A Drifting Wasteland (Peregrine x DotCom)

[Peregrine]

He could do nothing but stare at her sleeping figure, curled up in the sand, almost child-like in appearance. This was not the reaction he had expected. He had expected, even prepared for, some sort of smart-aleck comment that would ridicule the entire situation. What he had not anticipated was her not saying anything, not even reacting to the situation he had just forced her to experience. It was alarming. And worrisome.

He knew it had been necessary, knew he had to do something to impress upon her the true nature of the wastes, but maybe he shouldn't have taken it so far. He should have guessed that something was wrong when she stopped talking, when she began to fight against his efforts to drag her to the next voider physically instead of verbally. But he hadn't known her well enough to realize exactly how uncharacteristic such a thing was.

What was he going to do now? He knew nothing about how to care for another person, and couldn't even begin to guess where to start if her life depended on it. Starting to feel a real sense of panic he stood up, moving over to her in a couple quick strides. For a moment he was tempted to shake her awake, to make sure she was okay, but he also knew how healing sleep could be. He himself had just slept four days to heal from the gunshot wounds he had received, and he knew he would not have appreciated the intrusion had someone shaken him awake at that point. Instead he placed one large hand gently on her neck, checking for a post. Some of his anxiety faded when he felt her pulse, slow and strong. Whatever fright she might have received, she would not die from it.

It was only then that he noticed the blood on her hand. Vaguely remembering her trying to pull a knife on him when he had been dragging her towards the third voider, he bent down, gently checking the wound. We're it a wound on him he would have likely not even noticed its existence, but people could be so fragile at times. The flow of blood had already slowed to a sluggish crawl, though. It looked as though it would heal cleanly on its own. He certainly hoped so. Still feeling more than a little guilty but knowing there was nothing he could do for her at this point, he moved away, settling into the sand before curling up slightly, almost in imitation of Kaya. As the sky above them lost its last streaks of color, he joined his unwilling companion in uneasy sleep.

 

[DotCom]

Kaya's sleep wasn't as restive as she might have hoped if she'd been more herself, but when morning finally came -- and went -- she wouldn't remember that. She would remember, maybe, almost, snatches of a nightmare she'd had a hundred times before, though never in colors so vibrant as these. She remembered fire and blood and darkness and screaming and a voice, or many voices. Demanding, pleading, warning, crying. They were old dreams, all of them, dreams she thought she'd left behind years ago. But tonight, they were almost comforting in their familiarity, a whispered hint of what had happened and what was to come. Kaya stirred only a few times, making tiny, smothered noises that could have been sighs or whimpers. Over the course of the night, she released her grip on the knife, and one bloody hand found itself pressed firmly to her collar bone. Other than that, she did not move for nearly 16 hours.

Instead, she woke to a dry mouth, a pounding headache, and the slow and irksome trickle of sweat running in salty rivulets down her neck. Stiff, but more alert than she had been, she sat slowly, groaning as half a dozen inexplicably sort muscles exacted quiet revenge.

"Seven hells," she murmured, starting to stand before remembering -- sort of -- that she'd fall asleep with her pack on last night. Stretching, wincing, she slipped her arms from the leather straps, lurched to her feet, and staggered the few steps to where her horse and wagon waited in a shallow outcropping of warm shade. She dug through her supplies one-handed, yawning, until her fingers found her waterskin, frustratingly tepid, but full nonetheless. From this she took a long pull as she raked her fingers through her unruly curls, trying to ignore the accumulated dirt, sand, and sweat.

Kaya Strong was not a stupid girl. In fact, far from it, she was clever, witty, ambitious, with a better penchant for planning than most. She knew something had happened last night, and she had a decent idea of what that thing was, though she was loathe to think on it too long. If she racked her brain, she could remember chasing after her guide as things around them began to change. The air had gone thick, she though, almost palpable, it had gotten difficult to breathe. She thought she remembered tiny tongues of flame licking at the edge of her vision -- and then nothing. Or nothing that made any sense. Even what she could recall was swirled together like so many oil paints on ruined canvas. The next clear image was of sitting in the sand, dazed and exhausted, as her partner lectured her.

"There are no villages out here."

She hadn't responded to that, hadn't really been able to. The whole experience put her in mind of an incident in her fourth year working for Sam, nearly twelve years ago. She'd been just sixteen at the time, though no less haughty or ambitious for her youth. In an effort to prove to her employer that the local smith was withholding irons from her (because of her gender, she'd assumed then), she'd stolen a double armful to take back to Sam, and had fallen on the stairs down to his workshop, striking her head on the banister. She'd been fine, mostly. Nauseas for a few days, prone to random bouts of vertigo. The strangest part of it had been coming to there on the floor with less than no idea of who or where or what she was. It only lasted a few moments, but in that time, she'd have sworn she was herself another creature from another planet, dropped into the center of the life of a girl named Kaya Strong, someone with whom she had no connections whatsoever.

Now, of course, she was more aware of what had happened. She'd felt that sense of distant, inescapable confusion only once before, and while she was loathe to recall the circumstances surrounding it...it was the only thing that made sense.

Her guide had nearly run them through an active voider.

Satisfied, though still rather shaken at the prospect, she tossed aside the waterskin, now empty, and strode to the back of the cart, where she assumed her guide had taken up in the shade, apparently having grown impatient waiting for her to wake.

Only he was nowhere to be found.

Kaya was alone.

 

[Peregrine]

The sun had long since crested the horizon, and the rays had worked their way around the edge of the wagon, when he finally stirred from slumber. It was almost embarrassing to realize how late he had slept. Even though he had only been traveling with Kaya for a few days he had already grown complacent, used to her increased stirring signaling her rising consciousness to bring him awake himself. Without it, and in the stillness of the desert, he had required the sun's rays to wake him.

Still feeling more than a little guilty about the fact that he had scared her into such a sleep, he roused himself from stillness. She seemed calm and comfortable enough, slightly twisted in the embrace of the pack, but her pulse still beat strong and steady. That was sufficient for him. He settled in for waiting for her to wake up.

It was almost a relief, this waiting. He didn't normally move so much. If he found a good spot, one with water, shelter, and the marks of plentiful animal life, he would stay there, living off of that space until the water was gone or the animals finally learned that a predator had found their watering hole, and moved to another, safer location. He was never trying to get some place. Kaya, on the other hand, was, and she already begrudged their daily stops to avoid the hottest part of the day, when the sun beat down so strong that it distorted the distant horizon into nonexistent dunes and lakes. He guessed at the direction to Riven, going off of Kaya's initial direction of "south south east of Crolis" and aiming for the traces of humanity that he would normally do his best to avoid. They were few and far between, he was vaguely following an old and long abandoned path that often ran into voiders, and it would be many days before they found another city, which would be able to point them in the direction of Riven once more. While he knew that wandering escorts would be able to point them in the right direction, especially if Riven was as prosperous a city as Kaya implied, he was inclined to avoid people in the desert, no matter how practical it might be to try and find them. There was no telling who desert wanderers were, and they were just as likely to be bandits or the wandering insane who managed to find their way out of voiders by dumb luck as they were escorts with law-abiding citizens. If they were lucky in their direction, they would find Riven within a month.

It looked like they would be pausing for a little, though, while Kaya napped. He had no idea how long he would have to be waiting for her to reawaken, and faint notes of a need to feed were starting to echo through his body. He would need to eat before the end of tomorrow, or risk potentially unpleasant side effects. Considering it rude to forage through her supplies while she slept he decided to leave for a little while and head out hunting, before the heat of the day trapped him in place until evening.

