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In the Desert’s Mouth – Part 1 By: Marileta Hunsford

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In the Desert’s Mouth
Part One
By: Marileta Hunsford


Yet, despite its reputation, Ottílde could not help but admire this creature’s terrible beauty. Its black fur was sleek and had a faint blue sheen to it under the light of the stars while its pale underbelly was decorated with black spots. Silky streamers of black hair flowed from pointed ears. Normally wedowyns had green or black eyes framed with markings the same creamy white as their underbellies. Paws as big as a grown man’s face were trimmed with black claws as long as a man’s palm.

The cats roamed the deepest parts of the desert, settling at oases for months at a time. When away from a ready water supply, they survived by storing moisture in a special bladder beneath their spines, which gave the animal its hunch-back.

I’m no match for it. The certainty of that realization was both horrifying and, strangely, satisfying.

The cat had landed just feet from where she knelt and ambled to the spring. Ottílde watched it with baited breath as it crouched at the pool and drank. In the pre-dawn darkness she could not tell if this was a male or a female. However, since no cubs trailed the larger cat, she assumed she now faced a male.

I can’t let it trap me here, she thought. Her pride kept her from simply laying her neck bare for the beast—a fight would preserve her honor but still achieve her goal. With exquisite care, she dropped to all fours and began to crawl from beneath the overhang. She winced as her stiff legs screamed at her.

Later, Ottílde was never able to identify what sound she had made that attracted the wedowyn’s attention, but it turned like a black and tawny blur to stare at her. In the faint starlight, she could see the glint of its eyes but not the color. Then, she saw the unmistakable shine of a long incisor as the cat opened its maw in a warning growl.

Ottílde rose to her feet and dragged her spear to a defensive position. The cat had dropped into a preparatory crouch and slowly began to circle her. Ottílde moved with it so that she could keep her eyes on its huge form.

With no further warning, the beast leapt at her. Ottílde threw her spear, but haste put off her aim and the head merely opened a flesh wound along the cat’s ribs. The wind rushed from Ottílde’s lungs as she hit the ground and the wedowyn’s great weight came to rest on her chest and abdomen. Her eyes locked on the snarling face, just breaths away from her mouth. She smelled star lilies from its recent drink at the pool, but beneath that, the stench of stale blood.

This was it. All she had to do… was nothing. As she stared into the great eyes above her, she made out a faint glimmer of green and sandy gold.

Serrated teeth brushed the pulse in her throat and nicked the skin there. Its claws ripped through her shirt and opened up two scarlet lines on her chest. She barked out a cry of pain.

Just a little closer.

Ottílde squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her hands into fists. With a jolt, she realized that she still held her knife. Her finger worked into the groove on the hilt where her name had been carved by Haad La’s eldest son, Chasín. He had crafted it with her small hand in mind and then given it to her the night before her Rispa began. He waited for her in the north as did Haad La, Beha, and their other three sons. She would be their only daughter, their anakhus. And they would replace the family that had thrown her away.



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