Mary looked at him with wide eyes, "So we have to have as many people vouching for us as She has members of her inner circle? How are we supposed to know that?"

"One of you is a Scout, aren't you?" Dakarai shot back, "Don't you Scouts have the gift of sight? You could see for yourselves and give us a goal to work towards."

Mary shot him a sideways glance, "Look, I don't appreciate being talked down to like that. I am a Scout but our abilities don't work that way."

"Then you've forgotten how to do it, and that's not my problem," Dakarai said as he laid back down on the warm sand.

"What do you mean, we forgot how to do it?" Mary asked.

Dakarai opened a single eye and looked at the young woman. "I mean you've forgotten how to do it. There have been stories passed down from my people that spoke of the mighty werewolves, Shape shifters that were so perfectly in harmony with both their bestial and human nature that they could take the strengths of both their wolf and human halves to become what you are when you shift. I didn't believe that either, looks like I am going to have to pay up on that bet to Makalo." He smiled at the memory.

"What does that have to do with Mary," Acharya commented.

"The stories also told of your abilities, how your abilities were tied to the moon. How your Scout ability of sight was similar to our own. I just used my magic to find my friend. I'm sure a young werewolf could peek in on the Matriarch and see how many of her inner circle she keeps."

Mary sat there staring at the small bowl in the sand that held water a few minutes ago. Was it possible? Did she have abilities that she didn't even know about? She guessed anything was possible. She was also kinda pissed off, being told what she did and didn't know and what she was capable of. She looked and focused on the dry bowl in the desert. She tried to reach out with herself. She felt her eyes close as she focused…

"Okay! I got the water, let's get going," Tara said a little too happily.

Mary's eyes snapped open as she glared at the Native woman. Her lip twisted into a rueful expression as she heaved a sigh and stood up. Acharya helped the old man to his feet and Aiman fluidly rose from his place in the sand. Asclepius stood up and shook his body, sending grains of sand all over the place. The pack wiped the sand from their faces and bodies as best they could before Tara handed out the three canteens, two of which belonged to Dakarai. Once they settled their gear around their person they headed out, letting Dakarai lead the way.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

They found themselves walking down a road. There wasn't much traffic but there was some. With the sun setting to their right, they walked on that side of the road. As the night deepened, they saw one last set of headlights overtake them on its way south. The bus was a rickety, over packed, over stuffed buss with many people standing up, that they could see from the road. The bus passed them kicking up sand and dust as they covered their mouth to reduce breathing in the stuff.

Dakarai couldn't tell them exactly how far they had to go. So, they decided to make camp for the night. They didn't really want to go hunting but Aiman, Acharya, and Asclepius went off into the bush looking for something to eat.

Meanwhile Tara, Mary, and Malikah got wood to build a fire. Dakarai took the wood and his knife and shaved a good pile of tender from the branches, then he made kindling, then small sticks as the women gathered a good portion of wood for the fire. They were next to a road and they weren't too terribly worried about armies or militia coming out of nowhere. They pushed themselves back from the road though and hid among the shrub bushes.

Dakarai began heating the tender using the bow technique. This was just a piece of wood and string attached to both ends, made to look like a bow. The string was then wrapped around a vertical piece of wood set into a small hole made into a big log. Tender was then placed around the vertical stick and the sawing motion of the bow spun the vertical piece of wood, heating the tender till there was a spark. With expert care, Dakarai slowly built up the flame till the fire was happily crackling and burning, filing the night with warmth and light.

Mary found herself gazing into the flames as they danced. The old man may be right. If Scouts had lost and recently regained the ability to see and track other Shape shifters, then maybe they had forgotten other skills as well. It was possible.

"Dakarai, if what you said was true back there, that we Scouts have forgotten how to 'see,' may you can help me to regain that skill." She looked calmly at the old man, "May you teach me, please?"

Dakarai looked at her over the flames, "I don't know your kind well enough. I can try to explain how our magic works. It may help, it may not. Are you willing to try?"

Mary nodded, "Yes."

Dakarai motioned her over to his side. She sat across from him as he dug out a bowl in the earth as he had done before. "The bowl is to ensure we are connected to the earth; it doesn't work if the water is in a normal bowl."

"Would a lake work?" Mary asked.

Dakarai bobbed his head from side to side, "Maybe, it might be hard to get the surface of the lake to calm itself. I have never tried it, doesn't mean that it wouldn't. But that is unimportant." He drew Mary's attention back down to the shallow dug hole. "Then you pour the water in and you add something of yourself, spit, or blood, whatever you want. Swirl it together and then focus on the connection between the earth and yourself and the water that holds it all together."

"Hmm," Mary studied the hole in the earth. "My Scout abilities have never been tied to earth and self in such a way. I've never been taught to need any outside apparatus before." She looked inside herself and went over the techniques that she had learned from Haun Li in the tower of the City Under the Mountain. There was something there, off in the distance, something very vague, but nothing that she could really put her finger on. And just as the image was starting to sharpen in her mind, it was gone.

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