"I'm not hungry, Denai."

"You haven't eaten all day," she protested. "You need to eat, or the sun will drain you of your strength."

"The sun doesn't bother me, Denai," he said calmly, looking up at her. "I'm not human. Heat doesn't bother my kind." Well, it was almost true. Were-cats were highly adaptable. Given about a month or so, the heat truly wouldn't bother one.

"Fine. Here," she said, holding out a waterskin. "I know you need this."

He looked at the skin with narrow eyes, his feral nature rising up. The thought of what she did to that water rushed through him first, then he quashed such irrational thoughts deliberately. The girl was a Selani. She'd never intentionally poison someone. That was inexcusably dishonorable. He reached out carefully to take the skin, and as soon as he had it in his paw, he snatched it away from her, pulling his paw away from any possible danger.

She levelled her amber eyes on him, eyes that reminded him of Keritanima, then she smiled that charming smile of hers. "Look. No blood," she said, holding up her hands palms out.

He raised a paw, extended one finger, and showed her one of his long, wicked claws. "Would you like some?"

"Uh, no."

"Then go away," he said dismissively, but the command was unmistakable in his voice.

Denai said nothing more. She turned her back to him and walked away, rejoining Sarraya near a small fire she had made to cook whatever crawly thing she had managed to spit on her dagger. There were certainly enough crawly things out here. The land was relatively flat, with clumps of strange brush or tough weeds here and there, scattered across the dusty ground. The dirt had a strange reddish tint to it, and it was loose and compliant to the touch. It was actually quite soft. There were very few stones out here, and the ones that were here were very small. He had the sneaking suspicion that they were only here because sandstorms had picked them up and placed them out here. The vegetation could support life, but nothing on the scale of an inu, sukk, or kajat. Most things out here were small and scuttling. Lizards, bugs, spiders, a few mice, from the smell of things. He did smell some residual scent from a bird of some kind, and there was a faint trace of what smelled like some kind of canine, though. The grayish color of the ground to the west hinted that things were a little different over there, but that could also be the heat-haze rising up from the baking ground to distort the far landscape.

"Here," Denai said. Tarrin looked in that direction, and saw Denai and Sarraya hunching over something on the ground. "This is a zubu. That means slow walker. It's one of the common spiders in this region."

"Is it venomous?"

"Sarraya, everything in the desert is venomous," Denai said with a little chuckle. "My people have all but become immune to poison, with as many poisonous things out here that bite or sting us." She pointed down. " Zubu aren't really dangerous unless you annoy them. They're very gentle. Some of my people even keep them as pets."

"Are they deadly if they do bite?"

"Very," she replied. "Their poison is almost as potent as an umuni ."

"Isn't it a bit strange to keep a spider for a pet that can kill you if it gets annoyed?"

"What better pet to have?" she countered. "I'll guarantee that you'll never take a zubu for granted. It's a responsibility that you'll never dismiss."

"How do you mean?"

" Zubu get short-tempered when they're hungry," she answered. "The best way to keep a zubu happy is to keep it well fed."

"Oh. I get it," she mused, then she laughed. "What do they eat?"

"Anything that they can bite," she replied in a light tone. "They seem to prefer jumping mice and digger-beetles, though."

"It's pretty big for a spider."

"Yes, it's one of the larger breeds of spiders in the desert," Denai agreed. "It's not very fast, so it relies on camoflage to protect itself. And since it is so venomous, few predators will try to kill one unless they're very hungry."

"If they're not so fast, how do they catch mice?"

" Zubu are great hunters," Denai answered. "They track down the mice and attack them in their burrows, where the close quarters keeps them from getting away. Some also hunt by staying very still in a place that's well-travelled. They move slowly, but they can move very fast in a short jump. They use that to spring on unwary prey from ambush. If something can evade that spring, they'll get away from it, because it can't move quickly."

"Some of the spiders I know do the same thing," Sarraya told her. "We call them jumping spiders."

"That is what zubu do," she affirmed.

Tarrin rose to his feet, swishing his tail a few times, then turned his back to the pair of curious women and looked towards the west. He drank from the skin that Denai gave to him, finding the water to be somewhat stale and hot, but that was normal for water in the desert. The noontime heat hid the far distant from his eyes, hiding it behind the shimmering haze caused by the hot ground, but he could still make out a single rock spire not too far away from them. He was primarily looking for sandstorms, but he'd come to discover that it was rare for a storm to kick up during the midday heat. The winds that fueled them died down during the hottest part of the day. Only the big storms that came off the Sandshield rumbled across the desert in the midday hours.

"You done?" Sarraya asked, coming up from behind and hovering just beside his head.

"Guess so," he replied. "No luck, though."

"I sorta expected it," she told him. "As soon as we eat, we can move on. Are you hungry?"

"Not really," he told her.

Denai came up on the other side of him, rather close. It concerned him a little that she would get so close to him, but she didn't seem to notice. "That's the Lone Spire," she said, pointing to the singular rock spire in view. "It's a landmark. We're only about a day from the Great Canyon. Do you want to see it?"

"What do you mean?" Sarraya asked.

"It's a little out of the way, but it's very beautiful," she replied. "If you're curious, we can turn west and see it, then just follow the edge to where we can cross."

"We're not here to sightsee," Tarrin told her gruffly. "I have to cross the desert as fast as I can. That's the only reason I'm bringing you along, girl. If I'll lose time, then I'm not going that way."

"It was just a suggestion, Tarrin," she said mildly. "If you don't want to go, that's fine."

"How soon will we reach it if we go the other way?" Sarraya asked.

"About two days, but what you'll see there is nothing compared to what's that way," she said, pointing west. "It's still a formidable canyon where we're going to cross, but there are paths to get down the canyon walls. Over that way, it's just a cliff."

"How long is this canyon?" Tarrin asked curiously.

"If you're down at the base, it takes three days to run from one end to the other," she told him. "But that's if it was an easy run. The canyon floor is a maze of fallen rocks and rough terrain. It takes alot longer than that."

"What made it?"

"Nobody really knows," Denai answered. "There are smaller canyons in the desert made by old rivers that dried up, but the Great Canyon doesn't look the same as them."

No river made it. It sounded curiously like the Scar, the rift in northern Sulasia, only this one was considerably larger. Considerably.

"Your people go down there alot, Denai?"

"Oh, no," she replied. "It's a hunting ground for inu and kajat, the same as the Maze of Passages. The faster we start up the other side, the safer we'll be."

"There's enough food down there for them to survive?"

"Water pools in the deeper areas of the canyon," Denai told her. "The water supports plants, and those support enough prey for them."