Burnt Earth
Chapter 1: Vultures
The heat seems to have a churning noise of its own outside of Cobar's partially buried hovel. Air heavy with sediment from the expanse of desert lazily pushes across the wastes, filling his throat with scratchy granules as he inhales. Lifting a scaly, clawed hand over his slit eyes he patiently surveys the sand-choked horizon. It doesn't take long for him to spot the unmistakable shape of wings smoothly gliding in circles far south of the shelter. Limply, Cobar allows the hand fall back to his bare thigh.
The reptile's mind is full of thoughts, albeit being unable to articulate words describing them. He has not known the company of another sentient since he was a hatchling, and does not know how to communicate in any spoken language. As a result, his mind is one that speaks in images, sounds and smells married to meanings rather than a flurry of voices. At the moment, Cobar is putting together the image of black vulture wings casting shadows on dry cracked mud and the smell of carrion baking in the unyielding sun. Indeed, this is a day worth leaving the shade of his home, he expresses to himself wordlessly. With a raspy grunt, his nostrils and throat are cleared of sand before crouching into the hole that serves as the entrance to his shelter.
It doesn't take Cobar long to reemerge, as he has very few physical possessions to retrieve. Slung over his shoulder and hanging by his waist is a crude satchel fashioned from animal skins. A hood lays draped down the length of his head and snout, also crafted from the hides of desert creatures. He runs his forked tongue along the backsides of his sharpened teeth. Gazing into the southern sky to confirm the location of the circling carrion fowl, Cobar pushes off in their direction.
His stride is not forced despite being against the direction of the blowing sands. A slightly elongated neck causes Cobar's head to gently bob with each step as he cuts through the mild sand storm. The scales protecting his body are dull green with sections of tan stripes along his back. These tough plates don't receive burns from the sun easily, but his head however is long and susceptible to overheating. The simple cut of animal skin he drapes over his skull serves to keep the top of his snout and scalp from becoming too warm. All he needs to worry about is whether or not the vultures will remain aloft as a beacon for him to follow much longer.
Muscular double jointed legs make Cobar a superb runner and jumper if the need arises, but he rarely ever meets a situation dire enough to make him spend so much of his precious water and energy. His legs come to an end with long, three-toed feet; each toe equipped with a black talon similar to those on his fingers.
As he bends his ankle at the end of each step, he sinks the claw on his big toe deep into the sand. All too often the desert yields small gifts in the form of scorpions and lizards buried just below the surface, excellent bite-sized snacks. If the sands are exceptionably generous, one can chance upon a covered bloat frog burrow. When the rains come, bloat frogs emerge from the ground to feed and spawn in the thousands. Once the storms pass, each frog burrows into the ground and creates a sort of water-tight cocoon with the mucus in its skin mixed with the sand in which to hibernate. When next the rains come, the cocoon dissolves and the frogs repeat the cycle. Cobar knows finding one of these melon-sized cement spheres means he can either break it open for an edible water balloon or save it for later use within its shell. Few surprises in his life leave him as pleased as finding one of these frogs nestled in the sand, so not a single step passes him by unchecked.
Gusts of warm air slam countless grains of sand against his scale-plated chest as he checks the buzzards' position. To his surprise, he can already hear their caws and screeches over the wispy howl of the sand clouds. This means that the birds themselves are drawing closer to him. Whatever they have their eyes on is still alive and moving in his direction. Cobar becomes very concerned. He counts eight separate birds indicating their quarry is sizable and has been suffering long enough to attract many of the feathered scavengers.
Cobar pauses for a moment considering the possibilities. If he's lucky it's just a camel, but it could be something nastier like a sand thresher. He kneels down in the sand and lowers his head. The spindles in the leathery frills behind his ear sockets grow rigid with anxiety, causing them to fan out away from his neck in a display of vivid crimson. With concentration, he manages to subdue the instinctive hissing noise his contracting throat produces when he becomes frightened. All the same though, he pulls his satchel in front of himself and riffles through it nervously.
Within seconds he produces a crude instrument out of the leather sack. The tool is of the same material that forms his hovel to the north. He isn't its crafter. Rather, he found it years ago near a skeleton in the desert. It seems alien to him, like it doesn't belong among the desert's rocks, sands, brush, or bones. It's a foreigner to these lands; tough as stone, yet at the same time bendable under force like thick branches. When struck sharply it rings for several seconds, and if left in the open sun it becomes painfully hot to the touch. One end of its length is blunt enough for him to hold comfortably while the other is serrated and fine edged. He uses this tool to free the dying creatures the buzzards would find from their misery. A clean motion across the neck brings death the quickest and easiest.
Using the howling wind to muffle the sounds of his shifting legs, Cobar sprawls over the ground on all fours. His double jointed legs let him do this comfortably, enabling him to creep up on a target very low to the ground. From snout to tail, not a single part of him rises off the ground more than his skull's length. He slowly crawls over the sand towards the vultures' trophy, holding his tool in his mouth. The sand continuously hits his face as gusts throw large clouds of it into the air, but he does not let it faze him. His eyes remains fixated ahead of him, hardly blinking even in the buffeting gales. His movement slows to a complete stop and he waits for the animal to stumble unwittingly into his ambush, muscles tensing unbearably in anticipation.
A faint cry some ten or fifteen steps ahead in the airborne sand almost sends Cobar into the air with a startled hiss. It is a noise he never heard any creature make, but he can plainly hear the anguish in it. Within seconds, the soaring collection of black wings cackle and caw as they swoop out of the blue sky and into the golden brown mist just ahead of Cobar. If it is safe for the vultures it is also safe for him, the reptilian man reasons to himself. With caution, he picks himself up off the ground and moves in to assess the value of the meat.
It may not be dead, but it is completely covered in a frenzy of shifting black feathers. A few quick steps forward and some guttural barking scares away the majority of the feeders for Cobar to get a clear look at the prize. Not a second passes before he reacts to her, leaping backward with frills wide open and hissing hysterically. Before now, Cobar has never encountered a live human.