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Memories in the Sand

The sands crested red stone cliffs whirling below the bluffs and into a valley of tomb housing carved into their faces by a people forgotten to history. An empire that lay buried beneath the ever changing desert with a few sandstone bricks protruding on its surface watched by guardians whose faces were long rubbed off by countless ages of wind, sand and sun. Their shapes were not crafted in the likeness of one who moves among the desolate dwellings dotting the dark depths of the canyon. The one who moved through this historical town was a creature that lived among the shifting sands for longer than their elders could recount. A creature the inhabitants of these ancient buildings may have tried to take as pets. They were recognized by physically amusing quality which caused them to underestimate them.

His pointed ears were perhaps a fifth of the body's total length. His dusty tan fur blended into the sea of sand, with a tail almost long enough to touch the ground which he didn't stand very high from. Perhaps he would be two and a half feet tall if he stood on two. His body was adorned with a necklace of scorpion pincers intermingling with two halves of a scarab beetle that formed a clasp, arm and leg bands covered in the barbs of vulture feathers beaten by sand and time were barely secure around his limbs. A satchel hung over his shoulder, its strap had been eaten through by the winds and grain when it hasn't been partially marred with teeth by the creature's own jaws. His eyes were of two colors, the left brown while the other dark green.

He'll fall onto all fours and begin climbing the mounting sand face at the edge of the ravine. The winds were dying causing only small beads to slide down its face which could be enough to cause some sections of the desert to completely give way when one's foot touched the uneasy ground. The creature's light footed paws were covered in fur to prevent the sand from burning the digits. In a world ever shifting in subtle ways, it was enough to prevent others from tracking him.

That was if they were tracking his prints.

He hears something under that sand. He has been searching for its trail since he left his den. The clan knows of it, fears it. He is no different. They tracked its hunting patterns, paying heed of it. Many tried to talk him out of this journey; he was almost one of them. But his search has led him here, to the den of this apex predator; the one that claimed something more valuable to him than any treasure or secret. Their ancestors, their guardians, the ones that gave the seers sight and of whom influence all things guided him here. He couldn't ignore them. They pull at his very soul. The sands shift under him once more. He fears it but can't give into it.

He'll remember those long days spent journeying over the dunes of golden brown in the sun and the blackened silver under the moon. Three days passed among the ever changing path; the destination an enigma. The territory beyond their borders were no more than vague stories the elders pass on to the kits to deter them from following the lure of some fomenting demon's pull on their imaginations. It was as faceless as the tan slates that dot the landscape. A forest of faceless stone was the first destination. Their monolithic proportions inspire awe and fear of the creatures that made them. The spirits never created so many consistent shapes in one place. The one the spirits stop him at wasn't like the others. Its roof was spherical, covered in glass and was in the middle of a circular bowl which protected it from the wind. But time was ever patient, and the desert has the patience to test time. It took advantage of a small chip in the stone wall to carve it out with sand until it became a gaping wound. Sand always finds a way through

The creature will hear the wind rushing through a hole in this structure on the leeward side of the stone abode. This den was most unusual. The carvings weren't done by the wind, the digits used to craft them were more dexterous than he and his kin possessed and they were meticulously carved into the walls. What meaning they had may be lost with those who carved it, for those who live in this desert did not have the means to make this. The carvings were flanked by old blue paint which had faded out on pillars and red which darkened on the walls.

White fluttering passed his muzzle, into the darkness below the sand hill alit by the rays of sun. He'll slide down that hill, keeping balance on two with his tail and left hand like paw keeping him on balance. The corridor's stature was grand when compared to his meek frame. A world that inflates its size much like a beast trying to drive off a predator. Was he indeed the predator of these halls? Where their secrets his prey? The spirits wouldn't answer him right now; instead he'll feel their tug on his invisible lead. The sandstone walls held firm though the dust of ages long pass scatters under each step his paws take. Light cracked through holes in the ceiling with a sprinkle of sand trickling through the gaps and flowing on the wind like falling leaves caught in a gentle breeze. The still waves of this grainy sea will be frozen on the walls lapping the sides of the corridor. The epicenter was held up by two pillars in each compass direction, except the southward facing pillars which crumbled and allowed sunlight to illuminate the golden dust.

