Elira was a bone-walker. She wore a wide hat of woven reed and a cloak stitched from the dried hide of a lesser lizard. Her trade was memory. When a beast died—a sand-worm, a sun-whale, a leviathan of the old world—its bones held a final echo of what it had been. Elira knew how to listen.
The tremors stopped. One by one, the other skeletons went still. The sun steadied. The flicker passed. The beasts remained bones. beasts in the sun skeletons
"I hear a promise," Elira said. "And a hunger." Elira was a bone-walker
She pressed her ear to the bone. And heard a heart. " Elira whispered to the beast
"Tomorrow," Elira whispered to the beast, "the sun flickers. And you'll rise. You'll shake off your dust. And you'll remember you're a mouth."