Rain-Born kicked open yet another apartment and stumbled in without much thought about her surroundings. Jespar followed behind with worried eyes. Something was definitely wrong with her.
"Hey, Chief, er -" he tentatively began. "Listen, maybe it's time to settle down tonight."
"No," she breathed, cursing in fury as she found another cupboard covered in cobwebs. "I can go on."
He was trying to work out the problem here. Was it just her pride that stopped her from acknowledging her limitations?
He hopped on top of a dust-caked couch and barked at her. "Hey, you told me you'd listen to me from now on, right?" he asked, trying to make eye contact with the constantly pacing warrior. "It's ok to admit that you need a break now and then. You just performed a root canal on a giant worm, for fuck"s sake."
His tone caught him by surprise. Sometimes, he realized, Nicole's lessons did sink through.
But she still wouldn't stop. She stood now in front of the couch he lay on, having upturned everything else in the whole abode.
"Move, Jespar."
"Nah, Chief, not this time," he said, facing her and meeting her furious gaze. This wasn't her he was looking at. What the hell was happening behind those eyes?
"Why are you being so...so you?" she asked, her hand flying to her temple in consternation.
"And why are you losing it like this?" he asked her right back. He wasn't gonna let up this time.
"Because I don't know what I'm doing!"
Her outburst shook him momentarily, lost in her desperate, bulging eyes. She looked like she was about to break. Then he caught himself. Why should that be a surprise? Who the Hell did know what they were doing out here?
"Rain-Born, listen, just stay here for a bit, and I'll scout ahead. I'll come back lat- hey!"
She had collapsed onto the couch, her breathing coming in raspy, short bursts. Looking at her closer, he saw that she was sweating.
Even in the cold of this desert night?
Above them both, a rusted fan spun with no alternative, still committed to the duty it had been designed for decades ago. It was the only spectator as the dog stared dumbly at the girl who collapsed on the couch next to him, clutching at some invisible wound around her stomach.
"Rain-Born, hey -"
She batted his paw away from her and staggered out to the tiny adjoining apartment hallway. There was one door she had yet to open.
"I will finish this tonight. And then I will find Callisto. I have to. I was chosen."
She panted like some wounded animal, still clutching her stomach tightly. It was like there was something there she wanted to physically tear out of her the way she tightened her grip. Jespar had had enough.
"If you don't lie down, I swear I'm gonna...write you a strongly worded letter. Speak to your parents. Damn it, girl, I'll take this up with the P.T. Fucking A!"
He ran through her legs and rounded on her just as she was about to kick down the door. "I said stop!"
She looked down at him with disgust, gritted teeth and wild hair framing her as an image of pure Deadlands ferocity. In this instance, she was the very painting of those two Tribals who had first muzzled him, thinking him nothing more than spare meat.
But he didn't back down. He wasn't afraid. She was in there; he just had to remind her.
She tried to kick him aside, but he stood stalwart, as stoic as his breed could be.
"You're gonna go back to that couch and lie down, young lady," he added shakily. "Or else."
Her fury did not abate. "Or what, Jespar?" she asked, rounding on him. "You will fight me here? You may as well kill me. I am already a failure in the eyes of my Tribe. At least if I died to a creature of The Deadlands, I would be spared their judgmental faces. I would not have to look upon Father-Mother as I did within that evil tunnel."
At the mention of the tunnel, he narrowed his eyes.
So, you went through something too, he thought.
"Chief," he said calmly. "You are not a failure."
She suddenly flew into a rage.
"I am a failure as a warrior, a huntress of the Hanakh, and as a woman," she added with spite. "To let this thing lay me low. This stupid, stupid thing!"
"Chief!"
She had thrown herself at the door with a scream, intent only on breaking through to take what she could and then - perhaps she did not know what. Maybe she no longer knew why she was even here anymore. Everything in front of her had become an obstacle, an impediment to the path she was supposed to walk—the path to Callisto.
Now, even her own body slowed her down.
