The Gullet's eye closed.
The sun had not set for three hundred cycles. It hung there, bloated and white, bleaching the world of color and shadow. In the endless, glaring noon, the skeletons of the great beasts lay scattered across the cracked salt flats like the ribs of failed arks. beasts in the sun skeletons
The sun began to fade toward the Zenith Fade. The eye blinked. The Gullet's eye closed
The bones should have been white as the sun. These were dark. A deep, bruised purple bled through the calcium, and when Elira touched a rib, it was hot. Not from the day's blaze. Hot from within. In the endless, glaring noon, the skeletons of
The tremors stopped. One by one, the other skeletons went still. The sun steadied. The flicker passed. The beasts remained bones.
And she walked home, leaving the beasts in the sun skeletons to their long, hot dreams of a world with shadows.
Elira slid down the skull and sat in the shadow of a giant rib. Her hands were ruined. Her hat was gone. But she was alive.