Onyx lowered her nose to the ground, squinting at the imprints in the sand. Supposedly they were the tracks of some animal that had recently passed through here. But the imprints were so shallow and ill-defined that Onyx had no guess what that some animal could have been. It may as well have been a particularly heavy bug.

A part of her couldn't help but feel like this was shaping up to be a fool's errand. She and Diorite had marched all over the desert in search of prey, and so far no dice. Near microscopic imprints aside, this patch of Issiq looked the same as all the others. Golden swathes of sand stretched out to the horizon in every direction, only occasionally broken up by sloping dunes. This far away they could hardly see their home canyon anymore.

Diorite nosed her aside before sticking his dumb face right where hers had been before. The whelp's brows knit together and Onyx stifled the urge to snicker. "Don't take it personally if you can't identify them, kid. The prints are so faint it's impossible to say what-"

"Jaebo. At least eight of them, probably closer to ten," Diorite reported. He glanced over to flash a far too smug look. "It's quite simple, really."

"What?" Onyx shoved him aside to stare down at the tracks. Nope, the shapes were as nebulous and unidentifiable as ever. She wouldn't be surprised if Diorite had truly pulled a random species out of his rear. "What makes you think these things are Jaebo tracks?"

Not that she knew what Jarbo tracks looked like. But if she had to guess she would figure that they wouldn't look so… vague. Anything small enough probably could have made those.

Twin elbows against her ribs made Onyx siddle away. Diorite was quick to take her place again, looking down at the faint indents. "I'm certain of it. Look how narrow they are, but still have defined front, back, and middle ends. Like this one here, you can clearly see three toes while this one -the back legs- have only two."

Frankly, Onyx didn't see what he was talking about. The shallow imprints all looked more or less the same to her. But sure, toe divots, let's go with that.

Diorite sniffed at the tracks once again before quietly following them along. All the while the whelp kept his face close to the sand like a terranean bloodhound.

Onyx rolled her eyes but followed after the spotted whelp. If he was wrong she wouldn't hesitate to give him a hard time for it. And on the off chance he was right… well, she won't mention that she originally thought he was wrong.

The trail led them up a gently sloping hill and the odd duo fought to keep their footing against the constantly shifting sand. Onyx figured that a lighter creature like a Jaebo wouldn't have the same issue of sinking so deep into the sand.

The fact that Diorite was trekking along just fine was annoying enough as is.

Motion caught her eye and Onyx instinctively dropped to her belly. When Diorite failed to do the same she dragged him down beside her. The whelp opened his mouth to complain only for her to slam a paw over it.

"Shh, look," Onyx hissed, pointing with a free hand.

Just a few strides ahead of them the almost endless sand yielded to a large patch of cracked earth. There a gentle hole had been carved by endless winds just deep enough to let scarce rainwater collect.

And dotted all along the water's edges were a collection of lumpy brown shapes. Yet as they watched the shapes moved, heads picking up and ears flicking around in search of danger. Fortunately, the two tsabhua crouching just behind the farthest dune went undetected.

Well who would have guessed, Diorite was right. But Onyx couldn't bring herself to be annoyed at that. This watering hole would be a great source of water for any colonist who wandered out for a drink. But so would the local wildlife too, a free source of easy to find meat.

"Send a message to Sam," Onyx instructed. "We've found the herds."