He tracked his way away from the little depression, creating a mental map of the paths between the dunes, marking rocks, grasses, and shrubs the way cityfolk would mark buildings and signs. Without having to worry about Kaya keeping up he settled into a steady lope that ate away at the ground and left him breathing easy should he need to transition into a full-out run at any point. He caught several little lizards sunning themselves on rocks, still slightly sluggish from the cool of the night, but decided it was worthwhile to continue his search. He found a rabbit warren on the far side of a large rock, near a small patch of grass that the colony had already cropped down near to the dirt. A period of patient waiting and one little bunny finally popped its head out of the rock. It moved hesitantly, clinging to the shadows, not seeing him hiding above it, clinging to a hole in the rock. He would only have one shot to catch it, if he missed the thing would be back in the burrow before he could blink, and no other members would be coming out of that entrance this day, but such was the nature of the wild. He didn't blink.

He left a handful of entrails sunning just outside the shade of the rock, wrinkling his nose as the stench rose. True to purpose, though, a black-headed vulture came fluttering down from the sky only a short while later, just barely long enough to be able to see that the shadow of the rock had moved. Once again he moved with lightning speed, snagging the thing before it would be able to swallow the morsel and take off again.

Satisfied with the weight of his meal, he began to set off sluggishly back towards the camp. It didn't take him very long to realize that he had eaten too much to be able to make it back to camp before the sun reached the hottest point of the day. Fearing what the distortion of the heat on both his mind and the land would do to his ability to track where he was going, he settled into a narrow ravine, digging slightly into the dirt bank to create a depression where he could rest until the sun moved on.

As he sat and waited for the sun to pass, he thought predominantly of two things. The first was the basic tasks of all survival, eating and sleeping and avoiding dangers, and planning ahead for unlikely eventualities. The other was of Kaya. He still agonized over what he had done to her. He had been intending to scare her, to get her to understand exactly what kind of place the wastes were, and why her statement about moving from small village to small village had been so ludicrous, but he hadn't wanted her to end up like this. All the same, no matter how hard he thought, he could see no other alternative that would have been better, even with the blessed vision of foresight. This was, in part, because he had no clue what had scared her. Thus far they had encountered nothing particularly dangerous in the wastes, other than a hungry coyote so close to the edge of starvation that even a large group like them had seemed worth investigating, but Kaya had never shown anything even remotely resembling fear or uncertainty. He would have rather learned that she possessed such life-saving emotions under different circumstances, though.

When he finally started moving again the sun had dipped below this particular ridge, although it was still a good many fists before it would actually drop below the horizon and the world would descend into night. He had digested a good part of his meal and was able to move quite quickly on his way back to camp, not afraid of alerting potential prey to his presence now that he was full.

He wondered how Kaya was doing. He was quite sure there was nothing that would have found her while she slept. He would check her pulse again when he got there, and then settle in for the wait for her to wake, however long it may be. He had drained the last pool of water they had found dry, and had easily enough to last him for several days, if need be.

It was some surprise to him, though, to come across the top of the hill and find Kaya awake. Realizing his hunting trip had been mostly unnecessary, he still didn't regret the uninterrupted chance to hunt. Sand skidded out from under his feet as he bounded down the hill, slowing his descent through a series of small leaps uphill as he slid down towards the bottom of the hill.

He wasn't the best judge of these kinds of things, but Kaya seemed flustered and anxious. Perhaps something had come to bother her. He checked the area carefully, but saw no signs of disturbance. Tilting his head slightly, he asked "You are well again?"

 

[DotCom]

In her hours spent alone, Kaya had not been quite certain of what to do with herself. Or rather, she had known precisely what she wanted to do, just as she knew she could do precisely none of it, if only because her greatest pride was her self-control, without which she was, literally, nothing. Later, perhaps, but only much later, she might speak, or at least reflect upon what had occurred between the time of her haggard waking and the escort's return. The speaking would be terse and trite, resentful; the reflection even moreso. For now, though, she was resolved to allow the period of time to end and try only to forget what had happened.

A shrewd observer, however, might find hints scattered about her person as well as the clearing.

The cut on Kaya's hand, for instance, may have appeared to some to have grown deeper, wider, angrier, or, at the very least, more raw – as if scoured to an inimitable shine. And all of this was only barely evident from the redness that peaked around the edges of a rough-hewn, yet neatly wound bandage wrapped and tied around her fingers. A small spot of dark red sat, cupped and forgotten, in her palm, nestled amidst once-white linen.

The contents of her cart had been pristinely rearranged, unpacked, repacked, and inventoried, as evidenced by the slip of paper Kaya held in one unblemished hand. The list was written in a hand fine as that of a printing press, though faintly flecked in blood, and if you turned it to catch the fading sunlight just so, you could see a half dozen shaky marks hastily scrawled into sheets that had since been scattered to the wind: over the edge of the rise, tattered pieces of parchment glowed white on the sand.

In the cart, several of the now-inventoried items bore scratches and cracks that they hadn't before, the marks of an apparent rough handling. Though the cart itself was still, it was warm to the touch, and the horse stood with its nostrils flaring, its ears laid back upon its head, more skittish than usual. Kaya, too, stood still, almost rigid, and yet her darks curls were in relative disarray, and her passive expression could not hide the flush of her cheeks. A thin trail of scarlet made a jagged line down the back of one leg, visible perhaps only because her riding breeches appeared to have been cut several inches shorter than they had been the previous night. She also wore a new belt, long enough to wrap around her waist several times. It was the same color, nearly, as the bandage around her hand and the riding breeches both.

Kaya made note of none of this when at last her guide crested the nearest dune to descend once more into the depression she only half remembered finding last night. She merely regarded him quietly, her expression carefully, utterly unreadable, for a long moment before speaking:

"I am perfectly fine, thank you. It's good you've returned; we've wasted enough time here as it were. Next time, wake me before you disappear. I'm afraid this will mean a small deduction from your final pay. Consider it a warning. Leave without notice again, and the whole bonus will do the same. Understood?"

All of it was said in a gracious, almost casual monotone. And to her credit, Kaya kept the hint of defiant, terrified rage from her voice almost entirely.

 

[Peregrine]

Kaya's words did nothing to alleviate his certainty that something unusual had happened. Other, of course, than what he had done to her yesterday evening, but she had time to sleep and recover from that particular trauma. Her statement also confused him, and for the first time he felt the need to defend himself from her complaints in his direction. This was not so much because he cared about this "pay" she promised, but because it disturbed him that she had been bothered over it. That was, in the end, the only conclusion he could reach about this strange air about the camp. Somehow, his absence had alarmed her. Had he thought he would leave her out here? He had given no such indications of doing any such thing.

"You slept," he replied as if that answered all questions and stipulations. Perhaps if she recalled that he had slept for nearly four days without waking while he had been healing, she might understand why, to him, that answered all. Sleep was sometimes the only thing that kept one balanced on the knife between life and death, and waking at the wrong moment and being forced to move might lead to an unwanted tumble over the edge. If not, it would seem hardly a satisfactory explanation. "I wanted food."

He was also inclined to protest her desire to move on, seeing as it was once more almost dusk, but somehow got the impression that pushing her on this matter would not be wise. This would not be the first time he had traveled late into the night in search of shelter, and it would not be the last. As disinclined a she might be to leave this shelter and risk a night out on the open dunes with the wind and animals, he was even less inclined to see what Kaya would do if he simply refused to move again until morning.

So, despite his hesitancy over the matter, he helped her catch the flustered mare and hook it back up to the wagon. It took them an unfortunately long time to catch the spooked beast, as it had taken an obvious distaste for the arrangement and for being around Kaya at all, who loomed like a predator about to pounce. Therefore, by the time they were ready to go again, the sun had completely dropped below the horizon and they were working by the light of a flaming sky, which seemed to grow darker every minute.