The pull guides him to the left corridor, its décor the same walls with a language he couldn't comprehend. The difference being they were written flanked with salt white bands but they were soon swallowed by the darkness. His vision began to go as the sun from the central chamber couldn't reach this corner of the structure. The idle sea gained a tide. His vessel betrayed him to this unfamiliar stream. His balance was soon lost to the tide growing in strength, forcing him to go on all fours. He tries to scramble back, fear of what was lurking in this darkness preying on his senses even as the spirits say follow, follow the sand's current. The change was subtle, the sand shifting sounding like the ocean tide, then the pull increases and the smooth tide turns into a rough torrent. Their roar echoes through the hall and he'll realize the sand was falling through a very large and deep, deep hole. Maybe one that descends into the very heart the earth. Yet in the face of this impending peril his instincts didn't tell him to flee. This was the work of the spirits, they were the only reason this place was swallowing the sand and trying to engulf him. Something was here and this was how he will get to it. He'll move towards the source of the suction, running on all fours with the pull causing him to move ever faster. The sand fell in a funnel and the whispers of the spirits came clearer in his ears, in his head, through his body. He can't remember if he dived in or if he just lost his footing and fell but soon the darkness that surrounded his sight became a tight pressure through his entire body for only a moment.

His fall was slow, as if the sands of time fell a grain a season. Time became an abstract thing or place that existed in his imagination. The darkness traps him in its cage leaving no sense of space outside his own. The sands falling around him stopped sounding of storms, they became his thoughts. He could think nothing but sand while trapped in the jaws of darkness, no sense of time and place. No, gravity itself began to leave him, his descent slows as though he had the mass of a feather. Gone were the images of familiar faces, smells of his clan and the den of solid stone. His large ears drank in the words of sand, no different than he consumed the advice of elders. He heard voices, calling him, a name? He could not pronounce it.

The names change to other words, stories? No, this was not the stories the old ones told the kits. This was something else, histories. Times long pass, things forgotten. Things even the ancient ones who made this den forgot or things they never knew before. It has been many ages since then. The pull of those ancient guardians became a gentle hold, a cradling mother. Time... it was lost under the well of knowledge that came to him.

He opens his eyes. He was not inside of the ancient den anymore. He wasn't falling either. The sands that were absorbed into the hole lay around him, the grains that fell before formed a bed, a hill that caught him. No more fell after him only some small trickles lay on his body. He still hears the echo of the ancient's words ringing through him. The reverberation, it felt the same as the sand that shifted around him in the fall. Its form bound by the constraints of gravity, but so light that even the lightest movement can cause the landscape to change.

The shadows here, they were broken. A light reflected upon the water. He couldn't still be in the structure he fell through. Have the sands carried him somewhere farther from home? And that scent in the air, its smell was the same as tears. The air tasted lightly of it. Salt, a voice told him, this scent and the taste in the air was salt. He can also smell water. His eyes adjust to the little bit of light seeping through the cracks in the ceiling. The light touching the water bounced off the white crystals covering stone pillars.

He'll stand the ancient's whispers were no longer whispers, their guidance came clear as day. They told him to come and he will follow. Follow the lights refracting off the water and salt spires, illuminating the dark cave in greens, purples, yellows and white. Each step brought the patient sands with him, they follow him like the harbinger of the advancing desert. The speckles of color were broken by the one spot illuminated in a bright yellow circle where the ancient's voices sung through the very stone. But the ancients voices were also joined by an unfamiliar one. He could not figure out what it was. No malice was in its call, no lie in what it promised, it was familiar while it was strange.

The voices, the light, they give him company down the cave, a small stream running alongside him deep under the earth, the light from the ceiling was obscured by the stone and sand again, but the light that guides him now remains bright and focused, bouncing off the salt spires. The trail went ever forward, down, left, up, down, the light never fades, the spires persist. They were pillars placed perfectly along the cave by the host. Though the darkness was once encroaching, with this light and the spirits guidance, they became welcoming. They were joined by the patter of water on stone, something he hardly heard in his lifetime. The scent of salt and water became stronger, the voices of the spirits echo and fill with bass.

