The world ended and Im stuck as a griffon 300km from home. So begins a trek across an empty Europe and beyond (A story that took a hard turn in existentialism of a soulless nihilist that wants to be alone but not lonely in an Earth full of ponies)
"Baltics: Population 6 million. This can not end well... And neither can my supposed mini-vacation. Like waking up not human wasn't enough, everyone I've ever known and loved are gone and now I'm all alone and three hundred kilometers away from an empty home. Did I mention I'm some weird lion-chicken now? Fun... But no, it doesn't just stop there. When one trek is over it can only signal the beginning of another journey that'll take me halfway across the world. It doesn't help that I can't swim..."
What started as the story equivalent of a survival game took a hard turn into existentialism, the breakdown of the individual without society and the meaning of being good. The philosophy of a selfish, soulless, depressed nihilist that desperately wants to be alone, but not lonely, and the hell that is people assuming they know you better than you do. The Dark tag is there for a reason.
The only reason I woke up is because my arm had gone numb from the elbow down. It wasn't the first time that'd happened, I had a bad habit of sleeping with my limbs in weird angles so waking up like this was nothing new, just another lazy beginning to a little vacation. When I cracked open my eyes, the first thing that was wrong was the fact that I was on my stomach. I could fall asleep like that, sure, but I could never actually sleep like that.
The second thing was the fact that I was tiny. When you’ve been the tallest person, period, your entire life, suddenly finding yourself the size of a big dog was… concerning.
Well, saying suddenly was a bit of a lie. When I had woken up yesterday, fallen out of my hammock and gone; ‘face, meet floor’ everything just spiraled out of control after that.
And today, today was the day my desperate hopes of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours had been either a dream or some accidental, drug, hallucination-y, nightmare-y induced… nightmare…
Basically, what I'm getting at was that I was fucked.
After blinking for about a minute straight to make sure that, yep, I was indeed awake I started the tedious process of moving. My weird, wobbly legs managed to push the front of my body upward and into some kind of clumsy sitting position. Then came my back legs. Why yes, I did have more than two legs but ya’ know what? I had filled my ‘mental breakdown’ quota yesterday so today was when shit was going to get done.
As unsteady as I was, I got myself into a sort of standing position atop my mattress. My light and teeny body barely even made depressions in the thing while I hobbled in a circle to try and get myself to face the door to the other room.
One wobbly leg after the other, like crawling on all fours but with one’s knees bending the wrong way ‘round, I stumbled to the closed door. Reaching up towards the handle I thanked whatever twisted shithead of a god that had done this to me, that he at least let me keep my fingers. Granted they were now one fewer and really, really sharp at the tips but weird thumbs were better than no thumbs.
When I managed to shimmy open the door and not ram my face into the linoleum again, my senses was assaulted by the stale stench of dust and the absolutely wonderful pungent aroma of rot. I did a little, involuntary dry heave before I slammed my palm over the top of my beak, where my nostrils were and took a second to calm down. Inching my hand off my face I got myself accustomed to the stench and squinted my eyes to get them adjusted to the low light of the next room.
It was about half the size of my huge-ass bedroom with a stairwell going down to the first floor of my family’s summer home in the far left corner. The wall to my right was the one the massive balcony was attached to and the entire wall had gray curtains pulled across it, stifling what little daylight there still was streaming through the window and glass door. As I quickly stumbled my way around the door to my room that hid my mom’s bed from view a million possibilities ran through my head.
An empty bed was none of them.
Her bright blue comforter she always laid over her bed was gone, along with her woolen blanket leaving behind only her orthopedic pillow. My eyes darted around the room but all her other stuff was still there. Her laptop bag, her backpack with her clothes, drying tea (who on earth would steal tea?).
I sighed. I wasn’t going to get anywhere just by standing around so my next course of action was to figure out what the flying fuck I was. And if I was a flying fuck because of some… interesting anatomic additions I felt on my back.
