“Snake and Ingwa,” Phillip confirmed, glaring at the trails that led away into the roving sands. “I recognize those tracks.”
“They took the kid,” Daring growled, glaring into the shifting shadows. “Using him as bait for us.”
“Obviously,” Phillip agreed, his throat suddenly dry.
They turned to Rolling Thunder and Creek Fog, who were both reassuring the distraught parents. Phillip took a breath and trotted over to them.
“We’re going to find your son,” Phillip promised them.
“What took them?” the mare sobbed as her husband tried to pat her on the back. “What took my baby?”
“Just two wankers,” Phillip replied. “Don’t worry, we’ll find him easy. They left an obvious trail.”
Because they want us to follow them.
“Are you sure you don’t want us to follow you?” Rolling Thunder offered.
“Appreciated, but you’d slow us down, and we can’t worry about ourselves and you at the same time,” Phillip replied.
“Be careful,” Rolling Thunder urged. “It’s easy to get lost out there, and there are plenty of hunters roving around.”
But Rolling gave him a deep, meaningful frown, a spark of concern in his dark gray eyes. Clearly, he had come to the same conclusion that he and Daring had.
“We’ll watch our steps,” Phillip nodded.
“We will be praying for you all,” Creek Fog whispered, grasping his hoof as he passed her.
“Thank you,” Phillip said, feeling a strange comfort from her words. The eyes of the watching tourists all tracked him as he walked back to the mouth of the gorge.
He rejoined Daring, who was already hovering above the ground, scanning the sand with her binoculars. “I’ve got their trail,” she reported, repocketing her binoculars and lowering her pith helmet over her eyes. She pointed, her hoof tracking a line of tracks leading along the bank of the river that formed the gorge.
“Then let’s get going,” Phillip grunted, drawing his pistol and checking the cylinder to make sure that all six chambers were loaded.
Drawing her own pistol, Daring took off, flying low over the ground as Phillip trotted after her, keeping astride of their targets’ hoofprints. The distraught parents, Aborigineigh guides, and witnesses all watched them disappear around the bend in the water.
“They’ll find him, honey,” the mustachioed husband whispered, rubbing his wife’s back as she whimpered into his chest. “That’s the two best detectives in Equestria. They’ll find him.”
Rolling Thunder and Creek Fog looked to one another and joined hooves. Closing their eyes, they began to whisper together in their native tongue, voices joining in whispered, venomous tones of quiet fury at the monsters who had harmed a child. Their incantation rolled along the painted walls in a quiet, powerful song that carried itself up into the sky. Within moments, a wall of thin, gray clouds began to roll across the dome, covering the stars like a shield as a distant roll of thunder rumbled angrily.
“Dammit,” Daring growled, glaring at the darkening sky. “C’mon, hurry. If it starts raining, we’ll lose the trail.”
“They crossed the stream here,” Phillip reported, pointing to some smudges in the dirt leading to the bank of the whispering water.
Daring took Phillip beneath his forelegs and carried him over to the other bank, biting back a wince as her right wing protested the additional weight. “There,” Phillip declared, pointing at two more trails of darker hoofprints leading further up the red sand, out through a gap in the canyon walls.
Daring carried Phillip over the gap in the stone walls and they discovered that the hoofprints led out the other side, winding through the beehive-shaped stone structures.
“They’re making it too easy,” Daring growled, lowering Phillip to the ground.
“Keep to the sky,” Phillip instructed her, keeping one eye on the ground before him and the other scanning the shifting shadows. “They’re out here.”
Daring nodded and flew back up into the sky, glaring down at the stones beneath her, cast in a faint greenish tinge through her night vision contacts. An owl flapped past her with a hoot and beneath her, she heard the skittering of various nocturnal animals in search of cover or food.
Predator or prey? Daring asked herself, licking her lips as she continued to search for any sign of their targets.
Phillip abruptly paused and became stock-still, his ears flicking back and forth as he listened. Daring paused, subconsciously holding her breath as she hovered in midair.
There. Just beneath the chittering of bats and flapping of nocturnal wings. The wind was whistling again, distant howls like hungry beasts. Daring felt a shudder run involuntarily down her spine. The low, long baying of the night air almost sounded...angry?
Daring shook her head to refocus. Just the wind. Find the kid and get back to the Gorge.
Phillip glared and pointed to a cave opening beneath a table-shaped rock formation about forty yards ahead. “There,” he said.
Daring landed, then winced and rubbed her bandaged wing, trying to force the ache of protesting limbs back down. Phillip gave her a querying glance, but she replied with a grunt and a nod.
