The Salt-Pan Shrine

A sun-cracked roadside shrine on the white salt flats where drovers left offerings against the heat-thirst.

Out on the blinding salt south of the Vale stands a low shrine of stacked, wind-polished stone, its offering bowl long dry. The cattle-drovers who once crossed the flats left water and copper here against the thirst the heat lies about — and the thirst took many of them anyway. The salt has eaten the carvings smooth; only the shape of a cupped hand remains, and whatever the desperate still leave in it.