More than anything, the sentinel realized it needed a purpose. Resuscitated into an era unknown to it. Operating in a fugue state of digital existentialism. It realized this and pondered, for the first time, what it was worth.
The hatch closed and the craft lifted off into the night, ascending into the starry horizon. As it streaked across the sky, in the far distance atop the Whetstone ridge, a mirage passed through pine, dancing through the tree line like a phantom. A translucent homunculus. Spirit of the sierra. The pellucid creature stopped mid-sprint atop the high promontory, tracing the arc of the white shuttle as it soared into the upper boundary. The moonlight passed through the phantom and it refracted like a flawed gem. Standing there, watching the shuttle, the phantom lifted aloft a longrifle, bearing it upon the craft as it escaped into the night. A finger wrapped around the trigger of the massive gun then hesitated before finally easing off the grip. The solitary being lowered the gun, stock to ground, and stood motionless.
A pack of Mexican Wolves sidled up beside the phantom, watching along with it as the white craft disappeared into the black. The Sonoran desert fell silent, into the void. Into the waste. A calm wrested the violence from the fist of the wild and it hung in the air, suspended in time, wandering through the valleys of the Madrean Sky Islands like a cry shouted into the abyss, echoing off the canyons and fading to a whisper. Macwidag, toward the east. And there came the long clouds. And everything was different from what it had been.