The story
Keep half an eye on the desert off to the sides through here, because the flats have surprises in them. This is Galleta Meadows, the open ground where the steel sky-art creatures roam, and you may catch a metal beast standing out in the brush like a mirage that decided to stay. In an ordinary year it's pale and spare out here. But in a good March, after winter rains, this whole flat detonates into gold, poppies and sand verbena running to the foot of the mountains, the desert showing off the one trick nobody expects from it. Mountains all around, sky above, whimsy out in the scrub.
