Illstar

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Aerin didn't look up when she came out, but he knew she was around because the wolves got excited, plus there was a half-heard greeting. He was more focused on his art around him until the main wolf, Fang, bounded around him in a large circle. It was enough to disrupt the dust on the ground, and Aerin watched with a touch of sadness as his design swirled away into nothing. He sighed, leaning on the slight twig as he followed the wolf's foot prints all the way to Nova's boots. Gaze trailing up to her eyes, his head tilted and he almost seemed to perk up at the idea of companions. There was that, and the twig had been threatening to break under his weight, which would have been ungraceful and maybe make Nova rethink her choice.

Sorrow from his uncompleted project chased away, Aerin nodded. "I haven't had any... It'd be nice, even if three of them are animals." They still had feeling and emotion, which was more than he could say for some of the Illstar-infected people he'd come across.

Twirling the twig in his fingers, Aerin walked past her to collect his gear. "I'm glad to have someone to travel with." Nova probably didn't know what she was getting herself into. Aerin, despite loving to do something that didn't require human interaction, also had a penchant for talking and sharing stories on just about anything, even embarrassing moments in his life. If she was hoping for something quieter, well... she was most certainly out of luck.
 
Yeah....like she thought he'd actually refuse. Wishful thinking at its finest.

Nova groaned inwardly, but only to herself, and outwardly forced herself to smile even a little. "Great." Well, maybe more than a little smile. He almost looked like an eager wolf himself looking at her like that and the brunette's smile widened a little and became a bit more genuine despite herself. Oh, what had she gotten herself into? No, no scratch that. The wolves had gotten her into this and she would very willingly blame them this time around if something went wrong or she was driven to the brink of her sanity by all this. Brown eyes flickered with a hard stare to said canines and she was met with lolling tongues and completely happy expressions that made her pinch the bridge of her nose between her fingers.

Nevermind. She'd have no help there.

Hoisting her bag higher on her shoulders and pulling her hood up - once again cursing the color black, though, she wouldn't actually trade it for anything else - Nova glanced at Aerin again and gave him a look over for a moment. Still rather cute. If only that counted for everything. "Why do I get the feeling I am not going to know a moment of quiet for a long time yet?" It was part teasing - if anything Nova did could be called teasing - and she raised a brow before starting to walk.

The wolves yipped, Rifle running around Aerin excitedly for a moment, much more dog behavior than wolf, before all three took off after the woman and then past her. Perfect scouts.
 
Aerin followed suit, the dirty, off-white hood covering his features along with a face mask that obscured his nose and mouth. Only the green eyes glinted in the shadows under his hood. Despite that, there was almost an faux innocence in his smile under the fabric. "'cause you won't," he said, coming up to her side to walk along with her. Now that initial introductions were out of the way, the wolves seemed to be okay with his presence. At least, okay enough not to try and kill and then eat him. Which wasn't a completely comforting thought, but he took it as it was.

"Have you met anyone else with strange abilities like yours?" he asked, deciding that he could give her a slight reprieve before his stories picked up. "I can count on one hand the number of times I've met Wanderers. None of them were like you." It sounded wrong, so he tried again. "With... a super ability, I mean. I don't really know what to call it. I'm guessing not too many people know about it either." If the wrong people found out, they'd try to kill her, or the wolves. Or both.
 
Nova snorted at his confirmation, pulling her own mask up over her face. That's what she'd thought. The brunette almost braced herself for the next words that might come out of his mouth, fully expecting them to be long-winded and probably about something she didn't give a hoot over, but Aerin surprised her - probably wouldn't be the first time, though, she didn't know that yet - and brown eyes glanced over to green before looking away again. Her mask hid her grimace of a smirk, but there was a small edge of it in her voice nonetheless.