Daring and Phillip crept up to the mouth of the cave, pressing their backs against the corners of the entrance and peeking around. The low-ceilinged tunnel was pitch black, though they could both hear the faint, muffled whimpering of a colt.
Phillip looked at Daring and pumped his foreleg down. Daring nodded and retrieved a small silver sphere from an interior pocket. She shook the sphere slightly, feeling it warm up as the little spark inside began to activate.
One...two...three! She threw the smoke bomb into the mouth of the cave and ducked back behind cover. With a crack of thunder and a bright flash of light, the bomb detonated and smoke began to spill out of the cave. Coughing and choking soon sounded from inside.
Snapping on flashlights, Daring and Phillip charged into the cave, the smoke scratching at their throats with every rapid, shallow breath. The rough walls of the cave were covered in tribal paintings, most of them of the skeletal namorodo stalking animals and Aborigineigh.
“Aqua!” Phillip shouted, his eyes checking every shadow twice.
A little voice in the back of the cave called “Here!” in between coughs. Daring and Phillip sprinted the last few feet around the bend.
Aqua was laying on the stone floor, his hooves bound with rough cord, coughing on the smoke. The wall behind him was adorned with a larger painting of several namorodo surrounding a larger figure: a large white alicorn with three wings and a single eye. His eye, wings, horn, and mane and tail were all made of flame.
Daybreaker? Daring thought for a moment, then mentally slapped herself. Focus on the kid, Daring!
“You’re okay, kid,” she said, bending down to scoop the shivering, coughing colt onto her back, her head panning from side to side in search of their targets, but there was no sign of Ingwa or Snake. “We’re gonna get you out of he--”
The breath was knocked from her as Phillip tackled her to the ground, gesturing violently with one foreleg. Aqua’s cry of pain and shock was muted by the sound of two gunshots and bullets striking the stone wall, immediately returned by a cry of pain as Phillip’s boomerang struck the gun out of their attacker’s hoof.
Hoofsteps pounded down the cave walls. A blade swooshed through the air with a furious bellow. Phillip and Daring both rolled aside, narrowly avoiding the machete blade that Sand Snake was now slashing at Phillip as he lay on the ground.
“Give us the book!” Sand Snake snarled, every strike narrowly missing Phillip as he dodged. “Just give us the book and we’ll let you live!”
“Get back!” Phillip shouted, kicking Sand in the leg to force him away and raising his foreleg, centering the iron sights on his target’s head.
At the same moment, Daring looked up and spotted Ingwa further up the tunnel; the Aborigineigh flinched as the beam of Daring’s flashlight blinded her. With a grin, Daring snapped her sights to her targets’ center mass.
Click. Click.
For a moment, everypony froze, blinking in disbelief. Then Sand Snake sneered and charged at Phillip again, raising his machete again.
Ingwa grunted and something flashed silver. Ducking as Ingwa's throwing knife whistled over her head, Daring kicked Sand Snake in the back, knocking him off-balance and giving Phillip enough time to do a kip-up back to his hooves. “Get the kid out!” Phillip shouted as he seized Sand’s foreleg, snapping a roundhouse into his foe’s thigh. Sand snarled in pain as the blade fell from his grasp.
Daring hesitated for a moment as the two stallions struggled, then grabbed Aqua and threw the colt onto her back, charging for the tunnel entrance.
“No, you don’t!” Ingwa Wep snarled, drawing another throwing knife from her belt and snapping it out, the blade whipping towards her forehead fast as an arrow.
With no room to dodge and not enough time to duck, Daring did the only thing she could: she took her pith helmet off and thrust it forward. She felt the solid thunk as the knife slammed into her hat, the blade piercing through the top of the reinforced material.
A moment later, she bowled into the mare, sending the Aborigineigh tumbling to the ground with a grunt and a curse. Without slowing for a moment, Daring leaped over her prone form and kicked off the stone wall, shrugging to adjust for the weight of the yelping colt on her back. Her flashlight fell off and cracked against the stone floor, but she ran on, sparing only a grunted "Shit!"
Another swoosh gave her a heartbeat’s warning and she ducked just in time to avoid another knife that ricocheted off the wall next to her. “How many of those do you even have?!” she shouted over her shoulder as she sprinted up the tunnel. The sounds and oaths of the melee behind her soon faded away as she hurried outside.