That would be the first night where they slept without the protection of a mound of dunes around them, when he could no longer trust himself to lead the horse forward without walking it or the wagon into an unseen gopher hole, which could break the horse's leg or destroy the wagon wheel. he turned the wagon perpendicular to the wind, using the sand to build a small mound underneath it which would somewhat block the flow of the wind. A tarp on the other side would provide adequate, if not ideal protection. The horse stood nearby, a cloth wrapped around its eyes, nose, and ears to protect it from the inevitable blowing wind that would find it as the night progressed. There was not a single scrap of plant life around them, only hot, bone-dry dirt that had cracked into hexagons and low lying rocks that heaved up from the dirt like struggling beasts.

The dust found its way into the shelter deep into the night, when the time was unknowable. They would wake to stinging eyes, cracked lips, and aching throats, completely covered in a layer of dust so fine they seemed to have turned into ghosts. They moved on.

 

[DotCom]

The wastes, Kaya had decided, as her second week in the desert drew to a close, were nothing like what she had guessed, and that unpredictability – as did anything that was not hers to control – was absolutely maddening.

She had made her peace with much of what the wastes had to offer. The travel was taxing, but that much she had anticipated, and even come to appreciate, as the effort only made her stronger, and in more ways than one. The sun had freckled her face, the bridge of her nose and the apples of her cheeks, turning her green eyes to sea glass, and her dark curls to a heady bronze. She had grown used to dust coating her tongue and sand stuck in her teeth. Her back and calves no longer throbbed to keep her awake half the night. She had even come to almost appreciate, or at least resent slightly less, the mandatory reprieves her silent guide insisted upon each night. Their days had fallen just shy of monotony, but that gave her more time to plan for her now inevitable arrival in Riven.

But.

But there were other things she could not have anticipated. Her companion, for example, was nearly as unpredictable as the desert itself. He seemed neither motivated by money nor power – inconvenient, to say the very least – as she had built her entire plan around the greed of an escort she herself had killed. This one was strange for a number of reasons, his silence and his bandages not the least among them. What did he hide beneath them, she wondered? And yet when she let this train of thought go too far, she was greeted by the same fear and nausea that had plagued her on the first morning she'd laid eyes on him.

She usually changed the subject after that.

Despite the mystery, it seemed he felt compelled, though by what, she could not guess, to see her to Riven…even at a pace she considered painstakingly slow.

Worse still was the fact that much of their slowed pace rested on her shoulders. Her recovery from the strange episode on that night had gone slower than she'd expected. She was careful to keep any evidence of the fact from her guide as best she could, lest he attempt to take the opportunity to leave her again. Even so, strange dreams and random bouts of incoherence overcame her with little to no warning at all. At least twice since that night, she had found herself cheerfully maintaining a one-sided conversation with the escort only to abruptly forget what she had been saying, and once, even where and with whom she was.

This, she decided, after careful thought, and two furious, sleepless nights, was owed quite simply to a combination of dehydration, fatigue, and the poison she had been taking to keep the escort creature from gifting her the same fate he had her original guide. Granted, he did not seem terribly interested in doing so, but she found his stoicism – and his obvious lack of interest in her money – far more dangerous than his apparent diet.

In any case, in the days since she had woken to find herself alone, Kaya had taken a number of measures to keep such a thing from happening again. She had reduced the amount of the toxin she dosed herself with each morning and increased the amount of water she drank as much as she was able without slowing their pace further. She had already deducted from the final tally the bonus she had promised the guide, though that was to frustratingly little effect. She now also made it a point to sleep after him and wake before him as best as she was able. He had said he would not leave her again, but she could hardly trust him on his word alone. He had also shown her what might happen if she tried to find Riven on her own, and while she had successfully convinced herself the episode following the voiders was nothing more than a fluke, she was less than prepared to test that theory.

As it were, she was far more inclined to keep to what remained of her plan. It had, after all, allowed some room for leeway, and it was better that she reached Riven late than never at all. If her options were to go mad or remain relentlessly cheerful…well. Only one of them left room for reaching her goal.

"Do you have a family?" she asked brightly, hefting her pack onto her shoulders. It was approaching the hottest part of the day, and she fully expected a stop soon whether she wanted it or not. She doubted her distraction would help at all, but it was worth a try.

"Are they…out here somewhere?"

 

[Peregrine]

He could not help the snort of derisive laughter that emerged from him on Kaya's words. Many of these one-sided, question-filled conversations had happened over the past score of days, and it was something of a miracle that the woman had yet to run out of questions. Most of the time all she earned was silence or, if she was particularly persistent about it, a monosyllabic reply. In many respects that one noise was more expressive than anything he had ever given her, although it would be impossible to decipher the meaning behind it. Yes, his "family", if it could even be called that, was out here somewhere. He had no clue where, and, frankly, he had no desire to know except to make sure that he stayed as far away from it as possible. The last thing he wanted to do was encounter those whom he could call kin.

But the last thing he wanted was for Kaya to pursue this particular line of conversation, as there was no chance he was going to answer any further and he didn't want to deal with her insistent pushing on something about which he really didn't want to think. After that one, initial, instinctual reaction she did not earn another sound from him, no matter how hard they tried.

The one good thing about their travel was that it had brought them into a new part of the wastes. Instead of the surrounding, rolling flatland that had accompanied much of their journey, they had instead found a place of canyonlike crevices, which had the benefit of keeping them out of the sun and wind, but also meant that they frequently had to backtrack large distances to find a way around a voider that blocked the path forward. The land was alarmingly dry, and the heat seemed to settle into the cracks, withering the plants and evaporating any puddles that formed within the night long before the sun actually made it into the ravines. Their progress was hot and slow, but they had no choice but to travel through the low parts, for it was impossible to bring horse and wagon up the sides of the steep embankments that surrounded them, even if it would have been possible for them to climb.

They still stopped for the heat of the day, crouching in the little bit of shade that still remained on a south wall, and using the wagon to make just a touch more. Their water was starting to run low, and he had long since stopped drinking from the supplies, choosing instead to venture out in the morning and lick the few muddy puddles that would form under rocks from the tiny bits of moisture that filled the air while he hunted for lizards, beetles, and rodents to fill his belly. They would need to make it out of these canyons and back into the flatlands before an oasis or long-standing puddle would reappear.

All the same, he did not rush their pace. He stopped for the night long before the sun set, finding a place that would provide adequate shelter from the sand and the cold while there was still more than enough light to see around them. He gave them several hours of rest in the middle of the day, to avoid those moments when the sun beat down glaringly hot, and distorted the entire world into ripples and waves. Recklessly pushing ahead would do them no good, and would ultimately end up wasting more water, even if it might save them a couple days of time.

That was why it was such an anomaly when he stood suddenly only shortly after they had sat down for the noon break. Without word, and ignoring Kaya's protests, he stood, hauling himself up above the edge of the ravine to stare at the horizon line. He sniffed the air, and even dared to slightly unravel the filthy bandages that covered his mouth in order to better taste the air. He hopped back down less than a minute later.

"We must move," he said. "It is going to rain."

It seemed an absurd statement. The sky was cloudless and blue, the air as dry and sweltering as ever. He, however, would take no protest. "We must move!"

 

[DotCom]

The chuckle -- if it could be called that, and Kaya supposed it really couldn't -- was the first response of its kind to have come from her guide, indeed, the first sign that he could feel, or at least project anything aside from a sort of stoic resignation, and the young merchant was instantly intrigued. All at once, she'd forgotten the wretched heat of the day that seemed to weigh on her shoulders even heavier than her pack. The desperate panting of the horse plodding alongside them disappeared along with a new and growing anxiety the beast not be much longer for the world. Her frustrations with the many unexpected variables the wastes had thrown her eased suddenly as she realized there might be more to her escort than a shroud of mystery thick and impenetrable as the bandages he wore.