"I think mutation would be a good word for it. Nothing about us physically has changed, but the Illstar did something to our genetic make-up, maybe even our cellular make-up, and it's enhanced abilities we might have already been predisposed to or created something new altogether. It's hard to tell at this point." She seemed to frown at the uncertainty of it, silence reigning for a moment. "I do know that the two people I've met with mutations were from Chicago, though, the epicenter. I'm more than sure we were all in the first wave of the virus' spread. 'Course, one of them I am just guessing at since he got himself killed before the subject could be brought up, but still there seems to be a pattern emerging."

It was probably the most she'd said to him in one sitting since meeting and it did prove one thing about Nova; give her a topic she knew, was passionate about or just plain interested in and she'd talk. Perhaps a lot.

The female glanced at the male again, something hard in the depths of her gaze. "Oh, I wouldn't say not too many people know about the mutation. I would say that the majority who do know don't want anything good for us, though." There was a story there, but it was anyone's guess whether she'd tell it.
 
It made sense. It also explained why there were so few, and why they hadn't originated from anywhere outside of that area. Aerin was personally glad he didn't have any strange powers to deal with, but he did have to admit that hers was cool. He never thought having wolf friends would be a good idea, but they seemed like good animals. Better than some of the Illstar-infected he'd run across.

He was just glad he didn't have anything else to worry about.

The twig dragged in swirls and patterns behind him, giving his hands something to do while they walked. His fingers itched to draw or design something, yet he wanted to save the paper and pencils he'd found. Still, he found himself doodling whenever he was given the chance. It was just a habit.

"No, I guess that wouldn't be a good idea." It was a delayed response as Aerin got lost in his thoughts, but he still spoke out loud. "How'd you first figure it out? And how did you convince the wolves to follow you?"
 
Nova had to smile at the memory that came unbidden to her mind at his questions and she shook her head, looking ahead to where there wolves were only small shapes in the distance. They'd double-back soon enough to report, but not before they'd run off their morning energy, taking to a steady lope during the afternoon hours and staying close at that time. Amusement danced in her tone when she answered Aerin. "Well, I had just escaped an infected mob during the fifth month of the virus' spread, nothing to my name but a can of beans at the time, and when I ducked under a bridge, I scared the living daylights out of an stray cat."

The brunette chuckled, grinning beneath the mask across her face. "That cat taught me more swear words than I think I've ever heard in my life. That was my first introduction to talking felines, or rather my ability to hear them. That cat wanted nothing to do with me, but over time I found others, some stray dogs, too and I figure out what I could do."

Nova adjusted her pack on her shoulders and looked up to the sky for a moment before looking forward again. "The wolves...I didn't convince them of anything. I had nothing to give them, no promises to offer. I think they followed me at first because they were used to humans and I was the first one they'd seen who stopped to help them. I fully expected them to run off as soon as I let 'em out, but when we started speaking, they came along and they've kinda adopted me."

Brown eyes glanced over at green again, rather tired of talking about herself. She didn't normally do it. "So what about you? What makes you believe your father could be alive in Virginia?"
 
Attracting people was never his strong suit, despite his generally appealing outward appearance, but Aerin figured wolves were a little harder to talk to. Nova was becoming more interesting by the second, but he would be hard-pressed to admit that right then. He knew little about her, and the last thing he wanted to do was scare her off or make her feel threatened. There were wolves, after all.

Her question jarred him from his thoughts. "He's smart," was all he could manage at first. It wasn't a lie. His father, Neil, knew how to handle himself in a darker situation. And Illstar infections were the darkest anyone had ever faced. "He would know not to leave. If... If he's dead, then he'll still be there. I know he would have wanted to find me, but it became too dangerous to really do anything until the dust settled."

In that moment, a whip of wind swirled around them, stirring said settled dust. "Well... You know what I mean. He's there." I hope. No part of him wanted to think his father was dead or otherwise gone, but he forced himself to foresee that possibility. "I'll find him. We won't have time for familial relations, but I'll know he's there and happy to see me."

...I hope.
 