In the corner facing the stars was a large oak dresser. It had been pretty big back when I had still been a meter eighty but now it seemed like a towering mountain I would have to brave to make it to the mirror up top. After a little brainstorming I pulled out the bottom two drawers and made a stair out of them. After pulling myself up to the very top of the dresser using upper body strength I didn’t knew I possessed I was met with… me…
The first full look at myself after I stopped being human. Staring back at me was something straight out of my history books.
A griffon.
After steadying my heart and waiting for my brain to catch up with the fact that, yes, it was me looking back from the mirror and I was a goddamn mythological creature. I could finally properly inspect myself.
The first thing I noticed was just how bright my eyes were. Like, even in the dim light filtering through the thick and dust-clouded curtains covering the small window to the balcony, they looked like they were glowing. I blinked a few times and realized just how dim the room was yet I could see surprisingly well even if the colors around me seemed duller than usual. I had chalked it up to the dust covering fucking everything but the more I thought about it the more I realized I had probably gained some kind of cat-like vision.
Neat.
What was also neat was that my eyes were bright red. Like something out of a (proper, non-sparkly) vampire movie or something, which was actually pretty cool. I would never admit it to anyone but I had always wanted red eyes, even when I was still a girl. There was just something appealing about that, and for what it was worth, this was the one change I didn’t mind.
Also they were fucking humongous. Like, half my face was made of eye. I foresaw a lot of problems concerning grit in my future.
Continuing downward, my entire head all the way down to my neck and over my chest had feathers. They had a very light pink tint to them and they were insanely small and fluffy but also laid very thick. Perhaps down feathers? But at the same time they seemed pretty resilient and had this sort of stiff, shell-like feel to them which was… weird.
The craziest thing about this part of me was a huge triangle looking mark smack-dab in the middle over my breast. The color was a darker red and matched some of the highlights at the tips of some of my other feathers, but the triangular shape was unmistakable. Oh, and as a side note, it looked like I didn’t have visible ears but I did feel some bumps beneath the fluff so there was that.
I ran my hand through the feathers on my head which were another unique brand of odd. They were longer and bigger and stiffer than the others and had colored tips along with looking like they framed my face. A couple slightly fell in front of my eyes, like my old hairstyle back when I was like thirteen or something did, but not enough to be bothersome. At the back of my head, or at least as far as I could see with only one mirror, they made it look like I had medium length hair.
Absentmindedly I rubbed my weird orangey-brown claws or whatever against the side of my beak. The color was similar enough but the mechanics of my face confused me. I smiled at myself in the mirror and my beak moved into a strange smile, showing off sharp, bright white teeth at the sides but not at the front where it curved downward and into a hard, sharp point. I then made a motion of puckering my lips and my beak did… like lips… but… sharp… dafuq?
Just don’t think about it.
Why yes, brain I would like to see the rest of me, and not try to understand how my fucking face works! Yep… Tots’… Let’s move on shall we?!
Anyway, inspecting the rest of me was simple. From the neck down I had the build of a lioness with a short, smooth dark red-brown coat instead of skin or feathers or anything like that. I wiggled my butt in the mirror a bit and beside the fact that my thighs felt like they could crush rocks it was overall lion-y enough to sate my curiosity. After some mental struggling I sighed in defeat and lifted up my tail. The thing had a little pink tuft at the end and did a pretty good job of hiding my girl-bits which seemed mostly the same so I very quickly moved on to the most interesting part of my anatomy.
I had motherfucking wings.
They were absolutely huge, looking to be even longer then my entire body when folded. I wiggled my shoulder blades and watched them shift around, feeling the powerful muscles underneath my skin ripple. It felt like I had another two arms except very weirdly proportion and glued to my back. The feathers were long and tough, mostly the same color as my body with reddish ends, matching my highlights.
After another once-over I had gotten myself familiar enough with my new body to see what the shit was going everywhere else. In a brief moment of stupid cockiness I leaped off the dresser like a cat instead of climbing down like a normal griffon-person and oooh boy did I regret it.
Ya’ see my plan was to use my inner cat-ness and my new half-cat body to pull off a stunt worthy of a full cat. When my front legs crumpled under my own weight at the end of my jump and I once more rammed my face against the linoleum I realized, I am, in fact, no goddamn cat. Fuck everything.