At the center of the grand crystal chamber lie stairs, carved by water running down the stone. The stalagmite in the center was a pedestal which gleams brilliant silver light. The fanak walks up those stairs, this was it, what his guides told him to seek out. The steps were made for legs longer than his, but he'll climb them, even when he has to fall on all fours and pull himself up, he'll climb. The room almost stretches into eternity during that ascent, as if the spirits were testing his patience once more. But he wasn't one to stop, not after this, the sands followed him. Each step, his ears perk more, his tail will swish and eyes will wonder what the spirits brought him to. Now at the apex of his journey he could see their gift and all its mystery. Upon the pedestal its carapace gleams silver, its head carries the weight of two large pinchers, its body looks strong indeed but meant for carrying things much smaller than the fanak. This was a silver armored beetle, larger than the black scarabs he normally eats, but still a beetle. It'll look up at him, click those pinchers and tilt its head to inquire about it. That was when the big eared creature's ears sunk. Yet he could not just ignore the voices of his guides. His gait was very slow on approaching the beetle; simple steps which became harder to take. There was an underlying gravity to this approach. The sand was solid, no wind blew, yet why did he have to fight to get closer? The silver beetle rubs its wings together, the motion a hypnotically slow shimmer of pale blues, silver and tan. The thin membrane flutters at a rate of two beats per second, a kaleidoscopic dance of colors radiates from the insect though light did not touch this cavern.

He didn't remember when he got to the pedestal but he stood before it and the host inside of the translucent container. The puzzled fanak finds himself kneeling to the beetle, gazing in wonder at its shimmering exoskeleton of silver white metal. The eyes of the creature, he could see them. Orange as fire. The elytran plates were covered in small spikes, the antenna long and prodded against its glass container. Each tap it made sent out another small voice to his big ears and its revelation was the dawn breaking the clouds of the fanak's mind. The creature he was listening to give him guidance was this insect. This creature unusual color with the enchanting wings covered by a rugged shell protected by dark spines; this was his guide. Something that would seem insignificant held the strongest spiritual potential. Two more taps on the glass with its antenna. The beetle, Spirathorn, called him to learn the secrets of the desert and to protect it from itself. The notion confused him. What was the desert doing to itself that it needed protection? The answer wouldn't make the storm clearer.

Venwal. Protect it from Venwal.

An image flashes through the fanak's mind. There was a flower, white petals with golden stigma and anthers that reach out the flower like they grasp for the sky. Then a silver viscous liquid drips onto the flower. It sank and burned as it fell through. Where the flower was scarred a purple fluid starts to stretch from the edges of the wound to reach for the other side of the burns. They entwine and pull together patching the hole, but the petals and reproductive organs of the plant became a deep purple. The deep purple became black. The flower begins to drip purple liquid from the pedals and start to mutate the ground. The ground begins to die and the infection spreads to the other flowers. The original flower begins to change once more, the blackened leaves begin to separate, the fibers of the plant begin to take on the form of spindly clawed fingers. They grasp at the other flowers and ground and begin to pull the flower apart. The center of the flower undulates and pulses. Then, a head pushes out of the flower and screams. The screech was unlike any creature he knew. The spirits told him that this was a creature that frightened them. The flower is torn asunder by the mutated arms that grew from it. Scales cover this strange entity of a thousand claws, dripping purple and black fluid. Screeching and groaning pounded his head. The roar that came from this monster held the ferocity of the storms and could rend skin from flesh. Then there were the eyes, the eyes he only saw briefly. The eyes were not round, they were almost runny, yet they still move. And they stared. Their blood thirsty mutated pupils stared into the heart of the fanak and his very soul quakes in fear.

Then he was back in the cavern of the silver beetle. The walls aglow with symbols and pictures he couldn't understand. They will burn alight and dim in sequence and the beetle's wings will chatter and the burning elytra will glow as they share communion. The walls spoke of more voices, their words alien but said in haste. They have little time. Even now the land crumbles and sky absorbed into the vacuum of its corrupting heart. The chattering beetle tells him though he must stop Venwal, he cannot kill it like he does prey. Venwal wasn't always this angry and driven by its hunger to assimilate or destroy all that the ancient ones made. Once it was one of their first and most devout creations. It was Venwal's creativity that inspired the shape the ancient ones gave the land, sea and sky. Venwal's resilience was given to the creatures who inherited the world. He was to find Venwal's heart and where it once held those qualities the ancients used to shape the world and bless its creatures with. The voices whisper through chirping scarab wings. Their message echo in a symphonic rhapsody through the towering cavern hall. His purpose was clear now. The shifting sands trail his wake.