His explanation sounded like pure hope with maybe a tinge of desperation to it, but who was Nova to judge that? Everyone was looking for a reason to continue living. Or they were simply dying. It was human nature to want to cling to something. That's why Nova often wondered if she was still human. She had nothing. No family to look for, no one to find, nothing to move toward, no reason to want to go anywhere in particular. She just...was. It was an existence she'd seen other living....but they simply looked like one of the dead themselves. They didn't care....and she still cared. She didn't want to die, fought to live...but technically she had nothing to live for.

Yes, it was a curious way to exist.

Nova shook herself out of her thoughts and rather uncharacteristically for her, she spoke rather gently and refrained from the bluntness she was far more used to. She hadn't always been like that. She could have been described as outgoing and even bubbly on occasions before all this started, but she supposed everyone had changed in that last year.

"I hope you find him. Everyone deserves to know what happened to their family." She kept her brown eyes from his green when she spoke, not wanting anything read in her own gaze. She could keep her expressions rather neutral, but Nova knew her eyes often betrayed her and right now, she felt far sadder than she wanted to admit.
 
Aerin didn't miss the change in tone, but he forced himself not to ask. She sounded almost sorrowful, and his helpful side sprang forward, ready to comfort her at a moment's notice. But it wasn't his place. He knew too little to help, and he knew it. So, he only pulled the hood over his eyes and adjusted his mask over his nose. "Yeah. I'll find him."

Silence passed over them, or it would have, had the wind not begun to pick up and swirl around them. Sand bit at his exposed skin and his clothes, but he carried on. It seemed there would be harsher sand and windstorms through the day and night. At least, that was the prediction Aerin had been able to make recently. If the wind started in the morning, it would always persist. If it was patchy, there was a chance a storm could pass. If there were only breezes... that was when they became unruly. Lulls in the wind often foretold of even worse storms, but sometimes it didn't. All Aerin knew was to fear the breaks in the weather.

"We should try to find some shelter," he said, raising his voice over the wind. Their surroundings had grown desolate. Flaky debris and old chunks of man-made materials littered the ground, pieces occasionally flying off and disappearing into the sands. There were far less trees than before, so there was nothing to stop the gale's onslaught. Aerin couldn't see too far in front of him, but something on their horizon darkened, and it was the faint promise of a building, something to escape into. Upon further inspection, it appeared to be a store of some kind. It might have been a part of something bigger, but wood and bricks shifted in the wind, confirming that there had been other buildings. The glass doors had long shattered, but there were still metal frames, and it was enough for the time being.

Aerin shoved the metal frame open, and it gave a metallic squeal as it resisted the motion. Moving inside, he could hear the wind beating down as well as filtering through the broken glass doors. It was loud, but he was no longer being battered by the harsh weather. He took a moment to breathe, shaking sand from the creases in his hood as he pushed it from his head.
 
She was glad for the silence, but Nova was even more grateful for the wolves' intelligence as they came back to her and Aerin just before the wind really started to pick up. They were rather miserable in the wind, but the brunette was far more miserable when they got in the shed and each canine immediately shook the sand from their fur. Brown eyes watched as sand flew right into Aerin and Nova clenched both lips and teeth hard against laughter, clearing her throat after a moment, pulling her hood and mask down now that it was 'safe'. She stuck her tongue out a bit from the corner of her mouth for a moment before smiling a little with a chuckle.

"Yeah. Umm, better to keep the mask on until water and sand are shaken out with these guys." The warning was a little late, but hey, she'd warned him about water now, too!

Nova smiled a bit again and then sighed, sitting back against the wall, feeling the vibrations against the metal from the wind. The wolves took their own corner, laying down with each other and the brunette gave them a look over, seeing nothing alarming, before she looked more carefully around the shed - she'd taken up residence near the door but far enough away from the flying sand without even thinking about it - and then to Aerin himself.

Mhm. Still cute. But really, of all the things to notice when the world was going to hell in a hand basket. Then again...not much else to notice right now. And it wasn't like she was going to see any other attractive sights anytime soon. Eh, might as well enjoy it. Nova smirked inwardly and put her arm up on her bent knee, the other leg stretched out. She rolled her neck a bit, pulling her hair out and mussing it up with her free hand to get some of the sand out as she spoke to the male.

