The desert. Waves and rolling waves of yellowish sand, blue under the night sky, flow back from the shadowed gullies and canyons that cut through the low bulwarks of mountain stubs at the desert's rim.

The sky. Its black shield is bisected by the ribbons of the Milky Way, the Nile of the heavens meandering between the banks of the old gods, their insignia brilliant beacons of white light against the utter darkness. Orion is rising over the ridgeline to the east, stretching his limbs from sleep, following his glittering small herald up into the sky. A half moon rests on the opposite horizon.

Wild snarls, barks, and gutteral noises echo and re-echo from a nondescript gully in the midst of this vast landscape. A tiny black figure suddenly rolls out of its shadows into a patch of moonlight, struggling against several even smaller assailants.

Sepdet wrestles against five barely-grown jackals, fox-sized handfuls of fur and teeth and ears and long tails that bite and tug and grapple her wiry limbs. Most of them are dusky coyote-colors bleached to gray and silver by the moon; two are black, bearing the classic Strider coloring. It's hard to tell where the black-furred glabro Strider ends and her fourlegged cousins begin, as she rolls and bites with them, grabbing them with her hands and toes equally and taunting them with playful yips and growls. The whole writhing mass of tumbling black and silver shapes looks like part of a strange, wild dance.

Sepdet finally breaks loose from most of them and rolls up to all fours, balancing on hands and toes and laughing at them with her tongue hanging out. She scrabbles up the ridge in a blink, then bounces up to two legs and breaks into an effortless run across the crumbling edge. Her den-mates bound up to join her with tails whipping wildly. They stream around her bare legs, leaping up to lick her face and shoulders. The impromptu revel is cut short with a sudden, deep bark.

A lone jackal stands at the bottom of the gully, looking up at them impassively. The pups instantly change course and boil back down the bank towards the black shape, fawning the ground. In the dream, the jackal-bitch's meaning is as clear as human speech. Little Star. Come down. Come back to the den. The moon is setting; the enemy will be prowling soon.

Sepdet drops down on her belly against the crumbling sandstone, with her forearms dangling over the lip of the gully, and cocks her head to one side with a soft whine. Just a little longer, Mother? Let me say goodnight to Sister.

The older jackal's sides pulse in a faint sigh. All right, cub. Do not be too long. Then she turns and disappears back into the shadows hidden below, and the five pups accompany her in a dancing throng, still finishing their game of tag as they vanish into the darkness.

Sepdet turns back to the east and sits up in a familiar crouch, a black silhouette against the moon at her back. She cups her hands to her lips and belts out a long shimmering high howl that sends ripples across the canyons, a primal joyful greeting to the star that she loves so much. Then she lowers her hands to the earth and falls silent, simply tasting, feeling, watching the emptiness with glittering eyes and flared nostrils.

Suddenly she is no longer alone. Long-eared crinos and lupus silhouettes rise up like a wall on the lowest ridgeline above the gully, surrounding her, faintly glowing pale eyes cooler than the desert night.

Sepdet's body quivers and goes still. There is no point in shifting.

The voice does not seem to come from any one of them, but rather through the dry cold sand under her feet and fingertips.

~Behold the Lie of the Speaker of Truth.~