Write about something which has been lost.
"How do you lose a person?"
Mel turned away. "How do you keep a person around who won't be kept?" she muttered.
"You know him best, Mel. You find him. We can't stay here much longer."
Mel glared at her father's back, then sighed. There really was no point in arguing with him. And she *did* know Jason better than most.
The area around the truck was bare as far as the eye could see, and sandy. That was why they had been lax - there shouldn't have been anywhere for Jason to go without them seeing him, or at least his tracks. Between that and the fact that his wings were clipped, it should have been impossible for him to escape.
Mel's father was stomping around their camp, telling everybody that they had to stay another day, despite the fact that they were nowhere near an oasis. The other families in the caravan were not pleased to hear that their guide's guide had vanished.
Mel paced the perimeter of the camp, watching the ground for tracks. Jason could do a pretty spectacular long jump, but not right out of sight, not here, where the land was so flat.
The sand beyond the perimeter was untouched, ruffled only by the wind. Even their previous day's tracks were almost hidden. Mel fought her worry down. She had to find Jason within two days - he was their navigator, and the only one in the party who could find any trickle of water. After completing a circuit of the camp, she started walking down their back trail. There was no point trying to trace his footprints within the camp; by the time they had noticed he was gone, people had been up and started breaking camp, obliterating any footprints left from the previous night.
