The desert didn't care about time.
Not the way cities did. Not with clocks and calendars and panic over seconds slipping through fingers like sand.
Out here, in the red heart of Australia, time was a river that looped, pooled, and sometimes ran backward—just to remind you it could.
And tonight, it was singing.
Elder Marra stood barefoot on cracked earth, her white hair tied back with sinew, eyes closed against the wind. Around her, seven others knelt in a circle, palms pressed to the ground. Their lips moved, but no sound came out—not for human ears.
Beneath them, the land hummed.
Not vibration. Not noise.
A presence.
"You feel it?" asked Kiri, her granddaughter, voice low. She clutched a carved boomerang—not for throwing, but for grounding.
Marra opened her eyes. They were dark, deep, but flecked with something silver. "They're screaming," she said. "All of them. Across oceans. Across years."
Kiri swallowed. "The children?"