Now leaving the tunnel, the silver beetle's shimmering wings and glowing red elytra were the fanak's beacon now. The shadows interchange positions with each other. They had as many forms as he had fur on his body. They only last moments yet the movement of each shadow pressed forward. They follow the beetle. Towering creatures, short ones, ones that are nearly insignificant. Horns, fangs, long snouts, no snouts, no ears, ears larger than his, slouching or erect. They moved on two legs, four legs, six legs or more if they didn't slither or fly. They were hunters and prey, warriors, healers, siblings, rivals, acquaintances and complete strangers. Everything followed the beetle. This was their mission as much as his.

The light down the tunnel grew in concentration; the walls narrow and fold in upon itself. They formed a solid wall that the beetle's hooked legs would grasp. The voices return at the fluttering of its wings. The desert follows you on this journey. The desert shall be your fangs as well as your shelter as you go to the heart of despair. The sound of waves made the fanak look back. The sands had followed them. Their words then made sense to the little creature. The beetle continues fluttering its wings, the spirits continued instructing.

With the gift they give him, new passages can be opened. Secrets uncovered, forgotten worlds can resurface. When focused the desert holds the strength of the mountain in only their smallest form. Eventually he'll learn how to harness the heat of the sun and bitterness of the moon. With this knowledge, this power given to him will serve to protect all they hold dear. But this gift will only be given so long as the spirits see need of a protector for the worlds of land, sea and air.

First he will turn this wall into a path to sun. He knows how to feel the sand. His body became one with it during his fall into darkness. He feels its history, its pride still held in the shapes it makes under the ground when packed with water. With the storms they make that can blind all below them. They lost the fortitude of mountain but it was replaced by the artistry water and freedom through air. Now, he will use the powers given to him by the spirits, he'll use sand's memory of the wind and sand will answer. The hardened sands began to slowly drift away from the center. For now it forgets the solid form water lent it for the motions of wind. The wall was no longer a wall as they were shaped like a craftsman hand would clay into a funnel. The fanak had his way to the sun.

Their journey felt short; following the path of the spirits time was abstract. Each step could've been a generation and he would've never known. With their power he gained their patience to lose himself to time, but retained his speed to flow through it as normal. Here the light of the silver scarab's fiery red elytra was soon offset by the glowing white of the sun. The wind blows through the tunnel and the air was a fresh high noon. The beetle slows until the fanak would overtake it, then lands on his right arm. He barely notices its touch; he only felt the warmth of the sun.

He stands over a ravine, the deep crevice of loose and petrified sandstone. The earth scooped out by a giant claw leaving a slash in the desert. The scar in the sand had shapes built inside of it by smaller claws. The shapes were like the holes of a den, only more hollowed out and they stood on top of the other. Some of the holes he could reach on foot, others he'd have to look at closer to learn how to ascend. The scarab whispers with its fluttering wings. That was when he knew it was close.

Now it comes. He found his courage not just through his guides, but through the one he lost to it. The sand undulates and dashes for him. No, not the sand; the creature under it. The sands spoke to him. The creature's growl will be clear to his ears, it hungered. He sees tan spines rising from the sand, coiling with the muscles on its back. Under the coiling spines rose a flap of ghastly gray skin and muscle and writing tentacles as the flap turned into a gaping maw. But he knew, these were not the main body of the monster. It was coming under the wave of grain. He saw it with his mind's eye and through the heart of the sand. It was moving under him, trying to snap him up with this secondary mouth and keep moving. The lashing tentacles were almost upon him, they spread to snatch him up and pull him into the darkness like his mate.

It found the sand it rode in defiant as it rises over the maw and solidify before it, slowing its progress substantially. The tendrils lash out trying to snatch at prey that was just out of reach. The creature growls and bellows in confusion. The fanak raises his left claw to his left, the sand to the left of the maw raises. The tentacles thrash at the solidifying stone around it. The main body tries to coil under the prison forming around its extra appendage. The fanak slashes at air with his claw. The sand claw slashes at the appendage with the boom of a heavy sand and stone. A squealing roar leaves the body of the monster, the tentacles that thrashed before were stilled when the secondary mouth was knock shut on them by the impact. The secondary mouth was pulled under with the crumbling sand and stone. The fanak's heart raced and he falls on all fours running to the sinking appendage. The body burst from the sand under the fanak roaring furiously at the sky and the creature who struck it and the pain.