After laying face-down on the ground in pain for some minutes I wearily unglued myself from the floor and wobbled in the direction in the staircase. Speaking of which, all I can say is fuck ‘modern’ stairs. The first floor seemed a goddamn mile away and the only way down were flimsy, disproportioned, weird, creaky-ass and steep steps that not even my oma had the guts to climb. Yay me.
I spent a solid few minutes trying to think about how I was going to get down without snapping my neck and finally settled on what I dubbed the reverse-four-wheel-drive. Basically, every person in the planet has climbed up the stairs on all fours at least once in their life and if someone says they haven’t they're liars. So that’s what I did but backwards. It was pretty nerve-wracking but after a bit I was safely down on the first floor and breathed a sigh of relief.
Only to remember everything here smelled like literal death. With my hand on my nostrils again I did the three-legged race into the living room, past the small fridge that seemed to be the cause of the aroma and leaped through the archway. My eyes instantly snapped to the couch-bed thing Oma slept in only for it to be just like my mom’s. Empty, nothing but untouched dust.
There was this horrible, cold, crawling feeling at the very base of my neck and before I even knew it I burst out through the front door onto the wooden deck that thumped under my weight. Our vast lawn had grown out like crazy and would have probably gone way past my human-ankles. Now, however, it felt like it reached up to my elbows.
“HELLO?!” I called out, looking over to the house to my right. It belonged to my uncle’s family and at this point I was willing to hug or kiss or I don’t even fucking know, literally any living being.
“Hello?!” I called out again, wading through the overgrown grass and around the weed-ridden and wilted flower beds towards the gate that linked our properties. As I got closer I saw that their lawn had grown out just as much as ours and that… didn’t bode well, not at all.
The slide-y-lock on the gate was real effin’ high up and the little rope tied around the top to keep my cousins moronic dog from pushing the gate open and running off through the holes under our fence didn’t help either. I rose up on my back legs and as weird as it felt it was actually pretty alright. I undid the lock and began wiggling the gate back and forth to try and loosen the rope up top.
I finally succeeded and as rewards I fell back and flat on my ass. After grumbling under my breath and shaking all kinds of grass and dirt from myself I stepped into the neighboring yard. There was a very distinct stench of rotting meat in the air but it wasn’t as concentrated as our enclosed little house so I just kind of ignored it. A glance to the side, past the firewood shed and to the little gate that lead to the chicken enclosure gave me a pretty good idea on what was rotting. The strange part was that it looked like something had torn through the frail wire fence and into the enclosure but what…
Before I could even register what was happening everything slowed to a crawl. I could suddenly hear every blade of grass shift under something’s weight, I felt the pants that rang through the air and the ever so faint tremble of the earth. My body sprung to the side, almost on its own as my wings splayed outwards and I hit the paved driveway just as something barreled right through the grass where I had been standing.
Before I could recover, my entire field of view was obscured by something dirty white and scraggly, its hot breath washing over me.
So I did the only thing I could.
I screamed and kicked and trashed like a fucking maniac until I got the thing off of me and got myself up to my feet.
My senses fully returned to me and I got a good look at the attacker. It was pretty small, about two fifths my size with dirty, tangled and matted fur that was stained dark red-brown around its mouth. It looked at me with its beady black little eyes and wagged its tail at me and…
“BELLA!” I screeched at the top of my lungs the moment I recognized my cousin’s scraggly mutt. I threw myself around her and began feverishly petting her and rubbing her floppy ears and trying to keep her from licking my face. Somehow, she recognized me even if I barely even recognized myself, but fuck if I was gonna' question it.
“Oh Bella, Bella, Bella thank god, thank god I'm not alone.” I breathed as I continued petting every single inch of her. After a while we’d both calmed down but I was still left with one horrifying question.
Where did everyone go?
Judging by the dried blood around the mutt’s face and the feathers strewn all across the yard and holy shit was that a carcass or a shoe? Bella was fine, albeit a bit worse for wear and bit… bony. Really, I was just glad she was alive. I couldn’t say much for anyone or anything else around here.
