So we went. And with us came the strange creature that Slow West's family kept. It is like a raccoon, but like a squirrel, too. It rode upon Bourbon's back, and stood sometimes with its front paws perched between the man's ears, its nose in the air, sniff-sniff-sniffing." He demonstrated, lifting his nose into an imaginary breeze. "This creature could smell the water. It directed us to the next wellspring, where we met with another family in possession of strange companions. These were a wild ass, and a slithering snake.

"We traveled by night, for the desert sun meant death to those that labored beneath it — even creatures born into the desert were not safe. And as we cowered in the shade, they sang songs together:

"All day I've faced a barren waste
Without the taste of water, cool water
Old Dan and I with throats burned dry
And souls that cry for water
Cool, clear water."

Dutch laughed.

"They sang, but I could not! My throat was parched. It was painful even to swallow. And when the sun sank down, we went out again. They showed me how to eat the fruit of this land: the prickle-pears and the nopales, which are both spined like a porcupine. Most of the desert plants are spined. This meal coated my throat and kept me going through the nights. We came to another well, where a desert cat as large as myself was already drinking. I thought that she would fight us, but instead she joined us in the hunt for water. None of us hungered, by then. We only wanted a drink."

He described a little more: packs that came with coyote shamans. Those with the longest legs and the largest ears were most prized. He described how the packs had all been families: mothers and fathers and offspring, with the only non-relations being their water-sniffing creatures.

"One day Slow West went out in the sunlight. He said that he saw something, but none of the rest of us could see. We waited hours for his return, but the sun began to sink. We set off, walking in his footsteps for hours still. It was at dawn, then, that we met him again — and he had found a water hunter of his own. A great black bird, with a bald red head. A buzzard, they called it. Like a vulture, but larger still. A bird too large to ride on anyone's shoulders. It took to the air, and Slow West said that we must follow, even into the sunrise.

"My paws bled," he told them. "My nose bled. I saw strange things shimmering on the sands. They call these mirages. Dark spirits trying to lure you to your death. Their songs speak of it:

"Keep a-movin', Dan, don't you listen to him, Dan
He's a devil, not a man
And he spreads the burnin' sand with water
Dan, can you see that big, green tree?
Where the water's runnin' free
And it's waitin' there for you and me?
Water, cool, clear water."

Dutch bowed his head.

"I did not believe it, at first, when we came to Agua Roja. It is a great river in the season of rains, but at that time, it was a thin stream of red waters. It could flow through this lodge and leave room to sleep still on either side. And it was shallow! So shallow, one could not drink without drinking also the red clay beneath it. I remember the taste of it — like the sweetest delicacy that can be imagined. Of course it was! I had not had anything to drink in many days.

"It was in this place that Slow West met his bride: a coyote woman called Shady Bird. This courtship is a violent one. A man will kill those that dare come near his chosen mate. He said to me that I had best be gettin' on, — and I knew his teeth! So I stayed far from him, and I got to know the desert cat, who was called Balarina. Dancer. When the rains came back, and the river Agua Roja swelled, she led me back to the scrublands, to Bourbon's well. We parted ways there, and I returned to the mountains. And when I got there, I shivered all winter as my coat grew long once more."