A few moments later, she reemerged into the night air and skidded to a halt, panting and gasping in shock as she was suddenly assaulted by the icy rain that was pouring from the dark clouds that were now directly overhead. She dropped Aqua down onto the ground and quickly bit off the ropes around his limbs.
“Find a place to hide,” she ordered the trembling colt. “I’ll be right ba--”
Something swooshed over her head. Something large and heavy made a sharp whistling noise as it passed. Aqua screamed and flinched, covering his head. “Monster!” he wailed, running away as fast as his little legs could carry him.
Daring looked up and saw a dark shape darting back and forth over the sky, black against the black clouds, too far away and moving too fast to see clearly even with her night vision contacts, but from the brief glimpses she got...it looked like a skeletal pony, flying without wings.
Her heart dropped into her stomach. No. No, that’s not…
It suddenly swooped down towards the colt, bony limbs extended towards him: a high-pitched shriek of wind sounded as it dove.
“Watch out!” Daring screamed and lunged, seizing the colt and pulling him out of the way. She felt the wind rush past her as the thing missed by inches, heard it smack into the ground behind her with a heavy thump.
Lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating the stony plain; a shriek of pain that sounded like it was being torn out of a slit throat mixed with the responding clap of thunder. Daring glanced over her shoulder and caught a brief glimpse of a skeletal form and a pair of sunken eyes glaring at her through a long, tangled mane.
“Shit!” Daring gasped, holding Aqua to her chest. She spread her wings to take off, only to cry out as a white-hot jolt of pain ran up her injured wing. “Fuck!” Daring cried, diving behind a beehive stone.
The wind shrieked as darkness rushed past her, hooves tramping the ground beneath, so fast that she barely even saw it as she maneuvered around to the other side of the stone, quickly switching off her flashlight to hide. Pulling in rapid breaths through her teeth, she opened up the cylinder of her revolver and stared at what she saw in disbelief.
All six chambers were empty, staring at her mockingly.
How the fu...I know I loaded it!
She dug a hoof into her pocket and gasped as she felt nothing but cloth. Where are my bullets?! she thought in panic, patting herself down as though her spare rounds were hiding somewhere, even though she knew that they could have only been in that pocket.
Another shriek of wind assaulted her ears and suddenly the thing was there, right behind them. She could hear it snarling, every breath rattling as it sniffed the air, its joints cracking as it moved.
Aqua went stone still in her arms, though she could feel his little body shivering against her. Daring remained frozen, listening to the crick...crick...crick of its steps as it came closer.
A shadow in the corner of her gaze. Daring turned her eyes as far to the left as they would go and saw a blurry, dark shape inching forward. The head with its short, stubby horn and long, tangled mane that hung about it like rotted ropes was poking around the corner, twitching from side to side.
Daring held her breath, her heart pounding in her ears like a frantic drum. Don’t move. Don’t move. Don’t. Fucking. Move.
Another bolt of lightning streaked across the sky. The monster shuddered, then threw its head back, its mane falling to cover its face, and screamed at the sky. The noise sounded like pure, condensed pain and rage, setting Daring’s teeth on edge.
Now! Daring darted to another stone beehive and pressed her back against it, panting and clutching the whimpering colt as tight to her as she could. The thing screamed again in frustration and she peeked around the stone edge to see the hazy shape stalking around the stone that she’d been hiding behind before, its insect-like movements so fast and sudden that she couldn’t get a good look at it: it would go from near-stillness to a blur of speed and then still again as fast as an eyeblink.
Daring swallowed, then set the colt down. He looked up at her, his eyes wide; his tears mixed with the rain running down his face.
“Wait here,” Daring whispered into his ear. “When I move, head that way.” She pointed back south, towards the river. “Move from cover to cover. Do you understand?”
Aqua trembled but nodded. Daring stood back up and took a breath as she bent down and grabbed a stone from the ground. She peeked back around the stone to find that the thing was now stalking around in the open plains, head bent low as it sniffed the ground. Thankfully, it was facing the other way.
Daring threw the stone as hard as she could. It soared over her enemy’s head and clattered against the ground a few yards away.
The thing roared again and streaked over to where the stone landed, its head whipping back and forth as it searched for the source of the noise.
“Go!” Daring hissed to Aqua and flew over to another stack of stone, panting and holstering her pistol. Aqua hurried over to another beehive and hid behind it.
Another crack of lightning tore through the sky and the monster screamed in fury. With another blur of shadows, it flew back up into the sky, the hazy shape blending with the clouds overhead. Daring kept her eyes on it, trying to track it as it darted left, then right.