She immediately began to ply him with further questions -- how big, how old, where, why, and who -- and though she got no response, she was not discouraged. After all, he'd not answered her before. Even the first time she'd asked him to take her to Riven he had outright refused. This response was a good sign, if not very forthcoming, and if she could not wear him down, she was certain she could bring the information from him in another way. Not, of course, that she was interested so much as desperate. She was not keen to manipulate such a strange creature if she didn't have to, but his unpredictability had proved dangerous, at least potentially thus far, and she could so no other recourse as far as defending herself.

In any case, this new plan was soon forgotten as her guide bid them break from the heat of the day. Kaya, for once, felt vaguely relieved. She, too, had been thinking on their water situation, and only moreso since having convinced herself that her occasional spells of absent-mindedness were due to dehydration. She had only just resolved to see how long she could hold a single mouthful of water on her tongue before her thirst got the better of her, when suddenly, the escort rose and flung himself up the side of the canyon.

Kaya froze. She did not think he would run away from her, or at least not so conspicuously. He had to know she would follow, albeit slowly, and that he would lose pay for it again...though of course she knew now that second did not bother him. Still. Why would he so abruptly abandon her when she could clearly see where he was going? Did he think he could leave her far enough behind that she would pass through a voider before she caught up?

The thought made her shiver even in the heat of the day and she had just started to rise to her feet as imperiously as she could manage, when he was down on the canyon floor beside her again, speaking in short, tight sentences.

Again, his tone of voice surprised her as, again, he proved he was capable of something other than monosyllabic apathy. Again she was intrigued, as the severity of his tone implied urgency, perhaps even danger...even while the skies did no such thing.

Kaya eyed him for a moment, simply considering. It was true desert storms could break with little warning. Anyone who grew up within a breath's width of the sand knew that. Nor had she come so far to doubt her guide in a matter so simple as shelter from the rain, which is what she assumed he wanted. He was far more familiar with the wastes than she, that much was clear. If she could not trust him with her safety, she could trust him, at least, with this. After all, she had been trying now for days to get him to pick up his pace. If he was willing to skip their midday respite, certainly some weather must be coming.

However...

Kaya was no stranger to the quick and chaotic storms that could come upon the desert. When she'd been very young, she had watched them rolling in from the roof of the brothel where her mother worked, waiting quietly as their air around her grew thick with humidity. The storms broke loud, with little to no warning for those who couldn't feel them coming...but this day had not been like those. Even below the surface level, Kaya thought she ought to feel some humidity if a storm would break any time in the next hour. Any nearer than that, and her curly hair would already be wild from the static in the air. She'd been twelve when she'd broken her collar bone, an injury slow to heal but quick to react to changes in the weather. The desert was hot and dry and unpredictable, yes, but storms were another thing entirely. If one was to break, it would not be any time soon.

"Alright," she said, wary, but mostly unperturbed. "Back the way we came then?"

The merchant lurched to her feet with a groan, stretching a bit before hauling her sack over her shoulders and reaching for the horse's lead line with her free hand. She had grown used to backtracking through the canyons to stay clear of voiders. She guessed it would be no different in the rain.

 

[Peregrine]

It did not occur to him in that moment how much of a relief it was to have Kaya's cooperation in this matter. Later, at an undisclosed time of silence and thought, he would realize that she could easily have fought him on this matter, and the situation would have likely turned out worse than it already had.

At the time, though, his only concern had been finding a way out of those ravines before the rain struck. He had lived in the desert his whole life, and the faint traces of moisture were always the difference between life and death. When he was young he had not realized that, sometimes, water did not mean life. Sometimes it meant death. In a place as dry as this, the ground was simply incapable of absorbing the rain. It seemed like it would be the opposite, a parched ground that would absorb infinite rainwater, but the hardpacked dirt wouldn't let water in, and, contained by these narrow channels, it would gain momentum until there was no stopping it.

There was no worse place they could be for the beginning of a rainstorm. He knew this, and a part of him felt a great deal of anxiety about the matter. They had been wandering through these canyons for a good couple days, and they would never reach an exit in the fifteen to twenty minutes they had left before the rain began. As soon as the first drops fell he would force both him and Kaya to climb, leaving the wagon and horse behind to be swept away in the inevitable wave of water that would follow. What he hoped to find was a slope, something that they could drag horse and wagon up, that was high enough to protect them when the flood came.

Kaya seemed to have picked up on his urgency, and the horse had certainly picked up on the growing alarm in both the guide and the growing tension in the air that seemed to hint at something coming. Both followed along at the pace he set, a stride that neither horse nor Kaya could maintain for very long, but which just might be enough to find something to keep Kaya from getting stranded out in the desert with no supplies. He pushed on. But, as the minutes rushed on at a frustrating speed, the canyon walls changed little. A few banks appeared, but even a quick glance was enough to show that, while more mild than the rest of the slopes, it would still not be sufficient for horse and wagon to climb.

The first raindrop hit almost exactly nineteen minutes after he had forced them to their feet and started moving. The air still seemed impossibly dry, the sky completely clear, but the passage behind them was starting to grey out as the rain fell from the sky. The horse nickered, stomping a foot and bucking slightly as the rain began to hit its back.

"Time to climb," he said. Somehow, now that he had failed, the tension seemed to bleed from him. They weren't going to get the horse and wagon out before the water, guided by these narrow channels, hit them. He didn't know how Kaya was going to survive without the consistent access to food and water, but, one way or another, she would. "If you have anything worth life, grab now."

Despite these words he only gave her a few beats to follow through on it before grabbing her arm and forcibly pushing her up the embankment. The water was falling faster and faster, and the bandages were becoming so wet that they clung to his form, going from a light, dirty brown to a darker shade of filth. Kaya's hair was plastered to her head. In an instant the sun was covered, and they were plunged into greyness. It was impossible for a storm to appear so fast in a stable location. But they were surrounded by voiders, and the storm had built up within a small space, swirling around by the ephemeral currents of energy that caused voiders to move, and all the while building up momentum. Now it was released. For another couple minutes it seemed that nothing would happen but that they would get thoroughly soaked. He sat down, cupping his hands and tipping his head back, greedily guzzling the clean water that fell from the sky.

They heard the flood coming long before they saw it. At first it sounded like nothing so much as rushing, the sound of a wind that did not exist. But the sound grew louder and louder by the moment until, coming from the direction they had been heading towards, a wave of muddy water dark with sand and rocks appeared, so huge that the passageways could barely contain it. He grabbed Kaya again, pulling her back from the edge lest a stray wave reach out and grab her. The horse, stuck down in the lowest part, let out a terrified shriek before the wave hit, and horse, wagon, and supplies vanished in the rush of water, to inevitably be smashed against one of the banks when a curve appeared.

The flood went on for nearly ten minutes, but did not come to an end for a good three minutes after the rain had stopped. Finally it began to slow, filling less and less of the canyon until it was nothing but a small stream running in the bottom. The whole place was scoured clean, and anything that was not anchored to the earth through an unbreakable bond had vanished. There was no trace of horse or wagon.

"Fill up any bottles. You'll need later."

 

[DotCom]

It was the ache in her chest that finally told Kaya that she was no longer in control. She had taken a risk, as she had always done, and trusted her wit and her ambition and her willpower to see her through. For sixteen years, that had been it, that had been enough. There was no destiny she could not control, nothing he couldn't have through drive along. Why shouldn't she have thought she could make it across the wastes in a few short weeks, a legacy in tow? She had not failed at anything, or not for long, since she was twelve years old.