The creature was the stuff of their nightmares. A body covered in writhing flesh, decaying gray. Five legs, two on the front were scaly things that pulled its body, two were the exoskeletons of scorpion legs, between the scaly legs and scorpion ones was a leg of undulating flesh. It couldn't truly be called a leg, more like a growth that moved on its own will. Two tails curl out of the ground, fangs on the ends of them cry in anger and pain. Blood leaks from the ends of those fangs instead of saliva, the appendages were bleeding it their owner. He could see the head of the creature consisted of only a nose and a mouth consisting of many devouring teeth. It had no eyes.

The immensity of the creature stunned the fanak. The bleeding appendages whip about, sniffing the air with their scarlet maws. His attention returned to the immediate danger he was now in. The sand below the monstrosity began to slowly engulf the creature that breached it. The body of the sand monster slams into the ground and turns on the fanak, charging with a blind rage, ripping its body out of the sucking sands. The little mammal dashes to the right, carried by the sand getting him away from the monster's furious advance. The demonic entity smashed into the ground sending its target stumbling as the sands shook.

The monster rises with a roar and turns again on the fanak who was on all fours, gazing at the looming monster with his tail tucking and ears lowering. He focuses his thoughts on the sand under the monster before thrusting his claws into the sands and the sands burst under it knocking the creature backwards and roaring. The crushing weight of the large creature sends a plume of dust into the sky obscuring the fanak's vision. His teeth chatters and his paws carry him back as he tries to feel the creature moving though the sands. It was going under. The dust cloud was growing larger. His ears hear the sands tossed by the strong legs. He channels the memory of sand gathering on the wind and focuses the cloud into one concentrated mass. A fang of sand forms over where the monster lay. But the monster was gone. His fur stands on end. It's already underground. The sands shift under him, his paws thrust his claws into the sand and the sand welled under him, to launch him to the left. The ground burst where he stood with the will of the ancients and force of the monstrous predator.

It was at this moment he realized his paws were never this high from the ground. He was a good jumper, at least the best of their litter, bounding over stone with little trouble when giving chase at play or hunting rodents. They said the only ones who could jump higher than him were the desert cats and the birds. But the birds had the gift of flight. As he looks down on the monster who smashed the dunes under it, he realized that he has reached a height only the birds attain. Fear grips him and he'll fall onto the shadow of another dune sending a puff of dust into the air.

He tumbles down the grains, head over tail, his satchel comes loose of him and stops farther up the hill. Its owner stopped tumbling near the bottom, sliding on his back to a stop. His disorientation slowed his ability to regain his footing. The shaking ground only hindered him more. The monster was coming for him again and he was just picking himself up when the ground shattered before him. Instinct told him to move, but he knew he couldn't evade this one. For a while he thought he could end this monster with the power the ancient ones lent him. That he could put an end to the monster that crushed stone, terrorized all creatures in the region relentlessly. To stop the monster that devoured his mate and kits. Here he was staring into the maw that took them. Three years together. A litter of four. The markings of their muzzles were a darker brown than his, a trait they got from her. They also got her slightly longer tail. They had a darkening strip along the length of their tails like him. Like many kits they had a natural curiosity about their world but they respected the boundaries their territory for they knew of the dangers of the sands. He lost them in the same formation of rocks that sheltered him and his mate from a storm. Lost them as he returned from hunting. Saw the monster fall upon the stone formation as she tried to get the kits away. Saw it fall upon them and carry them away. Now the same demon comes down upon him. Death approached with all its foreboding presence.

That was when he heard the whispers of the beetle again. The whispers that had guided him; granted him a power few every hoped to attain. They were guiding him again. There was a formation of sand he still had the ability to make. Like his arms, it raises at the slow deadly pace of the monster, the sand rose with it, not a heavy layer, but a thin spire, twisting and hardening as it rose under the creature's maw. This twisted spire of sand turns its way through the bottom of its jaw. Blood leaks from the deepening wound, the sand was bending under the power of the creature impaled upon it, but it kept turning and burrowing and digging into the flesh of the mutated creature. It still came, wounded as it was and slowed only a bit, but it was still falling. It was all the fanak could do but to get down and duck his head before the monster bearing down on him. For some reason the encroaching darkness made him remember his time tumbling down the sandy well; feeling everything, being gifted with a form that is inconsequential on its own, sparse and scattered, floating in the wind, but when together would blind the mighty and formed an almost endless expanse of stone. He and his mate and his kits were borne for life here. The plants were born for life here. The insects and rodents they hunt. The reptiles that bathe on the stones, the birds that nest in wooden shells; they all turn to sand again. He too, turns to sand. The many hairs on his small body crumble into the grains. Bones, muscle, eyes and teeth; all becomes sand again.