The sky lit up with another bolt of lightning and she saw the wingless form pause, then dart down…
Daring’s heart leaped into her throat as it landed near the shivering colt. Nononono!
“HEY!” she shouted before she could stop herself.
The head whipped around, blindingly fast, and it let out another bellow of fury that sounded like it was coming from the lowest pit of Tartarus. Daring ducked back behind cover as it whipped towards her, the shriek of wind assaulting her ears like a physical blow.
Good job, Daring. You got its attention away from the kid. Now what?
Slow, crackling hoofsteps to her left. Daring sidled slowly to the right, inching around her cover, trying and failing to swallow down her fear. With one icy hoof, she reached up for the knife on her belt and started to draw it: the slow snnnnkt of the metal seemed to echo endlessly in her ears.
The head, its sodden mane covering its face, slowly came around the stone once again. Up close, Daring saw that the beast was shivering and shaking as though from cold, every growling breath coming hard and fast.
With a scream that was more desperation than fixed courage, Daring lunged forward and seized the mane, yanking the head towards her; the hair was slimy and cold in her hoof and smelled like copper, and she would have shuddered in revulsion if she wasn’t busy thrusting the knife into the narrow, bony neck.
The shudder of metal against brittle bone ran up her foreleg with each impact; there was no flesh on the neck, and no blood flowed from the wounds. The monster screamed at her as lightning streaked across the sky and Daring got a good look at its face.
Clumps of rotting flesh clung to the yellowed skull. Rotting teeth, all of them rough and jagged like the remnants of stone knives from ancient civilizations, clung to a dangling jaw bone, only a few sinews connecting it to the cranium. The eyes were so sunken into the skull that all she could see was a pair of faint white glimmers, glowing with rage and hunger.
The namorodo shrieked in response to the booming thunder and it rammed its skull into her chest. Daring felt like she’d been hit with a cannonball: the impact sent her flying back, all the breath whooshing out of her lungs. She hit the ground and rolled for several feet before coming to a stop against a stone wall.
Gasping for air, shuddering in the cold rain, Daring barely saw the black blur before the wind was howling right in her ear. Cold, dead hooves latched around her neck in an unnaturally strong grip, cutting off her attempt to draw in breath. Hot, stinking breath assailed her face and she threw her forelegs up just in time to block the namorodo’s final lunge, pressing them against the bony neck. Her head spun as the namorodo snapped its teeth inches away from her face.
Panic clouded her thoughts as blackness crept in around the edges of her vision, a buzzing growing in her ears. She tried to suck in air, but the painful vise around her neck was too tight. The namorodo, as if sensing weakness, leaned in closer, letting out laughter that sounded like branches creaking in the wind.
NO! In a desperate burst of strength, Daring struck down at one of the bony limbs strangling her, knocking it loose. Gasping in a single breath, she screamed her only hope to the heavens.
“WANDJINA!”
Lightning lit up the sky like the glow of day and thunder roared in triumph, the cool rain embracing her like a comforting hug as the ward in her vest activated. The namorodo released her with a shriek of agony, reeling away from her as though she had burned it. It glared at her for a moment, its shivering pronounced, then fled in a blur, vanishing over the horizon. Daring laid back against the stone, panting and trembling as her head slowly ceased its spinning.
“Daring!”
Daring looked up to see Creek Fog sprinting up towards her, with Aqua borne on her back. “Are you okay?” she asked, helping Daring to her hooves.
“Phil!” Daring gasped, turning back towards the cave entrance.
Rolling Thunder was already helping Phillip stumble out of the cave; Phillip had bruises on his jaw and his forelegs were both covered in cuts, the rain washing the blood down his limbs in red rivulets.
“Snake and Ingwa are gone,” he grunted as Daring hurried over to help him. “They ran out through another tunnel.” He winced and clutched his chest. “Damn, that hurts...is the kid okay?”
Aqua nodded mutely from Creek’s back, clinging to the elder mare’s mane, shivering in the rain.
“We told you to stay at the gorge,” Phillip grunted at the guides.
“You’re welcome,” Rolling Thunder deadpanned back.
Phil just grunted. “Let’s get back to the gorge.”
“Phil, check your pistol,” Daring urged as they started to trot back.
Phillip opened up the cylinder of his .38 and blinked in bewilderment at the empty chambers. “What the bloody hell…” He quickly patted himself down, his scowl deepening as he found no bullets. “I know I had them!”
“Same with me,” Daring told him. “C’mon, let’s just get back to camp before something else happens.”