But she had not counted on the same thing that had ruined her then to rear its head once more. She had hidden from the wastes for over a decade. Now she was remembering why.

Sitting there at the edge of the canyon, face blank, clothes soaked and muddy, Kaya knew, academically speaking, she hadn't turned to stone. Her heart still beat hard against her rib cage. Their sprint through the canyon had quickly turned from a brisk walk, to a canter, to nearly running, and then finally to hurling themselves up the steep embankment. Kaya saw it all as if it had happened outside her -- though the rising tang of apprehension in the back of her throat kept her centered enough to know she was not going to lose herself like she had on the night of their first voider. She had protested, furious and breathless bent over her knees.

"What?" she demanded, but the stark terror in her eyes betrayed her: she already knew exactly what was about to happen. "Climb? What about the horse? What about the cart, we can't just -- "

And then he was grabbing her, forcing her up the slope, really and truly intend to leave all her supplies behind, again like on the night of the voider. Only this time, she knew, there would be no getting them back.

In that moment, she had balked, frozen. It was as if she was fleeing all over again, being told to pack her life into a bag small enough to wear on her hip. And this really was her life, her livelihood and future packed into a cart. Not just food and water, warm clothing and blankets, but sketches, drawings, contacts, money. The most important of it was in her pack -- and that she would not leave behind if the rainwater threatened to carry her all the way to the center of the earth -- but she would not make it far enough to matter if she couldn't eat.

But the rain was falling now, fast and hard. Kaya was soaked to her skin within the minute, and desperate scrubbing water from her face as it ran down her hair and into her eyes no more than two minutes after that. She began grabbing what she could from the cart with wild, reckless abandon, not even comprehending what she was grabbing, only thinking that she needed to get all of it free from the cart and she could figure out the rest later --

She dropped half of it when he lost patience and began to drag her up the side. She was too startled, too panicked to be angry. She made the climb with a handful of sodden sketches clamped in her teeth, a pocket full of live ammo tucked into her belt, two empty canteens looped around her arm. She was surprised how quickly they reached the top, trembling with exertion and something perilously close to fear.

Her guide, turned nearly as brown as she by his wet and dirty bandages, sat back and sipped at the rainwater, but Kaya could not relax.

"I'm going to get the rest," she said quickly, already edging back toward the slope. She did not think to take her backpack off; she would have regretted it if she'd been able to get any further. "Necessities, food, water, money for lodgings -- "

It wasn't until she heard the water that she understood exactly what they had been running from, and even then she had prepared herself to reach out, maybe if she stretched she could just reach --

He pulled her away just as the wall of dirty water crashed around the corner, and the moment Kaya saw it she knew there would be no saving horse nor cart. Her supplies were gone.

And so she sat, quietly stunned, utterly disbelieving. Was this how it felt to lose? Was this how it had been for other apprentices with the gunsmith, when Kaya had come out on top again and again? Was this how it had felt to be Samson himself, waking to find half his new prototypes gone across the desert? Was this how the escort she had poisoned felt the minute he knew he was doing to die? It was not a feeling she found she liked, and for the first time in a long time, Kaya felt something she had not expected. It surged over the latent shock, the numbed panic of everything that had just happened, the shivering that came with cold or adrenaline or both. It was more pervasive than all she knew she was supposed to be feeling, those words her brain kept feeding her. Exhausted. Cold. Afraid. It was bigger than these.

Pity. Whether it was for herself, or for those she had hurt with her ambition, she could not begin to guess.

It seemed hours before she was able to drag herself to her feet. In the end, she had rescued little more than her pack, a handful of bullets, and a few canteens. She was uncharacteristically glad when the order came to fill them.

It gave her something to do.

 

[Peregrine]

In the days that followed the flood, he almost found himself missing Kaya's chatter. Almost. While he couldn't say that he actually missed her attempts to provoke conversation when he did his best to make it blatantly clear that he had no desire to speak to her, he could say that her silence was notably more alarming simply from the state of her mind.

She was alarmingly obedient the first couple days. He pushed them through the remainder of the passageways, traveling late and rising early. Without Kaya's supplies there was no way she would be able to last in this space, as the water quickly vanished and no creatures would make such a desolate place home. She didn't protest when he forced her awake or pushed her on until it was obvious that she was almost to the point of collapsing from exhaustion, as a hunger of two days without food built in her belly.

It was a relief to make it back out into the open desert. He left her seated in the shade of a small bush, made sure she wouldn't wander off, and then went off to hunt. He came back several hours later with a dead bird and an armload of cactus. He force fed her the raw food, flat out ignoring all her protests to get the sustenance in her. A part of him worried about whether her body would be able to process the food, for he knew that people couldn't eat things the way he could, but at that moment he hadn't the time to find things that would likely be safer. Everything Kaya couldn't or wouldn't eat he consumed.

And such began their silent, slow routine. They would move for an hour at dawn, making devastatingly slow process towards civilization, until he found a place to leave her for the day. He would roam far afield or the remainder of the day, drawing circles around Kaya, looking for anything she might be able to eat or drink while making sure that no voiders were moving towards their location. Insects became a dominant part of her diet, as did several variants of cactus.

He had never been in a position where he had to worry about someone else before, and it was proving to be remarkably exhausting. So time consuming was the process of making sure that she stayed physically capable of basic life functions that he didn't have time to look at her emotional and psychological health. Or so he told himself. He was unwilling to admit that, even if all he had was time, he would not have the faintest idea where to begin on helping her recover from whatever state of depression she had entered. The time he had spent with her was enough to confirm that there was something wrong with her, but he had no way of even beginning to guess what, or find a way to go about fixing it.

So he left her to sit in silence, to figure it out herself. Late in the evenings, after another short bout of moving in the cooling weather of dusk, they would sit together in broken silence. Kaya did not speak, and neither did he. He simply waited. He kept moving, kept her alive, and waited for something to change.

 

[DotCom]

The world had slowed to a crawl around her, shrouded in a cold, gray haze that made even her lapse after the voider seem like a mercy.

At first, Kaya felt too numb to even be all that concerned with whatever was wrong with her. Because she did know, in a vague and distant sort of way, that something was wrong, or at least off. Different, certainly. This, this icy and pervasive feeling of loss, hopelessness, abandonment, defeat -- she could compare to only one other instance in her life, and even then, it had been tinged with fear and anger. Just now, she felt nothing. She knew she ought to have, to have felt frustrated with herself for not having prepared for a flood, or perhaps angry with her guide for saving only her life, and not that which she needed to live. She ought to feel hungry, too. Exhausted. Perhaps even elated. For the first time in nearly two weeks, they traveled at a pace that, while difficult, felt satisfactory. It was grueling work, and had Kaya still felt anything, she might have felt resentful or bitter. For those two days, she shivered night and morning, felt her stomach twist into painful, empty shapes, tried to ignore her sandpaper tongue and her pounding headache.

All these things she knew ought to concern her, but she could feel only a quietly oppressive apathy.

The change came on the second day after their emergence from the canyons. With the change in scenery -- as well as the food she had reluctantly taken -- apathy gave way to stoic resignation, exhaustion, then, finally, a renewed, if somewhat subdued, vigor...though some would say this was struck through with a healthy dose of denial. She had been worried at first that she would not be able to recover from the loss of her supplies, but four days later she was not yet dead. Skinnier, perhaps, hungrier, more tired, but not dead. Her contacts and half her funds had been lost in the storm, a severe blow indeed, but she could rebuild, she was certain. Already she was considering running another apprenticeship in Riven -- only for a few months, perhaps a year. Just enough to recoup her losses, and then she would move again if she had to. With these new prototypes, she could make a name, even in a smaller city. If she got big enough -- and she would -- customers would come to her. Perhaps she could even be at the center of a new city, one to rival Crolis and Riven. Perhaps her shares need not stop at arms. Perhaps the storm had come precisely when it needed to.

