When Maysie turned 15, Alder pulled out his storage of guns and ammunition, to bring with them to teach her the ways of the crazies down below.
"Are you sure this is necessary, Dad?" At first, she was skeptical as to how useful it would be, due to her proficiency with the slingshot.
"A well-kept gun is much faster than a bow and arrow." Alder's answers were coming slower than they used to—and not because he suddenly had to think to speak, as that was his normal approach. It's just that what he had to say came from the depths of the hurt he set aside when their world ended. "My people gave up on their native weapons to trade with white settlers for guns in a last-ditch effort to defend ourselves...well, themselves in the fight that slowly pushed my people into the reservations. So, no, guns don't always win—but bows and arrows lose faster. When we go, your greatest chance to be stronger than that crazy man is a weapon that even the bird responds to. Your bow couldn't get deep enough to bother it."
So she learned to shoot a gun. The first part of gun safety was to never point it at living things unless you were ready to kill them. That used to mean pointing the gun at the ground. Unfortunately, that would just cause the bird to harm you.
"If you ever get out to the shell and upon the land masses? Point the gun at the ground, and keep your safety on or off as you must, but the safety must be on if you try that anywhere this bird is sensitive. Now, we've got plenty of tin cans set up at the right distances. Let's see how many of them you can hit."
Maysie wasn't wholly horrible. She learned to pull the trigger in between heartbeats and learned each weapon's slight misalignment and the limit of each weapon's range.
She doubted she'd ever get to use this training.
Sure, they witnessed 1 insane man, and the odds of there being more were pretty high, but would they ever go down? There were days that Maysie helped Alder to climb the long slope around the bird's eyes, and he'd be winded enough that she feared he wouldn't make the top. She fed him more meat as he talked about when they were younger, but it wasn't a lack of proteins that caused his shortness of breath.
She was 18 years old the day Alder stopped walking past the fire. That was the day she gave up any hope of making it off the head with her father. Still, he kept trying to teach her things before they were lost forever, and sometimes to give her a direction to take her life.
"Maysie-may!"
"I'm right here, Dad." This was the first time she noticed he was going blind, as well. He should have been able to see where she was, and not need to yell for her. Each new moment was breaking her heart.
"After I'm gone, I want you to take that risk with going down the neck, see if you can meet people out there."
" Don't talk like that, Dad."
" Maysie, You can't hide from this. I want you to live a life, not be struck up here, so listen to me."
" I don't want to."
" I know, baby, but I've got an idea that will make the trip quicker."
That half-heartedly caught her interest. Whatever idea he had for her might even work towards her bringing him with her. "Alright."
"Wait until the bird swallows a large asteroid before going down. Its neck gets shorter and wider to eat these landmasses whole. Your trip won't be nearly as deadly, that way, and the big ones take time to go down, unlike the smaller ones it just snips right and left. But it needs to be done before it goes after Mars. Even if everything worked out right, that would be a two-month never-ending journey done at a heavier gravity rhan yiure used to. And it must be soon—this bird is getting bigger."
Some days later he began talking about dehydrating food to take on a trip, and showed her how to make the jerkies he always took care of.
Another day, another thought from Alder, "Maysie, don't take a lot of water with you. Keep your thermos, maybe a backup, but take the evaporation trap and rest with the mist. That is your natural night."
At this point, Maysie was resigned to being taught things she did not want to hear. "Yes Dad," kept Alder from getting agitated enough to choke on needing a breath.
It was his last teaching that hurt the most. "Maysie, up between the second row of houses, there's the lot which I always kept that empty hole in. I want you to wrap me up in my blankets, drag me up there and dump me in, then cover me in dirt and stone."
Maysie was startled, "Wait, right now? "
"No, you can wait until after I die." Alder's coughing laugh scared her that it would be immediate, in spite of his protest. "Do that, pack up, get out of here. For both of us, alright?"
She had been making rabbit jerky and pumpkin leathers like crazy, hoping to convince him to leave with her up until this point. Denial is strong when you love someone. Her voice cracked, as she said "Yes, Dad."
But Alder was already gone, having exhausted everything he could think to tell his girl.