The pickings had been good that first night—a kangaroo rat and a scorpion—and her fur coat had kept her warm. However, with the rise of the sun she had been unable to find sufficient food, and the subsequent night was much harsher than the first. She had attempted to find her way back to the scrublands where she had started, but wind had shaped the dunes in new ways, erasing the landscape she had grown very faintly familiar with and replacing it with a terrifyingly different one.
And then Selene made the most fatal mistake of traveling at noon, with the sun at its highest, the sand at its hottest, and the shade at its smallest.
The dehydration had been an irritating dryness in her throat before it became weak enough to suck every last ounce of energy from her. Her metabolism had been eaten away by the prior night, as she struggled to keep warm, leaving her starving. No animal was stupid enough to be out at the peak of the desert heat, besides her, and so the underweight predator was left with nothing to sustain her.
Selene had lain stretched out on the burning sand, swallowing her spit, her grey fur turned brown from the dust and dirt. She had prayed for a vulture to try and pick her off; she would conserve her strength by lying in the shade of the cactus she'd found, and then grab the beast by its neck. However, the circling birds made themselves scarce, and she was left alone.
Crying would waste too much water. She played with the idea of shifting shape and stripping, but she hadn't the energy, and that would only burn her skin and allow her to sweat more profusely, ridding her of even more much needed moisture.
The kitsune had been in similarly bad situations, many of them involving hungry jaws larger than hers, but she had always been one damn lucky fox. Now, she didn't know what she could do. "Never say die" was the only rule that she could live by now that she was without any other hope.
"Come on, fucking buzzard... Come back so I can rip out your liver..."
And then the wind started to blow.
She closed her eyes and sighed at the faint coolness of the breeze before realization sank in when the gusts became more violent and contained more and more dirt and sand. She kept her eyes squeezed shut and tucked her tail over her face. A sandstorm was the last thing she needed. It took all of her strength to rock herself to her pale silver paws and open her eyes. Sand scratched at her face, irritating her nose and muzzle and mouth when she let it gape to pant for air.
Selene started moving. Any direction was better than succumbing to the sands. However, it wasn't long before, through the flying grains, she could see a bulky shadow. There was no hesitation in her mind; this was shelter. Regardless of myths—which she had never heard—she knew it was her only chance for survival. She picked up her pace, stumbling over the shifting ground, mostly blind, coughing lightly as her lungs spasmed against the sand trying to get into them.
She dragged herself up a rock, running on simply adrenaline now, and then collapsed once she had hit the stone ground. She curled up in the mouth of the cave, breathing heavily and coughing and staring out at the winds and flying debris. Eventually, she scooted further back, dragging her feet and falling once again onto her side once she hit a cave wall.
No more than ten minutes passed before she picked up the sound of hooves striking the cave floor. She opened her eyes, her dilated pupils making out a large shape as it heaved itself into the shelter. Nothing but feral terror entered her mind.
And in back of the small cave, there was her sudden snarl.