The glow of the starmoss torches greeted them like old friends as they returned to Cathedral Gorge, assuring them that they were safe here. The rain finally ceased as they approached, the thunder now far in the distance.
“Mama!” Aqua cried, leaping off Creek’s back and hurrying into his weeping mother’s arms. The parents immediately fell upon the group with tearful thanks as the other campers all cheered.
“No worries,” Phillip said, blushing as he tried to squirm out of the mother’s embrace. “We’re just glad the kid’s okay.”
“Here, here,” the mare urged, gesturing them towards her tent. “I’m a nurse, I can help you with those wounds. And you must be starving!”
Daring and Phillip submitted themselves to the grateful family’s ministrations, allowing them to clean and bandage their injuries and feed them warm soup.
“Can’t fault the service,” Daring admitted as they finally headed back to their own tent with a contented sigh. She turned around and looked up at Aqua, who had fallen safely asleep in his father’s arms in the open tent, his breathing slow. She smiled at the sight, returning the mother’s grateful wave.
But a moment later, her eyes caught the glowing white orbs of a wandjina and her smile faded as she remembered the wind whistling through the rain.
Creek and Rolling were tending to the campfire near their tents, both of them whispering to one another. They looked up and smiled as the detectives approached, though their faces fell slightly when they saw Daring.
“Is something wrong?” Creek asked.
Daring started to grunt back that she was fine, then paused. She sat down and stared into the crackling fire. She looked up over the flames at the paintings on the wall. A namorodo stared blankly back at her and she shivered.
“Daring?” Phillip asked, sitting down next to her and taking her hoof.
Daring sighed. “I…” She swallowed and forced herself to speak the words that she knew couldn’t be true. “I saw a namorodo.”
Rolling and Creek both hissed in a breath. Phillip stared at her for a beat, then whispered, “Are you sure?”
“Damn sure. And I bet anything that that thing is what stole our ammo,” Daring nodded, feeling herself starting to shiver despite the warmth of the fire. “I saw its...face.” She gulped. “It almost killed me and the kid,” she added.
Phillip was silent for a long beat, then draped a foreleg around her shoulders and pulled her close.
“You don’t believe me,” Daring mumbled.
“No, I do,” Phillip replied. “I mean, it’s crazy--they’re just mythological monsters--but we’ve already fought one of those, haven’t we?”
Black eyes stared at them from the shadows and an oily voice that was not a voice laughed in their ears. Both of them flinched, hissing in slow breaths.
“But I thought that the rain would’ve scared it off,” Daring mused, remembering how the thing had been shivering in the rain, how it screamed and roared every time lightning struck.
“Perhaps it was a particularly determined one,” Rolling Thunder commented.
“Or a stronger one. Perhaps borrowing strength from something else,” Creek Fog added as she and her husband both exchanged glances.
“It’s just…” Daring swallowed again. “I didn’t want to believe that that’s what it was. I just...couldn’t believe it, even when it was right in front of me. And…”
“What?” Creek Fog pressed, motherly concern etched into her face.
“It’s stupid,” Daring muttered, shaking her head. “But if evil spirits are real...then maybe gods are real, too.”
“Why is it hard for you to accept that gods might be real?” Creek Fog asked, tilting her head to the side in confusion. “Habit?”
“I don’t know,” Daring shrugged, taking off her pith helmet and rubbing the back of her head. She took a moment to compose her thoughts, then sighed.
“I never really liked the idea of gods,” she said. “Didn’t like the idea that there was some glowing pony up in the sky controlling my life, telling me what to do. Especially when they didn’t give a damn about me.”
For a moment, she looked down at the hoof that had, until recently, borne the cursed brand.
“But then, this spring and summer, I started realizing that there was...more out there than I thought,” Daring admitted, staring not at the stars, but the empty blackness between the faint, distant lights. “Things that...just didn’t make sense. Things that were alive and angry and weren't supposed to be real. That I didn’t want to believe in, even when they were trying to eat my face.”
She shuddered as she recalled the skittering sound of things that crawled through endless stone corridors, remembering how she could somehow feel them beneath her flesh.
“And it scared me,” she continued. “So I tried to tell myself that there was a rational explanation for it, that it was all just dreams and illusions and freaky magic. But I guess…”
She mopped her face with a long, low exhalation. “It scared me, thinking that there were maybe things bigger than ponies,” she confessed. “That we don’t understand.”
Phillip squeezed her tight for a long moment, then nodded. “I get it,” he said and took a breath.
