It did, Kin said smugly. That meat would have been rotting by now if it hadn’t.

Ottílde stared at him. “How… did you…”

It is only fair that I can hear your thoughts since you hear mine, the fennec said huffily, as though the whole business was terribly inconvenient to him.

She rubbed her head thoughtfully and smiled. This will go down as one of the more interesting Rispas in Traní history.

As it should, with me in the story, Kin interjected.

Dropping her hand, Ottílde looked at him with a rueful smile and said, “This is going to take some getting used to.”

Well, while you’re getting used to it, do you mind parceling out some of that meat. It will save me a hunting trip tonight.

Ottílde crept from beneath the shelf and stood, shaking out her hair, which had become a terrible tangle. Do fennecs eat wedowyn?

Kin sniffed daintily, We eat what’s available.

With a chuckle, Ottílde found her knife, shockingly neglected at the side of the dead beast and began to butcher her kill.

Ottílde spent three days at the oasis. She smoked what wedowyn meat she didn’t need for her and Kin. As proof of her kill and a reminder of the encounter, Ottílde extracted the sand cat’s claws and wrapped them in her pack. When she returned to the Traní, she would have them lacquered to preserve their razor edge and black luster. Her wounds continued to improve and by the end of her stay, they had become bright pink strips of memory. But they tingled from time to time, as though black fur was brushing her skin.

Though he slept during the day, like most desert creatures, Kin kept her company at night. He never answered her queries about the water or how it was that he could communicate with her and she soon gave up asking. Nonetheless, Kin was a welcome companion. His dry humor and lively stories about other inhabitants of the oasis—who would return eventually, Kin assured her—kept her loneliness at bay.

Ottílde could see that he was very lonely as well. It was not likely that another vixen would come along and fill his den with more young ones. She found it astounding that Kin was here at all. Fennecs tended to roam around the rockier regions of the desert where plants and wildlife proliferated. She did not ask him how he made it to this oasis and he did not offer the information. Still, she felt a bond with the little creature, some bone deep connection she could not explain. It was a connection she had never felt with anyone or anything before — not even Haad La and Beha. She would regret leaving him.

At nightfall on the third day, Ottílde knelt and drank from the pool for the last time. After filling her water bottle she picked up her pack, already loaded and tied, and slung it on her shoulders. Next, she gathered up her quiver and spear. She looked around the oasis for Kin, but the little fox was nowhere in sight. Kin, she called silently. Kin!

No answer. She hated to leave without saying goodbye to her friend, but the three days of her recovery had eaten up the time she had saved by her previous fast pace and tireless schedule. She had to be on the northern grass plains one year from when she started or the Traní would assume something had happened to her. Her mother and father were waiting. “Goodbye, Kin!” she called into the night. Thank you . She turned north and left the oasis.