Ahead all the plant life dwindles until even these last remenants of dessicated vegetation must give up to the sands of the desert. The sun haze over the sand ripples and shimmers like painted silk and a gust of hot air rolls in off the unwelcoming expanse, carrying the scent of dust.
Caught up in your meditations you have been standing completely still, only the soft whisper of a breeze over the blades of grass to serenade you. There is a unexpected rustle near you... then another further around...
Something is in the grass near you and appears to be getting closer, you begin to worry about snakes. When you hear a third, seperate disturbance of the grass behind... From the sound of it you are being surrounded...All your fears are dispelled when a small white creature scurries up a thick grass stem and peers at you, chirruping an inquiry. As swiftly as it came into sight a second appears,
it's dark coat like a shadow against the dull yellow and dun blades of grass until you realise it , is striped with white like a strange chipmunk of some kind.
It watches you with thoughtful eyes, toying with a piece of dry grass it clasps between it's paws.
A cool, frost laden gust of air swirls past you, cooling you for a fraction before the sun's cruel glare burns it away. Watching you from behind is yet another of the small beasts, this one brown and blue marked. The grass around her shimmering with hoar frost despite the heat of the day.
A last rustle resolves itself as a night black Taekanin, it is much like the others until her twitches her back and multihued wings are revealed, butterfly like and glistering. With a bound and a backwing, she is aloft, circling once before landing on the branch of a long dead and fire blackened tree near you. Unlike the others it hums softly, perhaps from it's wings. There is a tiny crinkling noise and the black charred end of the tree branch flakes away, new leaf shoots extending towards the sky. The dark Taerkanin continues to concentrate on it but the sun and wind swiftly wilt the small shoot.It looks disappointed and trills a mournful note to the others who reply in kind, except for the orange tail tipped male who is concentrating on setting fire to a stalk of grass.
Alarmed you stamp it out just as the white tail tipped one sets a cold-wet frost over it: putting out the fire and drenching your foot.
It seems that this is not an irregular occurance as no one is put out by any of it.
With a frightened squeak all four Taerkanin dissappear back into the long grass, a sphere of no-light at knee height in a radius of two meters blotting out their escape.
Moments later the shadow of a large hawk floats across the ground, circling lazily on the thermals.
Alone once more you may as well move on, the Dragon Spine Ridge contines roughly North - South, towards the far North the grass lands gradually rise into scrubby bush, South is the ocean or venturing out into the true desert.