"I don't travel with people, so bear with me if I get this phrasing wrong, but; what were you before the Illstar?"
 
Shortly after entering, Aerin was pelted with grains of sand, courtesy of the wolves. They stuck in his hair and in his eyebrows, and it took careful finger-combing to release the grains from the strands. He was in the process of re-spiking his hair into a suitable style when she spoke. He tilted his head up, one hand still resting on his head.

I was nobody, he wanted to say. What came out was, "I was an artist." A flush of color accompanied his words, as if he was embarrassed to admit such an... well, artsy career choice. "I was into graphic design and traditional art. I wanted to draw and work with design programs and all that. I was studying it in college. I would say it's not something I'm proud of, but I am." He looked around the store, a rueful expression on his face, as if he were hoping for the rare art supplies he was always on the hunt for.

The shelves were mostly empty, and various items littered the ground. They'd been pulled and dropped in haste, most likely when the Illstar-infected people began to attack. Everyone had gathered what they could and fled, but they weren't able to take everything. Aerin wandered, forgetting to be courteous and return the question. It was only when he spotted a stack of ripped construction paper did he find his voice. "What about you?" he asked, his voice distant as he searched for a pen or another suitable drawing tool. It was a never ending hunt, or so it felt like.
 
Nova can't help but smirk just a little at his answer, shaking her head ruefully. Oh, what a small world they lived in...and only growing smaller. Or was it that the world was growing bigger and communities were growing smaller? Eh, which ever. The brunette watched the male wander about, observing what he was doing before she clued into the fact that he was looking for something all artists wanted.

A pen.

Chuckling to herself, Nova crouched and dug quietly in her pack, pulling out the desired object before she rose again, silent as a cat. She raised a brow at his rather delayed question and didn't answer right away as she followed him down an aisle and tapped him on the shoulder. When Aerin turned, she didn't utter a word before simply handing him the pen in her grasp before she slipped by him, starting to speak. "I was in medical school. Family's choice, but I wasn't bad at it. Before that I took three years of art. Wasn't as good at that, but I liked it all right. Wasn't the lifestyle for me, though."

Her brown eyes were searching the shelves, looking for something and Nova smiled at finding it, reaching back and pulling out a simple tennis ball dog toy. She tossed it in the air, caught it and smiled a bit. That would be helpful later. The brunette brought her attention back to Aerin. "What do you like to draw the most?"
 
Aerin didn't seem to notice her lack of speech until he felt a touch on his shoulder. His mind, too trained on his mission, almost strayed toward the pistol at his side until he remembered Nova. His eyes focused on the object in her hand, and he immediately broke out into a smile, snatching the writing utensil from her before he slipped a paper out from the stack and began to draw on it. "They forced you to go? I guess if you weren't bad at it, that's not so... well, bad, but was it what you wanted to do?"

He heard the thump of the toy in her hand, but he couldn't tear himself away from his tentative drawing. It wasn't until she directed a question at him that he looked up. "Oh... that's a tough one," he chuckled. "I draw anything and everything. Mostly stuff I see gives me inspiration to recreate it. I mean, I could even draw a portrait of you if I wanted to." And that was when he bit his tongue at his complete lack of inhibition for a second. "...Sorry, that was--" Had it really been bad? "--forward. I only meant that if you hang around long enough, I could probably recreate your image without looking at you." A lopsided half smile crossed his features before he ducked his head.

His current drawing was on a torn half sheet of red construction paper. His forearm blocked one side of the paper and he was more hunched over than he should have been, but one careful angle revealed the lines. A side view of a rose, complete with leaves and thorns, adorned his page. The shading wasn't terrible, but all he had was a pen. There were a few stray lines out of place, coming from his out-of-practice hands. The thought was there, however, and he still had an eye for design.
 
