The road is empty. The last veil of twilight sinks past the horizon and, with it, the last touch of day. Night opens its welcoming arms, and silence awaits in the darkness. A pair of headlights loom on the horizon, like the unblinking stare of a ravening dragon. They advance upon the landscape, swallowing the smooth asphalt in steady gulps of motion and speed. Stirred by the vehicle's passing, a dervish of dust sifts upon the desert breeze, a billowing cloud in the wake of the steel beast. A lizard ambles onto the asphalt, lulled by the trapped sunlight that warms its smooth surface. The headlights catch the glittering scales of its skin, and the reptile freezes, blinking up at its doom as the roaring menace is upon it. The driver is skilled. Seeing the lizard, she swerves, and the metal dragon flies smoothly past its organic cousin, the dust-wake dimming its rainbow scales with a coat of sand. The lizard turns its head and puzzles, watching as the dark shape speeds toward the hazy mountains, disappearing into the distance. A moon-pale moth flutters, eyespots blinking in the dim night. It dances in the air currents stirred by the swift passage of the iron dragon, dipping, swaying and diving. Silence rules the roadway again. The unwary moth flits too close to the lizard, its shadow and the whisper of its wings alerting the hungry reptile to its presence. Golden eyes narrow, unfazed by glaring eyespots painted on wind-kissed wings.

The lizard strikes swiftly. Silken wings crumble between snapping jaws.

In the distance, around the mountain, lights play lazily in the still night, blinking like lanterns, winking like eyes.