“I haven’t heard the old stories since I was a kid,” Phillip continued, one hoof going to his totem of Angkakert. “I never gave them much thought when I was growing up. Thought they were just stories. Had other things to worry about. Besides, I can’t believe in something that I can’t see or hear or touch.
“But then I looked into it...Zugzwang’s eyes, and…” He swallowed, his grip briefly tightening around the little carving. “And I saw that it was something that wasn’t a pony. Wasn’t anything that belonged in this world.
“And when I was…” He was silent for several seconds, his shoulders shaking slightly as he gulped down air. “I...remember I was dreaming. I thought I heard something...someone singing to me. I just felt this...peace. Like I was safe.” He blinked. “And that all went away when I woke up. Just a dream." He blinked. "Just a dream," he repeated to himself.
“But it made me think of…” He paused, swallowed, then whispered the name. “Trace. I know he just...died, and that’s it, but...I can’t help but wonder if there is anything...on the other side, I guess. I…” He closed his eyes for a long pause. “I don’t like to think that he’s just gone…” he whispered as if knowing that it sounded stupid.
“So…” He took off his trilby and ran a hoof through his mane. “I’m not sure I can believe in any of that. I’m a detective. Supposed to believe in evidence. But…” He shrugged. “Maybe there is some evidence. But I don’t know what to do with it. What I’m supposed to believe.”
For a long time, there was silence save for the crackling of the fire and the rippling of the water. Phillip and Daring just lay there and held each other, while their guides contemplated them.
Then, Rolling Fog stepped forward.
“You can’t believe in what you can’t see or hear or touch?” he asked. “Tell me, Phillip, if you ground the universe down to the finest dust and put it through a sieve, would you be able to find any trace of justice or goodness or law or order or empathy?”
Phillip rubbed the back of his head. “Well...no,” he admitted.
“And yet you believe in those things,” Rolling pointed out. “Is it so hard to believe that there might be other things out there?”
Phil and Daring just stared at each other for a beat, then Daring frowned. “Yeah, but...how do we know what’s out there?” she asked. “Or if there really is anything out there and we're not just seeing shit? I mean…” She gestured around at the paintings on the wall. “These stories are nice, but they’re just stories.”
“Are they?” Creek Fog smiled. “Are not history books stories as well? Or even witness testimony?”
“Yeah, but those are things that actually happened,” Daring countered. “There’s proof backing it up.”
“Perhaps the proof you’re looking for is a bit less obvious,” Creek suggested.
Daring and Phillip both stared up at the paintings as they pondered their words. Yhi smiled peacefully as she had for centuries, while the wandjina looked down upon them; despite their mouthless countenances, cast in the semi-darkness and enchanted light, they all seemed to share a strange glow of concern.
“No one can give you all of the answers on their own; any teachings are like a hoof pointing at the sky; if you focus on the hoof, you can’t see the stars,” Creek said, pointing up at the dome above them, prompting them to look up to admire the infinity of stars overhead. Daring’s eyes instinctively went to Polaris, and she felt a strange comfort in seeing that little star winking at her from its fixed position in the sky.
“The answers that you’re looking for, you’ll have to find on your own,” Creek continued. She smiled softly at their pensive frowns. “I know that’s not what you want to hear--that you want to hear a simple answer. But unfortunately, faith is never that simple.”
“A lot of things in life aren’t,” Daring sighed despondently.
“But that makes getting them so much the sweeter, I say,” Creek replied.
Phillip yawned. “Bedtime,” Rolling Fog announced, stretching as he stood. “You two had best get some rest, we have a big day tomorrow.”
“Right,” Phillip nodded, standing. “G’night.”
He and Daring trotted over to their tent, eyelids falling heavy as Creek and Thunder began to draw a circle around their encampment once again. As they removed their clothes to climb into their bags, both of them simultaneously started to remove their wandjina totems, then paused. They stared at each other for a beat, then, both of them trying to keep the lingering foolishness from their faces, kept the small necklaces on.
They climbed into their bags and nestled close to one another, Daring tucking her head beneath Phillip’s chin. He kissed her on the head, smiling as she made a soft, appreciative noise in reply.
As he closed his eyes to sleep, Phillip heard Creek Fog outside, softly singing, her voice rolling over the cavernous stones to settle over them like a comforting blanket:
“Fear not this night, you will not go astray,
Though shadows fall, still the stars find their way…”
Before sleep stole up upon him, Phillip felt a strange echo of familiarity in the words. Like he’d heard them before in a dream.