She blinked in some surprise at his statement and then shook her head, waving off the apology quite literally before she tossed the ball up again. "Don't worry about it. You draw what catches your eye. Whether that's me or an orange, there's no greater significance one over the other." She shrugged and then moved a bit closer, curious about his drawing despite herself. A quick, discreet glance showed her the rose and Nova raised a brow, nodding slightly in mild appreciation of the world. Nice. Needed to work on his lines and posture to keep better control of the pen, but it wasn't bad at all. And she was hardly going to correct him about it right now.

What would be the point?

She moved away again, tossing the ball absently. "As for me and med-school, well...no, I didn't want to go, but my mother was a geneticist and my father....ran in the same field, and it's what they wanted for me." She sighed and ran a hand through her hair, looking around again for anything that might prove useful, anything not picked over. Chances were slim she'd actually come across anything useful. Not after this long, but it was always wise to look.

"I didn't really know what I wanted to do."
 
The off hand comment about her father's field of study made him look up. It was an odd thing to say, considering he'd specified her mother's. He opened his mouth, but the only words that might have spilled were ones that would pry into her life. So he simply closed his lips and went back to his drawing. When he finally pulled back, he noticed the mistakes and a frown creased his features. He didn't like making mistakes. It was why they had invented erasers. Still, it was art, and he folded it and hefted his backpack down to his feet to slide it into a random pocket.

"Well, that's normal," he said, zipping up the pocket. He pushed the pen behind his ear, seemingly (or conveniently) forgetting that it wasn't his pen. "I didn't know until I got to college. I took a design class and really enjoyed it. I was always good at drawing, but you know, you get told artists make crap for cash, blah blah blah. Well, I pursued it anyway. I had some critiques on work that got pushed into contests and whatnot... made a little money, but my dad was always supportive. He liked what I was doing. I guess that's why I want to find him. He was always looking out for me, so now I need to look out for him."

Realizing it might have been too much to say, he gave another smile before he dove into another piece of paper. This time, the drawing became of a wolf head, though it had more dog-like features, similar to Rifle.
 
----

Night had settled rather quickly on this place - not that they really knew how late it was at the moment - and the dust storm still wailed outside. The noise was a constant now, not nearly so deafening, or perhaps they'd just gotten used to it, and Nova laid looking up at the ceiling of the store, eyes flickering about. The wolves were still sleeping, but she suspected that Aerin was now and she spoke out into the silence of the store. If he was still awake, then they'd talk, but if he was asleep she'd be fine with that, too.

"Do you ever miss the stars?"

The clouds were always blocking it at night and storms like this made star-gazing impossible. Nova could remember them, though. She remembered a lot of things that she was more than sure would not be coming back to them. The world....green. Birds. Food that was easy to come by. Friendly people. Warmth. Gentle sunlight. So many things they'd taken for granted and she more than some.

The brunette rolled to her stomach, tracing the patterns on the floor with her eyes. It was better than looking up at a metal ceiling crisscrossing with bars. Well, at least it wasn't a small place, the entire store providing enough space that she didn't feel trapped.
 
Aerin knew night had come, because the sand darkened and no longer reflected the sparing sunlight through the day. He lost his only light, and no matter how hard he snapped the light switch or yanked on the cord, no electricity flowed through the building to provide drawing light. He had grumbled, but he kept the construction paper and had rolled out behind the counter. He was twirling Nova's pen in between his fingers, unable to sleep with the howling wind sweeping through their shelter. It wasn't so overpowering, but it was there, and he knew it was, and his mind wouldn't let go of that. And then she spoke into the wind.

"The stars? Yeah... I do. When I was a kid, I wanted to move them around to make pictures. Then my dad told me they already had symbolic pictures. It was like someone had already painted the sky." A romantic notion, coming from a child, but he'd held onto it. "I just want the world to go back to normal. I never thought I'd say that. This whole thing... It sucks pretty bad."

Good job, Aerin. You just uttered the understatement of the century. Real smooth.
 
She'd never thought of the stars that way. It was a nice way of looking at it.

