This is very well written, I thoroughly enjoyed it! I particularly like the way you personified the desert in the following paragraph: "There comes a point after enduring too much of nature’s suffering that one begins to personify it. They
curse and argue with it as if expecting nature to argue back. Salas was at that point. He cursed the
desert, and he held furious one-sided debates with the sands in which he thought he made some
damned good points. He only stopped in his tirades when he found his muzzle buried into the sand itself,
as if the desert had clasped a hand around it to shut him up. He had fallen, and he hadn’t even noticed."

Very well done!

Haha, I thought you'd like that part. I had fun writing the beginning of the story in particular.

Strange, the beginnings are my most hated part to write. Anyway, I'd be curious to hear more about this world.

Oh, Skyewriter, I was touched by how unabashedly sentimental you let this piece be! Frankly, I've been hovering around the Thursday Prompt community for several months now but this is the first piece that's really made my heart feel warm. I think you did a good job portraying Salas' cynicism--it's really quite playful, especially i. And your exploration of imagery and emotion is quite easy to read, which is something from which I can learn. Like,

"The fruits were smooth on one side, and spiky on the other, with
a stalk protruding from the spiky half large enough to hold onto, as if the fruit had been served on a stick."

How lucid!
I'm curious about this world! The desert—it sounds like some sort of environmental catastrophe. Deforestation? Or are you referring to geologic time? And Salas—I get that he is both loyal in principle and defiant in feeling—but I can't quite tell why, though I do really like how you explore that dilemma. Deciding based on some arbitrary happenstance seems very human, err, very coyote.

Anyhow, thank you for sharing this!

I'm really glad you liked it, and that those feelings I was trying to portray got through. It means a lot to hear that.

As for the more vague aspects of the story, I suppose those can be up to interpretation.

I've read that it is the hallmark of poetry to invite the reader into the arena of interpretation.

I'm going to try to be more active in the prompt world as well. So, see you around, perhaps!

this is/was such a wonderful read... I truly enjoyed it...

Welcome to the prompt!

Vix

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

That was genuinely beautiful and extremely well written! Is this part of a larger story-universe or a one-off?

There is one very minor thing and only because I was expecting Shimmer to take female form - "Salas took one look at him" - yet they are subsequently described with non-gender specific pronouns?

Aw darn. I'm used to writing gay relationships, so I accidentally write "him" a lot. I thought I'd scoured this story and gotten every mistake corrected, but I guess I missed one. Sorry about that, and thank's for pointing it out.

It's not part of a larger story/universe. I have trouble writing short stories because the scope of them gets too out of hand if I let it. Zweihander, which I recently updated, grew from what was originally supposed to be an ~8,000 word story to a novella very quickly as I tried to hold back that tide. I create worlds by accident far too often, so this was sort of a practice in self-restraint.

Ah I see, and don't worry I don't think I've uploaded a story yet without at least one typo ;)

And well the Prompt is good practice for short-story writing, I hope you do more!

Not much to say that hasn't been said already; it's a good take on a story that's been around for a while (undines, naiads, and such). I honestly wasn't expecting that species but it makes perfect sense.

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it and got a surprise out of it.