The Old Blog in the Desert

The winter came without asking and stayed without apology. Snow fell where rain once did, and the desert, old, patient, and usually loud with wind, went quiet, as if holding its breath.

In that hush, a coyote stepped from his den and into the white. The cold bit first at the paws, then the bones.

It paused, nose lifted, reading the world the way only hunger can teach. The air carried fewer stories now.

Mice tunneled deeper. Rabbits learned the trick of stillness.

Even the stars seemed farther away, dimmed by a sky that no longer trusted itself. But an animal’s gotta eat.

The woods had crept outward over the years, skeletal trees marching into ground that once baked under the sun. Their branches glazed with ice, each limb a frozen question mark.

The coyote slipped between them, moving like a thought that hadn’t quite decided to be dangerous yet. Things watched him; he felt it.

Some presences were old, older than tracks, older than names, settled deep into the land like bones beneath skin. Others were newer, sharp-edged and restless, humming faintly even under snow.

He did not know them, but he knew enough not to linger.

The brambles were the worst of it. They had grown mean with the cold, twisting over themselves, knitting tighter each night.

Thorns snagged fur and tore loose bits of him he could not afford to lose. Still, beyond them lay the scent of warmth and the promise of a meal.

He pushed through.

Blood spotted the snow behind him, bright as memory. Ahead, something small scurried, careless or desperate.

The coyote surged forward, hunger burning brighter than fear. The world was ending, perhaps, or becoming something else entirely.

Either way, the snow still fell, the woods still waited, and the coyote still ran, because endings do not cancel hunger. They sharpen it.