How long had it been anyway? The grass, the dust, the rot, the death, what happened? And why was I the only one still here? I scratched Bella behind her ears and just stared off into nothing.
“So… what now?” I asked no one.
I cast my look from the overcast skies and across the wilderness that had reclaimed our lots and our land all the way down to the empty fields below and the pines off into the distance. “I guess I'm all alone… I mean, I might as well make the most of it, right?”
With renewed vigor I set off to do… a great many things.
My overall plan was simple. Get to Riga, get home, see if there's anyone still left in one of the biggest cities in the Baltics. Now all I had to do was figure out a way to actually get there.
Time passed in a blur after that point but I distinctly remember leaving Bella to her own devices and heading back up to my room. There, on my laptop and my MP4, both having some serious battery conserving power, I checked the dates and they both read June 19th. I couldn’t check my phone since the battery had died over the apparent MONTH I was… sleeping…?
Honestly I just rolled with it, I was a fucking griffon and waking up a month after the motherfucking Rapture was just another thing to add to the pile. Speaking of piles, I packed up my laptop and tech and essentials and my plush turtle that I’d love forever and ever, and brought it all down to the first floor. It was difficult but as long as I didn’t actually think about walking I did fine.
Cleaning out the fridge was horrible, but apparently mythological creatures had a much less horrible gag reflex than old-me. I scrounged up all the food in my house and with a bucket we kept in the bathroom I headed off to my cousin’s house and raided that as well. It was just as barren and dusty and after grabbing all the food and dog-food I may or may not have stolen Tom's Xbox while I was there. Maybe, possibly…
Step two was head to town. It was few kilometers out but I was a person that had walked five miles to school barefoot in the snow uphill both ways, so that was all fine and dandy. Bella trailed behind me the entire way and I was a bit scared she might run off and I’d lose my only friend left in this empty world but she was surprisingly reasonable, especially since she was, ya’ know, an untrained borderline-retarded mutt.
Valka and the entire trip there was just as empty as I pretty much expected. No matter how loud I yelled and sang in all two languages I knew no one answered. It was a bit disheartening but… oh well.
I robbed all three shops we had, mostly canned stuff and drinks but I also took candy and chocolates and as much Sour cream and Onion Pringles as I could get my hands on and loaded all of that up in a shopping cart. I took two bags of dry dog-food kibbles and some random assorted stuff that I figured I could use and at that point I could barely move the fucker so I began pushing that heavy-ass cart uphill back home.
At least Bella kept me company.
By the time I made it to the front gate of our lot I was fucking dead from exhaustion. The sun had gone down two-thirds the way home and predictably, the electricity was out, so not only was it dark as shit it was also pretty fucking spoopy. I kept hearing noises and birds and all that crap. I was a bit concerned because I didn't really know what lived in this area but since we were surrounded by forests on all sides I had a couple of ideas.
I dragged my haul next to my mom’s car in the little shed we used as a garage, just in case it rained and grabbed a big ol’ rawhide bone for Bella, a giant flashlight and a can of peas and a can of corn and left the rest of it. Hopefully nothing was going to eat it while I slept.
As I walked up onto the deck of my home away from home and watched Bella lie down in oma’s upturned chair, gnawing on her treat, I had a sudden idea. I dashed through my moonlit yard and into my cousin’s house and with my flashlight shoved down my goddamn throat (at least that’s how it felt) rummaged through every pocket, checked every countertop and flipped every cushion until I finally found a key to one of the two cars sitting just outside.
I nearly tumbled down the stairs on my way out to their patio and rushed to the cars. It wasn’t the first one but the second one’s doors opened with a click that was like music to my ears. I threw myself into the driver’s seat and rammed the damned key into the ignition. I felt like a complete and utter moron for not thinking of this before and I could have very well pissed myself in excitement as I turned the key.
Only for the car to give a few weak sputters and stay dead.
And just like that the entire day’s exhaustions rushed to meet me in one giant explosion of misery and I slammed my head against the steering wheel.
Hard.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
I didn’t even realized the fluid dripping onto my hands were my tears until I felt Bella lick them away. The dumb dog pushed into the car with me and wrapped her warm body against me and just stayed there. If anything, it was just an invitation to continue bawling.
