Noon

Rain comes once again with colder times. Her and many others, all nestling in the sand, raised by the sun, shiver awake. All crawling out from their warrens, tasting salt on the air, clutching rocks or bone or glass. The sharp and soft edges warmed by their palms, gathering static between each clenched tendon.

She steps out second to last, slow enough to count. The sky bruised in dusk, blue creeping up, a whisper of heat flooding across the dunes.

(She is the worst of them all: Alta, the tallest. The favorite. Body compelled to follow in helpless perfection. Plunge into the depths to sink, meet what is made in the cradle of Pacific tempests—Baja; her and all the other singers raising their call through the southward winds.)

A breath barely escapes her mouth when the first snaps past. A second. A third. Wind whips at her skin, a riot of dust gnashing whatever it could touch, the shadows of countless running past her.