Nova chuckled openly at his words and she raised her head, looking over at him in some amusement. "I would say it more than sucks, but the sentiment is understood." she replied before sighing, the sound lost in the wailing of the wind as she laid her head back down on her arms. "I think anyone who likes this world is not right in the head. And I've met a lot of people who weren't right in the head, I think I can accurately judge that one."

The flash of a memory her own words instilled made the brunette shiver in the darkness, unnoticed and that was the only reason she let that reaction show. Nova shook it away soon after and she curled further into her sleeping bag. "Night, Aerin." The words almost felt strange to say. It had been a long time since she'd said those words to anyone at night. She didn't really over-think it all that much, though, as her eyes closed and she slipped into sleep, an uneasy sleep.

In the morning she wouldn't know if it was because of the wind howling in the night or because she'd thought about it that brought the nightmares. All Nova did know when she woke in the night was that she wasn't thinking clearly at all. She jolted up with a scream and then immediately scrambled out of her sleeping bag to press her back against the wall, curling as much as she could make herself and trembling violently. She seemed not to realize where she was in the least, seeing something completely different.

The wolves have woken with the scream and while Shadow and Fang moved toward her, wary but concerned, as if they'd gone through this before and knew not to touch her, Rifle went to Aerin, nudging him with a whine. One could almost wonder if the wolves had wanted another person with their human pack-member because they didn't know how to handle her at times like this.
 
"Night, Nova." Having a companion wasn't so bad. Even if she did tote around three dangerous animals. There was a feeling of hopeful safety stirring in his mind, and a tentative friendship warmed his heart as he fell asleep, despite the sounds of the outside. However, it only seemed to last a short time, or maybe it was a long time. Aerin had lost track of the hours in his head, dreamless black swamping his mind. He heard a shriek that had nothing to do with the wind, but his sleepy brain credited the sound to the gales. It was only when he felt a wet nose on his hand did he stir. He came face to face with Rifle and he sat up, nearly smacking his head on the counter.

"What's the matter?" he asked before realizing he wasn't Nova. The animals couldn't talk back to him. He noted Rifle's whining before he saw a boot sticking out from a corner. The other two wolves were around her, but she wasn't asleep. She was shaking and she looked like she wanted to cry. She held the glassy gaze of someone who couldn't tell left from right, or in her case, nightmare from reality.

"Nova?" He knelt on one knee between the two wolves, though he adopted the same distance they did from her. He didn't want to set any of them on edge. "Nova, wake up. You're having a nightmare. What you're seeing isn't real." He inched closer, but he did so with deliberate care. He hadn't laid a hand on her, and he wasn't going to. His gaze darted between her and the wolves, ready to jump back if any one of them lashed out.
 
The canine's were whining, not growling, distressed by what they could not fix nor understand. Their attempts to talk to the brunette were met with failure as it took part of her conscious mind to communicate with them and right now Nova was anything but completely conscious. Her eyes snapped to Aerin, though, at his words, but it was unclear at first whether she understood what he was saying. It soon became apparent, though, and she whimpered and tried to press back further, having nowhere to go, but still trying to escape.

"...I don't....know... I d-don't know...a-anything..." Her shaking worsened, her fingers coming up to her head. "...please, p-please leave...leave me alone... I don't kn-know..." The words were whispered, but desperate, scared and Rifle gave another whine verging on a growl as he risked touching her arm with his nose. Nova flinched back violently and her head disappeared under her arms as if warding off a blow. She started to cry then and it was not a reaction Nova would ever let herself show if she'd been awake. She didn't cry. She would never give any indication that something was wrong with her while she was aware, but at night, her mind got free reign. It wasn't every night, though, the pattern seemingly random.

The wolves jumped back and started to half-circle at a distance, stiff-legged and fur bristling, but keeping away. Both Shadow and Rifle would look at Aerin every so often, though, their eyes flickering from one human to another. Instinct told them that Nova was not their kin even if she was in their pack. Aerin was her kin. They could help one another and their human needed help.
 
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