Sanscale

It lies just under the crust with only its nostrils and eye-ridges exposed, and it can hold that buried stillness for the better part of a day, waiting for the vibration of something edible walking overhead. The strike is a single explosive lunge out of the sand, over almost before it starts. Between meals it swims through the loose upper sand as easily as a fish through water, a faint rippling wake the only sign of its passage, and at the desert's brief cold dawn it surfaces to bask, briefly, before the day drives it back under.