And with this thought echoing like a mirthful taunt in her head, she observed the contents of the new room:
The curtains were drawn, and the moon"s light peered only slightly through the torn holes in their veil to illuminate the small objects that dotted the room. There looked to be some wrappings that covered the wall, emblazoned with the words "Happy Birthday." Beneath these signs were many small ornaments and toys that even Rain-Born could recognize were the playthings of a new life: plastic balls, smiling dolls with button-eyes and dirt-caked skirts, and stuffed animals all staring at the object in the room's center. Rain-Born crept closer to examine this strange thing while Jespar hung back, saying nothing.
It looked like an oddly shaped wooden cot, with thin feet jutting out from its base and high, slatted sides enclosing something within. This something seemed to be a tiny bundle wrapped in white cotton cloth - and as Rain-Born traced her fingers along it, she felt its softness. It was probably the most exquisite fabric her calloused skin had ever felt.
But they felt something else beneath the blanket. She felt the bumpy sensation of a small form concealed within. Something hard and oblong.
Then she saw the tiny skeletal hand that poked out from under the blanket"s side.
She gulped as she unveiled the rest of the body.
"Hey, Chief," Jespar said, slowly inching forwards, seeing her bow her head and watching her shoulders sink. "Listen..."
"Have it your way, Jespar," she said. There was no sadness or pain behind her words. Truthfully, there was no emotion at all. "I will rest."
She walked passed him without saying anything more and only spared a slight glance in his direction. He was left in the room sighing, staring at the "Happy Birthday" banners littering the interior.
"My way, huh?" he said to no one but the dead air. "Where have I heard that before?"
He covered the baby"s mummified body back up before leaving the room.
...
"Happy Birthday, Jespar!"
A barrage of balloons and firecrackers hit his face, and searing light assailed his senses. He hated being woken up by the lab buzzer early and grumbled to himself as he stretched his legs and made for his breakfast kibble. She had waited in the darkness of the laboratory research station to assault him like this.
"WHA? WHO? IS THIS IT? NICOLE, THE LIGHT OF DEATH IS UPON ME!"
She appeared from behind her analyst desk with a look of dismay. "Honestly, Jespar," she moaned. "You're such a drama queen."
He pouted and looked around at the decorations in the lab - the banners draped over the pale chrome walls, the candles burning bright against the harsh, electric computer lights, and the birthday cake dominating the wiped-down table in the center of the room.
"Nicole, you didn't have to do this."
She shook her finger at him, reprimanding a child. "First, a dog's owner cares for her little man no matter what. Secondly, it's not every day your dog turns 21. In dog years, you're a wise sage at this point."
"Ouch," he wailed. "Why you gotta say it like that? Think of it in human terms, girl, please. I'm a young, happy-go-lucky swinger still in the prime of life."
"Whatever you say," she chuckled. "Gramps."
"Hey!" he protested but was met with only a barrage of tummy tickles that laid him low. He grunted to resist the storm of laughter and joy running up his body.
"What is your wisdom, Great Jespar of the Underground World?" she asked him through her schoolgirl-like giggles.
"Don't attack an old man on his birthday!" he whined, still trying to suppress his laughter slowly rising from his gullet.
"Fine," she relented. "But I had to get your tickles out of the way now. Can't have you puking up birthday cake all over the floor. The technicians will kill me. Besides, I still owe them a beaker from when I cooked you those meatballs."
"Hmpf," he scoffed. "Just put it on my tab with your old man."
At this, she said nothing and turned away to prepare the candles on the cake. Had he inquired further, he could have teased out something from her. It was one of the many small occasions he constantly ran over in his mind, like running a computer simulation and trying to deduce the outcome of different scenarios. In every dream, however, nothing he did could truly avert the ultimate conclusion of all their moments together.
She brought the cake over to him and dimmed the lights so that only they, the cake, and the tiny embers flickering on the candles were the sole entities that made up the microcosm of the lab room. The place where they were both soon to be trapped, though he didn't know it then. Then again, even as the realization dawned on him later, he accepted it with the silent, solemn approval that only a soul who already had all it wanted in the world could ever give. The lab became their little universe, and in moments like this, he remembered just how base his nature was. All he needed was to look into those lily-pad eyes and feel her blonde hair and coarse hands run over him when she picked him up or played with him.
He looked into them now as she knelt before him with the pastry, illuminated by only its somber radiance, and he saw something he hadn't seen before.
"Uh," he stuttered. Why was this suddenly such an awkward moment?
