They wondered why they never got mail anymore. Dust devils dancing just beyond the miasma of smoke- a creak of old wood, howling in a broken wind. What happened to those parched words? Those words pressed in ink, cursive, and the secret language of longing.

Coyote wanders the dry creek bed,
his paws heavy with dust,
the kind that clings to you,
weighs down your steps like the years.
He used to run fast,
chase the wind and outrun the sky,
but now even the wind’s forgotten his name.
The ground doesn’t laugh beneath him anymore,
it just sighs,
and the stars?
They’ve turned their backs.

Absence.

Whites of eyes strained in the sun, they sat rubbing the crust from hard pupils.

“I have never seen the other side of the sun, have you?” Kindred asks, biting their parched lips.

“Once, when I was interdimensional, I swooped in for a gander. It is unlike anything you have ever seen.” Cameron proclaims.

“How so?” Kindred replies.

“Would you like to see?”

With that Cameron pulls out his satchel that holds the keys to the skies and raises it up to Kindred’s face. They focus their eyes like an Eagle, pin point meaning and softly reply.

“Sure, I would be interested in seeing the dying sun.” They say.

In a sacrament of smoke, they traced the sky open, pulling stars into mass, and with a slip of the wrist, blast into infinity. The voyage opened to the constellations drawing tracers against warm faces. Higher and higher they flew- souls adrift the apex, thrown through universes. Taking the long way home, until the faint glow of the sun exploded into fire, and then darkness.

“Oh, it’s a feeling, isn’t it?” Kindred asks. “The black hole sun, it is a feeling”

The November wind, sharp as a bone from an old song, sweeps across the mesa. The land holds the memory of every step, every word, every breath. Here, everything that was still lingers, woven into the pulse of the earth, into the howl that rises over the New Mexican horizon. In the distance, the radio tower blinks its red light like a forgotten heartbeat, its rhythm steady but fading, as if the stories it carries are slipping into the past.
Billy George, an elderly shepherd who has lived alone on the Mesa since his wife died a few years back, moves through this land, tired, but not broken. His feet know the way, and his voice, a soft thread in the Dine language of his ancestors, wraps around the sheep as he guides them to their nightly coral.

“Yá’át’ééh, ch’íí’ yáhoot’ééł.”
(“Hurry up, it is getting dark”)

He is alone, but loneliness has no place here—not where the wind speaks and the land listens. The spirits of the old ones walk with him, their presence felt in every stone, every gust that rattles his small shack. A collection of wood, tin, and memories all tied to a humble anchor called home. As he steps onto his porch, he whispers.

“Ha’íísh’íí’ éí naashá?”
(“What is that feeling in the air?”)

Inside, the fire flickers to life, its flame a phoenix in the dimly lit room. The shepherd strips away the layers of the day—dust, sweat, the weight of time—as the warmth begins to fill the small space. He moves with the ease of one who has known this ritual for many lifetimes, preparing his simple meal, the kerosene lantern casting soft shadows against the walls. The old AM crank radio hums from the corner, static blending with the crackling fire, both familiar as an old song sung in an old tongue.

“T’áá shí éí, nihíji’ígíí yéego.”
(“Creator, protect us.”)

Tonight is different. The air is thick with the weight of something sinister, something stirring, just beyond the edges of the mesa. It is election night, and though the shepherd is far from the cities, far from the noise of machines and men, he can feel the unease. The wind carries whispers of unrest, and the radio speaks of a country on the brink of war. He can feel it too, in the way the fire burns a little too bright, in the anxious pulse of the flames.

“‘What a historic night here in this great, if not broken, America.” the radio announcer crackles. “A night that bears the fate of a nation, on the participation of its citizens. And tonight it looks as though the USA has come out unanimously, to say, “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, We are tired of being divided.”

The sudden sound of bombs cuts the radio to static. It is the sky itself cracking open, splitting the silence. The shepherd jerks, startled, and the knife slips, blood pooling on the dirt floor. It is red like the setting sun, red like the blinking light on the radio tower, distant but steady. For a moment, he watches it drip, feeling the pulse of the earth in the cut, in the red glow outside, in his hurried heartbeat.
With quick hands, he pulls the curtains closed, shutting out the world beyond. He binds the wound with an old cloth, whispering a prayer as he ties the knot.

“T’áá shí éí, nihíji’ígíí yéego.”
(“Creator, protect us.”)

The radio, once a companion, now fills the small space with fear, and the shepherd, shaking off the unease, turns the dial until the familiar voice of Patsy Cline rises through the static.

*“I fall to pieces…”