This is what she told herself. She reminded herself of it when she felt compelled to sleep at night, choosing instead to sketch new plans, new ideas in the sand, shy of scoring them into her own skin. She told herself again that the storm had been good each and every time her escort forced her to eat raw carrion and dead insects. She reminded herself doubly of it on the days she chose to go hungry. This she liked. The pain kept her focused, centered, as it always had.

On their third evening after emerging from the canyons, Kaya turned, impassive (or nearly so) to her guide. She had started taking food again more willingly as her mind lifted and the haze cleared. She owed him her life, she realized, at least three times over now, and that without counting the voiders he kept her from at any given moment.

Vulnerability, being in debt to someone...it was not to her liking in the slightest. But Kaya had bigger goals, and she had come to far to die here, now.

"I've started keeping a tally of the food you've brought," she said glibly. "You will be paid by the pound, with interest accruing per week. You may recoup the lost bonus, though...I'm sure you know now the payment will be later than originally promised." She put up a hand to forestall arguments (not that she anticipated any) as much as to stable herself. She had known what she had lost. Saying it aloud still hurt.

"That said, I do not intend to be helpless. It's clear we've taken on a much slower pace since the storm, and while I do not believe it necessary, I will cede to your expertise on the matter. For now. In any case, I think we ought to split hunting and foraging tasks between ourselves."

 

[Peregrine]

Those words were the first ones she had spoken since the flood, and they took him a bit by surprise. Then again, he probably should have expected something of the sort. Kaya's mind was unfathomable, but it always seemed to come back to two things: money and progress. A part of him wished it hadn't. If there were two things that had no meaning out in the wastes, it was money and time. At the same time, it was probably preferable to the strange, empty, silent Kaya that had listlessly followed after him for the past couple days. At least this one seemed to have a desire to live, which would in turn make his job of keeping her alive that much easier.

Although he did not comment on her statement that they would split the foraging and hunting between them, he knew it was something that would ultimately never work out. She would waste far more energy chasing her prey than she would get from eating it, and there were many poisonous things in the desert that were not only unsafe to eat, but were unsafe to touch. All the same, simply trying to prevent her from doing the work would never last with Kaya. He had to find a way to show her that she simply didn't have the capability. He gave her one afternoon to try, one afternoon of futile lizard chasing, lifting heavy boulders to look for small insects underneath, one disturbed anthill that covered her in several painful bites, and one attempt to forage from a cactus that left her hand sore and swollen for the following day.

Were it her goal to find a way to live out in the wastes, he might have been a more patient teacher. He might have showed her how to lure a lizard towards her, the rocks that had the best chance of holding small insects, which plants and animals might be useful, and the others should be avoided at all costs. But Kaya only had to last until they got to Riven, and now that she was more aware of her surroundings he picked up the pace, running circles around her as they traveled, bringing her a cactus leaf with small drops of water in the internal hollow, a slightly crushed bug, and the body of a rodent that had been gutted, skinned and partially baked by the heat of the day.

Their progress was not as fast as when they had the wagon, mostly because he was forced to divide his attention between foraging and navigating through the wastes. He was more inclined to stop early, fearing being left out in the heat of the sun to bake in the middle of the day, or being left without some form of cover to protect them from the nightly wind. A couple of times he led them to a place that was impassible, and they had to backtrack and find a new way around. All the same, they were still making progress.

They found a road five days after the flood. It was not much of a path, nothing more than a long, narrow depression in the dirt that had been cleared of rocks and plants, but it was still the first real sign of civilization they had seen since leaving Crolis three weeks ago. Kaya's guide let out something like a sigh. He had always done his best to avoid paths, even when he had been traveling alone. Paths meant people, and people were utterly unpredictable. His instinct was to simply cross the desert, forge ahead and leave the path far behind, but a quick look was enough to show that there was a mid-sized cliff on the other side of the path, and descending it would be far more trouble than it was worth. Their only options were to backtrack, or follow the path until the cliff softened, and, even if he did persuade Kaya it was better to backtrack, they would likely only run into the path again. There was no choice but to follow it.

 

[DotCom]

He had been right, of course. Kaya was getting used to that. He was right -- and, more importantly, she was wrong -- with a frustrating consistency. She was useless, as he'd undoubtedly predicted, at hunting for her own food. She had tried for a full day, and while they'd both known it would end poorly for her within the hour, she had persisted, first out of sheer stubbornness, then out of a frustration bordering on hysteria. At the end of the day, she had collapsed, sore and exhausted, and ungodly angry, all the moreso for the fact that she could not hide it -- yet another aspect of control she had lost when she'd left Crolis.

Things in the wastes had not gone her way since that first day she'd woken up in the desert, and it was weighing ever more on her spirit. One catastrophe she might have weathered. A handful of mishaps here and there, a few unexpected occurrences, a single day having gone against her very careful planning -- these were all minor frustrations Kaya could have handled with her usual sense of inimitable, almost arrogant confidence. Kaya succeeded. It was what she did, what she had made herself do since the first time she had dragged herself out of the wastes. Anything less was not only unacceptable, it was inconceivable. She could no more imagine the world not ceding to her will than she could see a creature un-become itself. It was impossible, no more and no less.

But out here, far from the domain she had all but considered her own, the impossible her reared its head not once, not twice, but three times -- at least. It had been baffling the first time, waking up alone in the desert with only a vague memory, and an even vaguer understanding of what had almost happened with the voider the night before. Losing her supplies had been...considerably more disturbing. She had lost herself for a time then, somewhere even frustration and confusion hadn't been able to find her. She had resolved the issue afterward by telling herself she had been in shock -- and who could say it was any less than truthful? -- though it had felt stranger, deeper than that.

She had recovered, though, however tenuous her newfound grip on her life and sanity felt. She had redrawn the desert timeline in her head, had come up with a new plan for succeeding, then thriving in Riven. She told herself the new hunger, the constant fatigue -- they were her friends, or at the very least, her just desserts. She had even resolved to recreating her supplies from whatever the wastes had to offer. She had done it once, sort of, and she could do it again.

Or so she'd thought. Hunting hadn't worked. Did she have any guarantee she could do the same in Riven?

She ate as little as she could get away with. She did not want to die. That would be admitting loss, defeat. That final insult she knew she could not withstand. No, if she was going to die, it would be via action, not inaction. She would not fail in this life as a coward. If her passivity was to wound her, it would be her choice and not her death. That would come to her in a different way. For now, she thrived on the pain.

The cut on her hand would not heal.

She spoke less now. Part of that was fatigue. A greater part was distraction. Kaya spent a good portion of the night scribbling into the dirt, muttering under her breath, counting and recounting a thousand phantom gains. She grew thinner, more wan by the day, somehow paling even under the brown of her sun-kissed skin.

She had traveled so far from herself when at last they came upon the road, she almost did not recognize it for what it was. She felt her escort hesitate -- she had, she realized, become more attuned to his body language, though whether that was practice or desperation, she could not guess -- and suddenly went rigid with fear. She remembered, all at once, what it was to stand on solid ground, to feel she was in familiar territory for the first time in a long while. Kaya had never craved safety, mundanity before. It was strange. It was weak, grotesque, pitiful. She knew that. There was enough left of who she had been for that recognition to seep through. She made a fist of her hand and relished in the burn.

Fine. She would sort that out later.

But now, just now, she would kill to follow the road. She would die to follow the road. She knew suddenly, abruptly, if her escort turned away, she would not leave with him.