The creature fell onto its side with a crash of sand, stone and blood. A gurgled scream leaves its punctured throat and the mighty bane of the sands was flopping in the sand as helpless as a slug shriveling in the sun. The creature coughs more of the black filth from its mouth and spurts it through its wound; the base of the spiral protrudes from its throat. The dust settles on impression of the monster's slide across the grains. Dust that breathed and scampered underfoot and hid in the small places of the exposed world; that consisted of memories not millennia old but of moments old. Moments of fear, of sadness, of pain, of loneliness. Moments of curiosity, happiness and resolve. Memories of flesh and bone and sounds and smells. He felt the wind caress his hairs, the sweet scent of Sylh flowers when they bloom after the rare rainfall, the sand parting beneath his paws, the sun's warmth bathing his skin. He inhales, the desert exhales.

He burst from the sands the grains that didn't fall off his body found a place mixed with his body. The grains fall off his back, his tail, his paws. Shaken from his head, shedding the sand like a skin. He rises on two and looks in amazement at the monster covered in its own ichor on its side. Its breath was ragged and it gurgled on more of its blood. The fanak's surprise turned to something else. The monster took the lives of many creatures on the sands. The family that let him borrow one of their old dens lost a sire and one of their four kits to the monster. He lost his entire family. There were more creatures claimed by this wounded demon. He has the power to stop that now.

The fanak dashed with all the strength his muscles had in him. The monster tried to right itself, if it had the ability to feel fear it would dread what this little furry mammal was going to do to it. The fanak snarled and bounds up its splayed tail, running up the base onto its back. The monster tried raising the tendrils on its broken dorsal maw and a few of them register the call to defend itself. Rising, coiling to lash when the bleeding appendages felt a new kind of stinging. The fanak learned another mineral that would win his battle against this monster. Salt. Where sand and blood mingles, salt forms and burns. The salt that enfeebles the creature for the fanak to bring the sands above him, feeling the memories and will of the many creatures that have lived on its surface and sleep below its wake; the wisdom of those before him guiding his mind and spirit to give the sands shape; the power of a mountain that remembers its days of strength and glory. The sand was his claws and those claws came upon the head. The tips, sharp like glass, bit deep in its skull.

They weren't done yet. The sand pumps into the monsters veins, going deeper, deeper, surrounding its deadened heart and mind, its arms legs and wings; with sand that slowly turned into salt. The solvent that begins to dissolve the blood that coursed through the creature's veins. He could feel its heart beating; the pulse of hunger, madness and pain. Then he felt other things deeper inside, confusion, sadness and regret. The whispers come to him. The silver beetle crawls on his arm. Here he stands on top of a titan's dying husk and from the creature he begins to draw out the spark of life that was kept cocooned inside the demon since its birth. The claws dig deeper into the monster's heart. He feels the prison that was an unwilling was host to a monster. The touch turns to scratching, the scratching into clawing, the clawing into ripping and shredding. The shell breaks. The demon crumbles. Now this corrupt creature was reduced into something among the natural order. The blackened undulating skin, the limbs attached into the bastardized child of some unmentionable spawn. They turned into tan and white dust. They were reduced to their finest components and purified. The heart of the great beast, was the seed of something new and pure. A new voice joins the whispers, a voice most gracious. Then another voice, one giving is condolences. The last whispers were of happiness and pride. Pride in their...

The fanak, who was panting and who's limbs were tired and who's mind felt nothing but the heat of the moment, finally sat down. His eyes, would not see the husk of the desert terror. His body didn't feel the exhaustion of combat against the demon of the sands. He felt a familiar touch. His kits walk under him, licking at his muzzle for attention. His mate sitting at his side, her body pressed close to his. He takes on her weight, laying his head on hers. The first of his young would try pulling at his right leg to get him up and grab his attention. The second would always try climbing on him while he and his mate rested. The youngest always cried out when the sun sets or when the rains come, with a strange fear of the sky when it darkened. He sat at his sire's feet. For a moment there was happiness after the long trek across the sands, through light and darkness; the fear and doubt and loneliness. For a moment at least, he'll have his family again.