And so I did. I cried for my Mom and Oma. I cried for my cousin and his sister and his family, even if we never really got along. I cried for the librarian that always smiled at me when I used their free Wi-Fi. I cried for my other cousin, the teacher and her mother. I cried for the city I that held my childhood and I cried for all that once lived here.
And I cried for myself.
I cried for the empty world I was left in.
And I cried myself to sleep in a dead car that had been the last straw.
Ya’ know… there’s one thing I never really appreciated about Latvia before the entire ‘End of the World’ thing.
Hills.
Man, I used to bitch about biking up slopes for as long I can remember. Now though, as I raced downward a deathly empty road, the wind in my hair-feathers and dust in my eyes, behind a massive pair of shiny aviator shades, I realized I probably should have kept my mouth shut.
The last three days had passed in a blur. From me leaving Valka behind the moment I got up, all the way to now steadily coasting along on my way home. My great plan of hijacking one of my uncle’s cars had completely failed, since apparently car batteries had this shite’ habit of dying when not used for a month.
It was alright though! I was resourceful! At least, that's how I always saw myself…
Seeing how I didn’t have any actual vehicles and was way too small to steal my cousin’s bike I had settled on the next best thing: a goddamn shopping cart. Granted, it took me a couple of tries that ended up with me in a ditch, leaving my hands and face scratched up to fuck and limping, with all my precious cargo in the damn dirt, but eventually I managed to figure out a way to make it drivable.
Two brooms tied to the sides as brakes/steering wheels had turned the rickety bastard into something actually useful. I had reawakened all my mad skilz’ of sledding I had acquired in my youth and only a few hours later was well on my way to the capital.
Thankfully Bella was fine even after all those crash related endeavors as she had decided to run along my cart instead of sitting in it which was good for her. It also made me realize I was more of a complete moron than an untrained mutt, but whatever.
Thankfully all those crashes knocked my noggin’ around enough to give me a few ideas. The main one was the fact that I had to tie my shit down. Like, really, really well because it went fucking everywhere whenever I hit a bump. So did I.
Despite the fact that I had to leave most of my haul back at our summer-home, seeing how I could only (barely) control one cart at a time, I still managed to pack a fair bit of extra stuff in three backpacks and strap them to the sides and back of the cart. Those mostly contained food and other things, like blankets and rope and paper and some clothes I’d nabbed from the cheap hand-me-down store back at Valka, so I wasn’t too worried about mushing them if I tipped over again. Except for the backpack full of ramen… That shit was precious.
The rest of my supplies were neatly packed in the cart and tied down in layers with bed sheets and ropes. I had acquired a sort of Tetris-sense over the past few years when traveling between our two properties a bazillion times each summer, which basically gave me the ability to stack a fuckton of things in a space no normal human could ever put all of them. It was crazy, the random shit you picked up over the years. I also had this horrible urge to hoard plastic bags in another, larger, plastic bag for no reason other than the deepest recess of my mind whispering that I might need them some day.
And finally, my insane caravan that made me feel like some strange, new-age Oregon Trail style settler was topped off my two large pillows I had gotten from I don’t even remember where, as twin thrones atop an endless ocean of loot for myself and Bella.
No one said I couldn’t have fun with the Apocalypse.
A rather unnerving thing about Bella during the entire trip was the fact that she was insane amounts of calm, even when I knew for a fact she barked like a nutjob at any living soul or car that went within ten meters of her before everyone had vanished. Now, though, she was very well behaved and never wandered off even when I ran around like crazy through all the cities we passed on our way hoping to find any other survivors... of which there were none.
Whenever we sped down the highways (and I didn’t have to haul ass uphill) she just sat there, beside me on her pillow and didn’t flip out even when I would have. The only way I knew she wasn't some sort of demon wearing her skin was the fact that she let her tongue hang out and flop around when the wind blew in our faces.
The wheels of the shopping cart squeaked and rattled as I spotted the curve of the highway by the bridge that signaled only thirty more kilometers to go until I could see the concrete monoliths of my birthplace.