"Make a wish, Jespar," she whispered.
He shook his head. "You go," he replied.
She matched his shake action-for-action, her arches of blonde hair flying around like two hirsute acrobats.
"I've already got mine, remember?" She winked.
He wanted to smile, but something in him stopped his lips from forming the expression. He knew there was something wrong. He could tell. In his heart, he knew something was changing about this underground world, but he didn't know what it was. So he reverted to asking the one question he'd always pondered in the darkness of his strange, restless dreams. Dreams that were coveted by the vicious and the evil.
"Why?"
It was a question so simple that her head flew back, and he had managed to confuse the scientist for once.
"Why would you want this?"
He practically spat the words and was shocked by his barbarity. But in the heat of the moment, he could only go on. Now the gates were open; he had to let the waters he'd kept back for so long flow. Maybe there wouldn't ever be another time to ask her.
"Why me?" He asked, beginning to frame the question that had once been merely a larval thought in his mind, germinating ever since he could perceive the world of humans around him and recognize their differences.
"Why would you wish for something like me? You could have had anything, Nicole. You could have made something that could've helped bring this shit-for-brains species up from beneath the ground and taken back your world. You could have made any wonder your stupidly amazing mind could come up with - like some white witch conjuring magic from her cauldron or something. I dunno, I just think about it sometimes."
When she never answered him, he hung his head in shame. He shouldn't have said it, but running his mouth was somewhat of his specialty. It was all he could do.
"I mean, why not make something useful," he asked, giving a nervous chuckle afterward, until "afterward" became a moment so drawn out in space and time that it pained him. He felt his entire existence anchored to this moment. And he smiled inwardly at the realization that there indeed was no answer.
He felt her move near him, placing the cake gently on the ground.
"I hate when you talk like this."
He felt her arm reach for him, and he closed his eyes. If he could just be held for a second, he'd be.
"You know what?" She suddenly burst, retracting her arm like some robotic appendage. "I'm not even going to pet you. That's too easy. Instead, I'm going to do this."
He looked up in shock to see her blow out every candle lit upon the cake, smiling through the side of her mouth as she saw his surprised and flushed look of dismay.
"Wha-Nicole!"
"What? She said, now wreathed in almost total darkness. "You told me you didn't want to make a wish, so I made it for you. I'm a woman of my word, unlike a certain little gentlehound."
He felt his entire body tremble still from the puerile action. Awakening him from existential dread by blowing out the candles on his birthday cake: now that was a piece of symbolism only a being as cruel and pure as a human could think up.
They started laughing together, Jespar wheezing till he was red in the face.
He sighed a beleaguered "thank you" before he moved to wolf down his offering.
"Don't you want to know what I wished for?"
She asked him so innocently. How could he possibly refuse?
"A new Victoria"s Secret chemistry set?" he asked.
"Ugh. Sexism," she snorted. "So boring, Jespar. And much too basic for you."
He scoffed. Performance reviews were always her thing. "Ok, I'll bite," he said, sitting down and partially trying to ignore his grumbling abdomen. "What then?"
She took his scruffy paw in her hand and stroked it gently.
"I wished that one day you'll meet someone who's nothing like you are. Someone who can't understand anything about you - your words, looks, and general malaise. They'll have no clue how you came to be. They'll be someone who you honestly drive crazy. Someone who, by all accounts, should like nothing more than to get you as far away from them as possible. And yet, even with the abyssal gap between you, there"ll still be a bridge. Whether it's compassion, empathy, or just a plain connection - they'll want you to stay by their side. And you'll want to stay by theirs, too. That's love, Jespar. Finding someone who wants to stick by you not because of what you are or what you represent but because you'll feel like part of one, organic whole, even with the differences between the two of you. That's what it means to love - to be complete. It's not scientific. It's what a girl feels for her dog. It's what I felt for you when I took you home with me. You'll meet that person one day, and then you'll know why I wanted to hear you speak."
Their eyes met over the light smoke being puffed by the extinguished candles. He knew he must have been blushing. She always knew how to make a damned fool out of him.
"But Callisto didn't make you special, Jespar," she smiled. "You were always special to me."
