Tiziri.

By eleven the city has stopped using water, the pressure in the network rises, and a leak buried under the asphalt sounds far louder than it would at noon. The air conditioners shut off, the irrigation stops, the streets empty out, and the background noise drops so much that the system can be heard on its own. Tiziri parks, cuts the engine, and waits inside until the chassis stops ticking before she opens the door. Half a night's work goes into getting everything else to shut up.

The van carries a regulation water jerrycan. Tiziri returns it full every week, with the same joke as always, and by now nobody on the shift expects anything different. The sand cat never drinks: it gets all the water it needs from the blood and tissue of its prey — no waterholes, no oases — and that's how it lives in the Sahara. And she spends her nights chasing water that's escaping under the street, without ever once having been thirsty in her life.