And when at last the small cluster of travelers -- human travelers, four, maybe five of them -- appeared on the road, Kaya knew she could not have been dragged away by the devil himself.


"There are people there," she said huskily. "They will have supplies. They must. We can trade with them, ask where the nearest town is. They'll know, they have to. I can talk to them. You stay quiet. I'll take care of it. I can do this."

 

[Peregrine]

He heard the people long before he actually saw them. Kaya had been walking in front, able to travel easily with the obvious guidance of the path in front of her. He had settled into a distant rhythm while following her, a state that allowed him to track his position relative to potential dangers, be they voider or animal, with greater ease, at the cost of a lesser awareness of what was directly around him.

When he felt the group of people approaching he hesitated, coming to a complete halt in the middle of the path. A few steps later and he had caught back up with Kaya, fully prepared to drag her off the path if necessary. There was a chance that these people might be helpful, that they might be willing to offer up food and supplies to a traveler in need, but if all of his experiences in the wastes had taught him one thing, it was that people are unpredictable. Even those who seem of good heart could turn out to be the most dangerous thing in the waste, if you gave them the chance.

But when the silhouettes of the people came into clearer focus on the horizon, he felt something about Kaya's demeanor change. The arm that had been reaching out to grab Kaya's shoulder, to get her off the path and into the wastes, dropped listlessly back to his side. Her words seemed not the reasoned arguments and passion he was so used to, but rather the rambling of a mad creature. All the same, he did not dare pick her up or spirit her away.

Were he smaller, he would have tried to hide behind her, to vanish completely from sight. Instead he remained at her shoulder, arms crossed defensively over his chest, as they drew closer and closer to potential catastrophe.

 

[DotCom]

She was oblivious, or near enough, to his discomfort as they drew closer to the group -- indeed, four travelers with a small mule and cart drawn between them. Kaya felt her heart begin to race with such ferocity, she felt almost dizzy, though that might have just as easily been heat or hunger. She could feel herself begin to move quicker and more surely down that path, felt her shoulders straighten into something she'd have called confidence a month ago. Now, she felt only excitement, the blessed safety of feeling the ground become solid under her feet for the first time in weeks.

As the two teams of travelers grew closer, the larger began to slow, wary, perhaps, which some part of Kaya both appreciated and despised. She had always hated cowards, though she could not deny a keen love for foresight. Kaya, on the other hands, found herself nearly sprinting the last several hundred yards, stopping not ten feet short of the other group, panting and red faced, but as close to the woman who had left Crolis as she had been in many days.

"Greetings!" she said brightly, and for a moment, wondered if she appeared insane. Her brown skin had grown darker and her hair lighter under the sun, but the bright light danced in her eyes, and she could feel the flush on her cheeks warm as daylight. She was, she realized, entirely too dependent on these strangers, and she didn't even know what she wanted or expected of them. It was dangerous, she knew. But she couldn't bring herself to care.

"My name is Kaya. This is my escort. We are...headed west. I lost my supplies in a rainstorm not yet a week ago. Where are you headed? Where do you come from? Do you have anything you are willing to trade? Who are you?"

It was entirely unlike Kaya, so nearly showing her hand without knowing anything about the travelers. Any other time, she'd have hated herself for it, but now, even the anticipation of conversation felt too good to pass up. They were three men and a woman. The woman looked to be in her early forties -- too old, Kaya would have guessed, to be traveling very far. Perhaps there was a small city or village nearby? She travelled with a man who might have been her father, and a younger man near Kaya's own age. The fourth man, she realized, was closer to boyhood, perhaps having left it behind not so long ago. Her eyes lingered on him a moment longer, and a question flitted through her mind, unbidden and unasked.

She was somehow unsurprised when it was he who answered for his group.

"We...we come from a village two days' travel down the road," the boy started. He sounded uncertain, though, to his credit, his eyes never left Kaya's face. Behind him, the woman and older man looked frightened and exhausted. The younger man scanned the horizon, clearly anxious to go. His eyes kept flicking back toward Kaya's shoulder -- or rather, she realized after a moment, her own guide behind her. For this first time in several days, she recalled what he might look like to someone who did not know him. She felt her belly tense in sudden fear.

"We are hoping to meet a larger group of travelers over the rise, stationed with our fellow guides," continued the boy after a moment, gesturing to himself and the younger man. "It is a three-day journey yet, and we have only enough supplies to get us there. I am sorry."

Kaya felt her shoulders fall almost imperceptibly; before she had even bent over, her mind had sprung to life, quietly, quickly formulating a new plan. It had not yet half come into existence when the older guide spoke, thrusting an accusatory finger at Kaya's escort.

"What in the hell is that?"

 

[Peregrine]

He remained behind her, clinging to her shadow. How he wished he was small in that moment, small enough to hide himself away from the eyes of those people behind Kaya's legs like a child. Yet there was no way he could do such a thing. Even hunching, trying to protect himself from the unknown threat he could feel, would have served no purpose but to make him look even more threatening. He could do nothing but stand tall and let them look.

He could feel their eyes on him, already so distrustful. Distrust was a natural reaction out in the Wastes. How could there be anything but distrust between foreign parties in such a hostile location? And yet he knew by now that there was something in the human instinct that perceived him as a threat, and instinctively sensed the potential danger he posed. It had been easier back when he had still looked a child to get people to overcome that natural reaction. Now it was nearly impossible. Sometimes he could pull it off when he fully wrapped himself, hiding behind scavenged clothes. But now...

His bandages were starting to unravel, and were by this point so filthy that it was impossible to tell that they had once been any color other than a dark, putrid brown. He had not dared to take them off, even long enough to clean them. Not when Kaya was always clinging so close to him. He barely found enough time alone to try and rewrap them, and keep the entirety of his form hidden behind the thin strips of fabric. Many had fallen away, and it was now impossible to cover everything, no matter how hard he tried. Faint hints of skin like cheap, hardened leather, the color of dark, blood filled muscle peeked out from between the wrappings. For Kaya the transition would have been gradual, so gradual she might not even fully realize the oddity of it. But to others he had to look like something right out of a nightmare.

The accusing words of the guide would have been more than enough for him to spook. He could feel one of his legs shaking nearly uncontrollably as he desperately fought the instinct to bolt off into the wastes, where it was safe. Where he knew all the rules. But he could not leave Kaya, and at this moment there was no way she would follow. He could pick her up and run, but he feared what her reaction would be after they escaped this group. He feared what the guide's instinctive reaction would be. There was a gun strapped to his hip, a fine piece of metal and technology. He would be an expert in its use. All old escorts were.

There was nothing he could say in answer to the old guide's question. Kaya would have to do it. There was nothing he could do but stand there, and desperately try and conceal his shaking.

 

[DotCom]

It all happened very quickly from the time the bearded man asked his question to the time the two parties left each other with a much more urgent pace than the speed with which they'd approached. In Kaya's memory, she had spotted the first good news in days, even weeks...and then seen it sliding all from her fingers, just as everything else had, in the precise moment she realized that even if she could somehow gain the other guide's trust, her own would never have his. Whether that was her own shortcoming, or one of the creature who now nearly cowered behind her, she could not say. And she knew better than she'd have liked to admit that it did not matter.

In one moment, she had been asking after spare rations, already thinking of how she could wile them away from their owners. In the next, the bearded man was asking, then demanding, nearly shouting as his companions grew more irritated. All thoughts of rations or even amiability were out the window then, once more burned down to the dregs of survival. She saw the man pull his gun as if through water, his actions slow, even graceful. Then, as if she were only some dancer playing the part, Kaya was moving forward and not away. She would spend a good many nights thinking about that all-but instinctive answer, if only because it was a much-needed reprieve from the plans she kept drawing and redrawing in her head.