Approaching the curve of the road I grabbed my two ‘steering wheels’ and pulled back. Braking was a loud and nerve-wracking process as the filed-down nubs of the brooms loudly scraped against the road, but eventually we slowed down to manageable speeds. Pulling the ‘brake’ on the opposite side to the one I wanted to turn to I managed to ease into a nice angle just as we rode onto the bridge, the terrain evening out and slowing our descent.
Just like tobogganing.
We were almost off the other end of the bridge when the shopping cart rattled to a stop. I lowered the two brooms and anchored us in place. My limbs were still a bit jittery from the bumpy ride so of course I almost rammed my beak into the ground while getting out. Bella happily wagged her tail at me as she stood up in her seat, her little black eyes staring into my red ones.
“Yeah, yeah, fucking graceful, I know,” I snarked with an eye roll. Pushing my giant sunglasses up to my forehead I walked up the front of the cart.
At the moment I was wearing my favorite dark blue, rain-proof autumn jacket. The unfortunate thing about it was that it pressed my wings against my back it made it a bit hard to move, especially my front legs (arms?) but other than that it was perfect for the chilly weather that had accompanied me in my trip. At least it wasn’t raining.
My back legs were draped in bright purple and pink little kid shoes so I didn’t cut up the pads of my lion-feet. From my palms halfway up to my elbows were draped in mutilated wool socks that I had made into gloves for the same reason. My crappy, two-euro headphones wormed their way out of my thick feathers hiding my ear-holes to the banged-up old Walkman I kept in my right pocket. The music I had been blasting the entire way was now off.
Knots had never been my strong suit and when I had to untangle and re-tangle them twenty times a day I was just about to shred the entire length of rope with my sharp-as-shit fingertips. Thankfully I resisted and managed to undo the sort of harness-thingy-ma-bobber from the twine that had kept it bound to the front of the cart and slipped it around my neck.
It was made from a hoop of rope that was generously dressed and bulked up with hand-me-down t-shirts and it got the job done of turning me into a damn mule. Also it dug into my throat real bad but it was way better than nothing. I took a few cautious steps forward until the cords went taut and looked back at Bella. The scraggly white mutt had gotten herself comfy laying down on our pillow thrones and glanced up at me. Never before would I have believed eye contact with a dog would be uncomfortable but here I was.
Shaking my head I gave the cart a sharp tug and began walking, ignoring the slight jolts of pain in my front left ankle-slash-wrist. The twin broom-‘brakes’ scraped against the ground but without me pushing down on them they really didn’t do much to slow me down. Finally off the bridge, I stopped and granted myself a moment to look to my right to a place that had always been a highlight of our trips.
Rāmkalni could be described as a pit stop once you made your way out of the farthest reaches of Riga. Shops and attractions and a diner; this place filled my heart with a strange sense of nostalgia. Ever since I could remember my family would stop here and take a ride down the dry bobsled track and I recalled each trip with fondness.
With downcast eyes I dragged my cart into the large parking lot hugging the side of the highway just by the bridge. Cars with their batteries long dead and ignition keys gone sat unmoving, taunting me with their presence. I stopped just parallel to a slightly raised, dark wood deck with four, little three-step-stairs leading up to it from the lot. There stood three shops that once upon a time sold overpriced and overrated ‘eco’ snacks. Now their grand windows were dark, covered in dirt and dust kicked up by the rain and the sharp wind sweeping its way through the nearby riverbed.
I unhitched myself from my caravan and then lifted Bella out of it. The second I set her down she dashed off to god knows where and I just shrugged. It’s not like we could get lost or anything. I moved up the steps and the deck creaked under my weight. A sound I had never noticed thanks to the chatter of people and the roar of cars, both speeding by and sitting around.
Now there was only silence.
I peered through the marred window of one of the shops but aside from some shelves and some of those floor-fridges I couldn’t see anything. A quick hop back to my cart and a moment later I was pushing the glass door of the shop open and shining in a giant-ass flashlight.
