Nia stood beside the grain stalls with both hands on a sack of millet, checking the seam where the thread looked loose. The Saffron Dune Market was busy and bright around her. Brass cups flashed in the sun. Cloth awnings tugged at their ropes. Sand slid over the packed ground in little lines.
Then the sand began to move the wrong way.
At first it looked like a spill, a dark sprinkle racing over the grain bags. But it was beetles — tiny sand beetles with hard, tan shells, rushing in a chattering stream. They poured across the stacked sacks, crawled into open seed trays, and slipped under the loose stall cloth. One helper swatted at them and missed. Another shouted, “They’re in the flour!”
Nia pressed closer, careful not to crush any bags, and saw pale powder dusting the ground from a torn sack. A second bag had a neat little hole near the bottom, and seeds were spilling like tiny beads. The beetles were clustering here, under the awning, where the food was kept.
If she warned everyone right away, maybe the helpers would shut the stalls fast. If she tried to block the beetles herself, maybe she could stop them before they reached more bags. But the swarm was already slipping through the cloth and chewing at the grain, and Nia could tell this was bigger than one torn seam.
What happens next?
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