“Still asleep?” her voice was muffled but soft.

“Yeah,” Bette murmured dropping her towel on the floor before slipping under the covers, “Just like we should be.”

Tina’s body met her wife’s as soon as Bette hit the sheets snuggling in close before pressing a kiss against a damp shoulder.

“You’re wet,” Tina whined before drifting back to sleep.

Bette closed her eyes, but sleep did not come as easily to her. Flashes of the day’s sights began surfacing again, in a seemingly unending loop. However long was left of this night would possibly not bring any needed or well-deserved rest.

Her mind drifted to Nyah when she wondered whether sleep was also eluding the poacher hunter.

***

A few miles from the foundation’s lodge, a Maasai chief stood alone in the stillness of the night; his tall frame silhouetted against the embers of a dying fire. The ochre paint on his skin caught the flickering light, a stark contrast to the deep, endless black of the savannah beyond. A rich crimson covering, meticulously draped over his shoulders, gently shifted in the cool night breeze.

His spear, long and well-worn, was planted firmly in the ground beside him. His posture was rigid, still, but his fingers flexed occasionally—a small betrayal of the tension simmering beneath his composed exterior. His sharp eyes, dark as the night itself, scanned the horizon where thorny trees stood like silent sentinels. At dusk, he had left the security of the village and his protective boma and he was waiting in the open plain.

Far off, a hyena whooped, its eerie cry rising over the whisper of the wind. It was answered by another, closer this time. The chief’s jaw tightened as he glanced at the weapon next to him. Hopefully, he would not need it.

His brother was late.

Perhaps that was a good thing. Confrontation was never pleasant and perhaps Wilson was hoping that Elijah would disappoint once more.

His brother had always been reckless, forgetting his roots, where he came from, ignoring the ancestral legacy bestowed upon each Maasai tribesman and woman. All he wanted was to chase after easy money, after the promises of men who did not know the land as they did. The brothers had repeatedly argued, each side belittling the lifestyle of the other. This time, if there were to be a fight, it would be the last.