Africa thought nothing of the delay in both reaction and response. Wind stood beside her, by the edge of the Throat; the lake which epitomised the region, perhaps lost to some moment of privacy she had not the desire to intrude upon. Instead, her pale complexion lowered once more though not to taste the fresh water. The journey had been long and at times laden with plumes of dust moved by the cut of her hooves and the corners of her gentle creamy eyes had crusted enough to form a feast of sorts, for the myriad blow-flies now in attendance. She rubbed each length of her long lean face against the ball of an outstretched knee, clearing the litter and stimulating the follicles to shudder with delight.

He nodded in time, and rolling her crest back into the evening air, the Oracle snuffled quietly. "It isn’t far." She sighed calmly, turning as the trail of his voice was swept from her reach by a sudden gush of moist wind and she might have gestured towards the distant glow of the holy flame but the bank which they stood upon formed a basin, dipped low through the centre of the land. "I will tell you a bit about Dragon’s Throat while we go if you fancy?” Her tail licked loosely about her wiry hocks as she clambered up a new part of the clay-bank, guiding him then along a more easterly route than before they had taken. The fire of the Diviner lay out some distance between the rocky cliffs of the peninsula holding the desert high above rolling, angry tides, and the lush growth of flora inhabiting the oasis- it was not an obvious point of interest where sun and light bathed the land through the day; but come night fall, its steady warm blush was a curious invitation.

She spoke as they passed beyond the rich life harboured by the lake, of the landscape around them (shroud in ever-growing darkness), of Midas and Gaucho the Sultans and of the Sun God who she loved so, and who watched always over his land which they lived upon. Curiously, she turned an eye as they strolled to glance across at Wind. "Which Lord do you follow Wind?” Africa had become so accustomed to life in Helovia that she failed to realise his previous residence may not have shared these same grand deities.

The fire now acted as a rather beautiful beacon in the not too far away distance, and Africa was more than pleased to return. Shamefully on this occasion, she had failed to bring home an offering to lay within its dancing breadth, but she pledged with due confidence that perhaps she would wander the plateau beyond and scout for treasures in as the early hours of the next dawn began to descend. They covered the last of the ground quickly, and the Oracle greeted with an affectionate murmur her Bonded who was perched and waiting for them in the boughs of the old skeleton tree nearby. Silas had wedged the cactus in a lower fork for safe keeping, and was nestled comfortably into his plump coat of star-strewn feathers- not sleeping, for he was a creature of the night, like she also had become.

Africa