Thirst-Flies

Overview

Thirst-Flies are the small grey flies of the Parched, counted among its Sand-Stalkers. They gather on anything that sweats, weeps, or bleeds and drink it, and a traveller with a cloud of them around the face loses water faster than the sun alone could take it.

Appearance

A Thirst-Fly is smaller than a grain of barley, dust-grey with clear wings, and in the glare of the plane it is all but invisible until it lands. Its mouth is a short, soft tube for sucking, with no bite in it. One alone is nothing. A cloud of them is a faint haze around a head, and their sound is a thin, dry whine that does not stop. They crawl rather than fly once they have landed, along the edge of an eye or the crack of a lip, and their feet tickle.

Habitat and Range

They live everywhere on the plane where something living passes, and are thickest along the routes that caravans and Dust-Eater bands use. They rest in the shade of rocks and bones by day and rise at the first smell of sweat.

Behaviour and Temperament

They seek moisture in any living body: the corners of the eyes, the lips and nostrils, the sweat of the neck and armpits, the wet of a wound. They settle in dozens, drink, and come back as fast as they are brushed off. They do not sting and carry no venom. They will follow a traveller for a whole day.

Abilities

Thirst-Flies drink without being felt beyond a tickle, and the dry air of the plane takes whatever they leave. A traveller under a cloud of them dries out faster than the sun alone would manage, and eyes kept from weeping by the flies crack and burn. A wound they settle on dries into a crust before it can clean itself.

Life Cycle

They breed in the dried remains the plane's scavengers leave, and the maggots live on the last moisture in bone and sinew. A fly lives only days, and the swarms renew themselves without end.

Uses and Dangers

They give nothing. The Dust-Eaters go veiled and smear their faces with rendered fat to keep the flies from their eyes and mouths, and travellers who learn from them do the same. On a plane where thirst kills within days, the flies shorten the count.

Lore and Belief

Travellers call them "the plane's toll-takers" and say that every Thirst-Fly carries its drop to the land, which drinks it; the Dust-Eaters have no such tale and simply kill them. A belief that the flies cannot cross into the Material Plane because the air there is too wet is common and may be right; no one reports seeing them through a Dry Gate.

Where It Appears

• The Parched