Kaya had never been particularly quick, but she was determined, she was strong, and she could bluff her way from the darkest depths, or at least she had been able to do so once. Now, as the man drew his gun, she drew close, slowly, almost sultry, despite living beneath two weeks of grime and sweat. She pressed the side of her dagger against the taut tendon on the inside of his wrist and said, very quietly, "This will not kill you."

She had lost most of the poison after the storm, but enough remained in her blood -- the blood which had stained that blade nearly every night since the storm -- to rot the man's hand to uselessness before he found a city with anything close to an antidote.

"I don't want to fight," she went on, sounding almost casual in her sudden anger...or was it fear? "Leave now. Take your people and your rations, and every single bullet you've brought with you today, and you'll have no trouble from me or my guide. Rest assured, sir, that my blade will cut only if you attempt to pull the trigger -- don't test it, I can promise you won't like the results, insignificant as they may seem now -- and that you may well kill me long before you realized my knife is poisoned. After all, this won't kill you," she reminded. "But that pistol will not kill him, and please take it from me, his recovery process is gruesome."

She stood there a moment, feeling his gun tremble nearly against her sternum, silently thankful to whoever was listening that her hands had not yet betrayed her in the same way. Twenty minutes ago, she had seen a night in a clean bed with new friends and new barters. And now she was hoping only that she did not lose her guide -- whatever he was.

It seemed an eternity before at last the bearded man pulled away, white faced save for the high spots of red on his cheeks. He gave Kaya a look that she deciphered easily enough, though she could not quite put words to it. Or not in polite company. He did not look at her guide at all, and indeed, the strange wastelands creature might have been disappeared entirely for all Kaya knew. She didn't turned to look back at him until the smaller group of travelers made their careful, hasty way beyond him and further into the desert.

Kaya watched them go, then turned without a word to continue down the path. It now seemed ironic at best.

 

[Peregrine]

They finally left the path once they were out of view of the other group of travelers. It was a relief, to step off the hard-packed double tracks, created by the weight of hundreds of wagon wheels, and to feel the soft, shifting earth of dust, sand, and rock once more. They walked in silence, Kaya in front, him behind. He wondered what she was thinking, but there were no traces of her thoughts to be found on the back of her dark hair.

He, it seemed, had known that guard was going to draw his gun long before Kaya had. In some respects, he had known it was going to happen as soon as he had seen the black silhouettes of that party appearing from the wavering phantasm that was the desert air. What had been entirely unexpected was Kaya's decision to protect him. When he had seen that man drawing the gun from his waist, he had braced himself, ready for the gun's report, and for the bright rose of pain that would accompany it. Instead, he had looked up to see Kaya, her own body blocking the path from the barrel of the gun to him. There was a dagger in her hand, placed firmly against the man's wrist.

It was so unexpected that he didn't know what to think. He had no idea what to do. Instead he stood there, frozen, watching the words drip from Kaya's mouth like the blood flowing from his own body, thick and sticky. When they stepped to either side of the path and allowed Kaya to walk through them, he followed after her, silent, numb, confused.

What had prompted that? Was it simple repayment, for all the times he had drawn her away from the edge of danger, for bringing her food and water on this seemingly endless trek through the wastes? Somehow he couldn't see that. Not really. Kaya had promised him money. To her, that was what his efforts were worth, that was his repayment. It didn't matter that he had little use for such things, because that was the only language Kaya understood. She would never put her life on the line out of some attempt to repay him. As little as he understood her, he understood this much.

The thoughts kept running around in circles in his head as they moved on slowly, as he ran loping circles around Kaya's slow-moving form to bring her the things she needed to survive. He thought about it as they sat, silent and hunkered, in the scant shadow provided by a crevice dug in the back of a dune. He thought about it as they stumbled across the old, desiccated form of one of the desert trees that grew so rarely in the desert, brought them to a stop for the evening, and set out to hunt for fresh meat as Kaya gathered branches from the bone-dry wood. When he returned, a small, neat fire burned in the slight depression on one side of the tree, and he dropped the gutted, headless, wingless, legless, featherless form of the vulture in front of her. Whatever she could not finish that evening, he would eat the next morning.

They hadn't spoken a single word to each other. It wasn't uncommon. Ever since the flood, many an evening had passed in utter silence between the two. But, tonight, he broke tradition and did something unprecedented. He spoke first.

"Why?" he asked softly, glancing up to look at Kaya. "Could have let them shoot me, gone with, gone back to some city. Could have gotten out of the wastes. Didn't. Why?"

 

[DotCom]

While initiating conversation -- particularly one that could be deemed so potentially long and unwieldy -- was the very last thing Kaya expected her travel companion to do, the question he asked was, in itself, entirely unsurprising. The young merchant had in fact been asking herself the same thing since their encounter in the desert, and she had yet to come up with an explanation she found suitable. Accordingly, she also found the question, when voiced aloud, rather grating to say the least.

"Don't be stupid." She'd had meant for the words to sound at least somewhat scathing, but alas, they came across only as weary. And perhaps vaguely amused.

"I didn't, and do not want to go back to 'some city'," she continued evenly, reciting the words she'd been telling herself for some time now. "You think I'd come this far to turn around and entrust my life with a handful of beggars? As I explained to you when we first met, I choose the best in everything I do. I would not travel, even back to relative safety, with a reckless gunman and a boy yet halfway to manhood."

Feeling just about as satisfied with that answer as she had been when she'd first come up with it -- that is to say not at all -- Kaya gave a disdainful cough and tossed a handful of dried twigs into the fire, watching the embers float away into the night.

"Besides. My old employer has undoubtedly discovered my treachery by this point, so Crolis can hardly be called safety, and anywhere else is only a backwards step. You said yourself, there's nowhere out here worth going, and whatever that old woman was coming from, I don't want any part in it.

"So. My options were to let that idiot with the gun take control of the situation, or do the same myself. I've worked in a smithery long enough to know a pistol like that is best used at long range. In close quarters, even a single shot would have been far more trouble than it was worth." They were, all of them, the same arguments she'd been making to herself, spoken aloud now, only more fervently, defensive, nearly pleading -- yet another action Kaya was entirely unused to. There was more she could add: that she was not keen on waiting for him to recover while she sat and starved with no supplies alone in the desert. That she could hardly be counted to hunt for both of them while he slept, and what if he died? Even if she set out to follow the family to 'safety', she'd not get far on her own. If nothing else, Kaya intended to live, and the best way for her to do that was to ensure her guide's health and safety.

As he had ensured her own. That was the final argument she had made, hastily done, perhaps, at the peak of her exhaustion and frustration. It made sense on paper. Thrice now he had saved her, all but risked his life for her own. One way or another, she owed him far more than coin it was clear he had no use for. But that made no sense. Kaya was not that sort of person, and had not been for a great many years.

No, what her defense came down to was a hand of flimsy attempts to justify an action she could not understand. Probably, she was tired or hungry or simply growing desperate. More likely she was afraid, though she was not keen on sharing that aloud, either. That the desert's heat and spastic cruelty had addled her mind was clear. To what degree, she supposed, remained yet to be seen. Though if this bout of uncanny weakness was to be any indicator of what was to come, this would not be the last unwelcome question she would face.

"And anyway," she said finally, sounding just a bit petulant, "I don't see why it matters. You haven't been shot, have you? I'd have thought that counted as a win, regardless of my reasoning. Though of course my actions had nothing to do with you, creature, of that you can be sure."

It didn't occur to her until later that he hadn't asked that, precisely, and that her premature defense was no kind of defense at all.