The blue and black sands wove a world apart around the figure which crossed it, a habit of silent watching with luminous eyes and feet made both small and wide. Her steps hadn't the same delicate tread of the mouse, nor the softened slide of the viper. Instead, they broadcast to all her intentions, if not her reasons and each creature bound to the earth both hidden and crouched in the darkness made note of her in their quiet world. 

Across the sands, a jackal yipped and its kits joined in. In solidarity, they heralded her coming and then, like the rest, fell to soundlessness. First the jackal and then its kits, ears pricked wide and narrow noses to the sands, trotted about one dune and up another, keeping care of where the woman was. 

The bitch was darker than her kits and they were old enough to fend for themselves yet they clung to her and the last of her milk-drained teats to swallow up the last moments of community. They would make their own dens, have their own litters or sire litters, and at times, would keep in pairs, but never again would there be the panting jumble of legs where food was if not plentiful, dependable. She, however, had meant to move on, as her natural imperative, her drive to feed her own belly, had become more and more solid a need. This subtle difference from the usual, this solitary footstep on her sands was enough to make her break from them and they, as if sensing it, did their best to keep up with her in a bid to not lose her just yet. 

Despite their need, youth did eventually win out and they were diverted by mere lack of will. Two at first paused at a bit of half lost scrub breaking from some windswept rocks and the last, a hundred yards beyond, sat on her haunches and made a yawning cry which her mother ignored. 

The sun began to wash the darkness with violet dawn, still very much behind the shadow of the earth, and the blanket of night fled, yet the jackal kept up with the steady tred of the old woman. She, because the woman had made no attempt to deviate, had trotted ahead and sat atop the next dune, staring at the woman. With a shake, she laid on her belly and canted her head to the side in a curious pose. What was she to do with something so large, so solitary, which did not need to be harried or nibbled on? Still, it was a change and she was but a pup herself, her first litter abandoned like she had been abandoned by her mother, and such oddities like this woman were still of interest to her keen intellect.