Patterned giraffe line drawing

The reclamation crew came back from the Kaveri plains yesterday with the last of the herd's field notes, and I asked them to read me the pattern counts before they logged them. You will laugh, but the old engineers were right about the spirals. Every tall grazer on the ridge carries its own sequence of curls on the foreleg, and the younger ones copy the elders the way we once copied old songs. Dot clusters on the neck, scale fields over the ribs, zigzag bands running down the hind legs like tide lines. Dr Okonjo had them catalogued before the dust storms took the survey towers, and I have spent six months matching her tallies against the river charts.

Here is the strange part. Where the patterns crowd thickest, the animals always turn toward the same bearing, and the paisley swirls on their flanks point the way the water runs underground. Nobody believed it until Tomas walked a transect along the shoulder markings and found a well we had written off as dry. He sat on the rim for an hour, laughing like a boy, then cried a little, which he denies.

I am sending you the tracing the crew made of the largest bull. It is ink on proper paper, the old method, and it still smells of the field kit. Keep it flat. The lines are so fine that a single fold could break the water route.

Come home when the winter ships run. The herd will still be here, and so will I, though I am moving more slowly these days. Bring your compass. You will want to follow the markings yourself. Love, Nan