Bleak winds scour empty wastes where dust devils spin insanely along bone-dry creek beds. Above in featureless skies a blind sun hides behind a cataract of thin, high cloud.
On the flanks of a long-dead volcano a flock of small, red finches takes to the air like a noxious gas. Small hardy flowers have found a home here, attracting iridescent insects that flit like ancient sparks.
And in a shadowed cleft of rock, hidden from those who would hunt, a mother guards her mewling cub. Dark stripes mark tan, lithe flanks as ever-alert eyes glitter, hard as the blackest of lava.
Were she capable of mockery, she might howl in triumph at those who believe her extinct. Yet for the present she awaits Mankindβs destruction, knowing then that the thylacine will reclaim their ancestral lands.