She hugged him tightly, so much so that he was the one who felt he'd have to pull away this time. But he relaxed into her hold and felt her shoulders begin to heave. Was his birthday really that important to her?
"Hey," he murmured, pawing at her lab coat lightly. "That cake"s getting cold. And this special boy's gonna need his desert."
She sniffled as she let him go. But before he dug in, he licked her tired face.
"Thank you," he said. "But no one - and I mean it - no one could ever replace you."
She hungrily watched him nose the icing on the cake and petted him before heading to fetch her cutting knife. In doing so, she realized her lab-coat sleaves had ridden up slightly and quickly fixed them, covering up the bruises on her arms.
This same morning was the morning in which she heard her father had passed in his sleep. It was the morning that the marked one had finally come for her. He had told her their new job was to make the dog tell them what he knew. She had refused.
After he was done with her, he told her he'd do the same to Jespar. That sole fact was what had brought her to comply in the end. The "interrogations" were to begin this week.
But, watching Jespar wolf down every morsel of his cake, totally oblivious to the real reason they sat in darkness, a plan slowly formed in her mind.
She'd get him out of here. Or die trying.
...
After he returned to the main room, closing the door of the baby"s forgotten tomb behind him, he beheld the sweating form of Rain-Born on the couch. She seemed barely conscious, her breathing haggard now.
He ran up to her and shouted her name to no response.
Godammit, he thought. Come on, Jespar. You can figure this out.
"Chief," he said, measured and composed. "Can I just take a look at -"
"Mhuh!" she wailed, throwing her arm out at him. But it was a blow without any effort behind it, and she finally collapsed on the couch, sprawled out but still sweating profusely.
He got up and turned her over on her back with effort and nosed her arm out of the way of her stomach. Her body was shivering. He couldn't tell if she was too hot or too cold. Years living with a scientist, and he still knew nothing.
However, on her loincloth, he finally saw patches of blood she had been concealing for who knows how long. It was exactly as he feared. He'd been careless. She'd fought some creature who occupied these useless rooms. She'd fought tooth and claw and pushed through to get him those damn meatballs and, just as usual, suffered for it. For him. But where was the wound? He'd have to get more...intrusive.
"Look, Chief, I'm sorry, but I ain't letting you die here. I'm a dog. You're a girl. Let's be professional about this."
She didn't respond, and suddenly he felt worse.
Damnit! He howled internally, bit through the strap on the loincloth, and pulled it down swiftly.
Oh.
Then he saw what the problem was.
For a minute, he just sat there like some perverted navel gazer. Then he scoffed.
Jespar, he thought. You're a fucking idiot.
...
When Rain-Born awoke, morning had finally dawned, and the sun blasted its rays through the cracked glass of the apartment. She held her hand up to shield her eyes and felt something attached to her head. She would have thrown the spongy material from her head if she had had the energy to move, but it felt unusually soothing. She realized it must be a cloth soaked in ice water.
The pain of the Change still radiated from her abdomen to her crotch, but now she felt remarkably cooler - as though that region of her body were wrapped in milk-drenched silk. Shifting her gaze, she then found that that was more or less precisely what had occurred - someone had encased her body with pieces of the curtain, bedsheets, or torn blankets and had filled them with ice. The sensation was more soothing than this monthly time of pain had ever been.
That someone who had done this was already known to her. He was lying on the shag carpet at her feet, his head resting under her hand.
Instantly she felt the hot flush of shame paint itself across her parched face.
"Jespar-"
"You don't gotta say nothing," he said quietly. "Take your time, and when that ice melts, just lemme know. I'll change them up."
She started in vain to protest, but she instantly relented at his movement under her hand.
"Just let me do this," he said in a voice she almost did not recognize as belonging to him. "You're a warrior of the House of the Snake or whatever. Even warriors gotta heal sometimes. Let your healer of the House of the dumb mutt do his job."
She smiled at that and then groaned as she felt the lids of her eyes close again. She knew her quest was soon to end, but she would see through its final act with him. She knew it now. By some mad twist, fate had chosen him to guide her here even if she could not comprehend anything about him.
But, she realized, did that ever truly matter?
"I will never understand you," she murmured as she drifted off.
Unbeknownst to her, he smiled and let her stroking hand find his ears.
"I know."