For a moment it felt like something straight out of a horror movie or something. As I moved between the perfectly untouched shelves I managed to kick up an entire storm of dust. How long had it been since anyone set foot here? It was only a month since we had driven by, yet it felt like humanity had been gone for decades.
I shined my light on one of the shelves. On it sat an entire collection of different jammy, fruity, sour… y… snacks. I remembered always seeing these exact ones at like, every single fair or any sort of festival I’d ever gone to. And I’d gone to a lot of those.
I wasted a few more moments just staring at the shelf's contents, reminiscing, before snapping out of it. Running back to the front of the shop I grabbed a random woven basket and shoved everything on the shelf into it. No point in letting any of this go to waste, right?
I did another round through the store, holding the basket in one hand and the flashlight in my mouth. I grabbed some more choice snacks, at least the ones that still had some shelf life in them and ones I could actually reach with my severely reduced height, before exiting that dreary old place. I dropped the basket by my ‘vehicle’ and shoved the flashlight into my pocket before setting out again.
The sun was going down and as much as I reassured myself I was alone it was always still pretty scary being out at night. Despite the fact that I had fingertips that could rip through pretty much anything with ease I…
I shook my head again. I really, really didn’t need to psyche myself up like that. I still had a pretty long way to go, even if I’d made some seriously record time for a griffon with a fucking shopping cart. Still, I felt like I should explore a bit if nothing else than pure nostalgia.
Wait, no. What the fuck was I on about? Nostalgia? For what? Humanity?!
…
Yes…
Fuck.
With another shake of my head I set down a path towards the bobsledding track.
‘Click-clack’ went my front claws against the wooden walkway. The trail led around the giant restaurant that hugged the parking lot; like the shops did. In the humungous building’s shadow a small creek bubbled beside me, leading down the side of the hill and disappearing under a tiny bridge.
I passed two kayaks and a boat sitting ashore at the bottom of the walkway and paused to look at the sunlight dancing across the waters I had just crossed, visible through the scant few trees. I dragged myself towards a small bridge that stretched over the tiny creek, the place where it melded into the river. I propped myself on my back legs and leaned against the thick wooden railings. I barely even reached but it didn’t stop me from placing my arms atop the rail and burying my face against them as I blankly gazed across the glittering waters.
Gauja: the longest river in the county.
A river shrouded in old tales and memories. One that ran by my childhood home. One that marked the place of my father’s life work…
One that reminded me of a legacy that should have been mine…
No.
Stop it.
I had no time for this… this stupidness. I had cried myself out enough beforehand. I had better things to focus on. Important things…
Just don’t think about it.
Still… there was something…
I spent a few more moments watching the sun shimmer amongst the waves before I turned away. With an exhale I lowered myself back to all fours and proceeded forward through the resort. A sharp right straight off the bridge and past the picnic area. ‘Round the stump of the giant, fallen tree I once played on. Up the stars that had been rebuilt long after I had skinned my knee on them. Past the ticket booth that had eaten up more money that I could count. Through the maze that led the line to the rodel tracks.
A tug on the breaks of one of the contraptions sent it sliding down towards the long dead pulley that once upon a time dragged it up towards the peak of the hill. With a groan of the sled it began moving upwards.
With a curse my legs kept slipping on the metal track. With a grunt I continued pushing it upwards. With a gust of wind the clouds blackened what was left of the dying sunlight. With a squeak the unused sled protested. With sweat pouring down my face I crested the hill.
With a pause I stared down at the track before me. With a sad smile I clambered into the dirty dry bobsled. With a jerk it moved forward.
With a whoosh the wind whipped in my ears.
With a burst of ecstasy I forgot I wasn’t human anymore.
With a shout of joy I rounded a sharp corner.
With a rattle I sped down memory lane, again and again I felt those sunny days of years gone past play through my mind.
With wetness around my eyes my descent slowed until I came to a stop at the end of the track.
With a jerk the sled stopped and the empty word came back to me.
With a happy yelp Bella welcomed me back.
With the final rays of sun vanishing beyond the horizon and bathing the word in pale starlight my long trip caught up to me.
With a yawn I made my way back to the dusty store to lay down for a rest.
With a wag of her tail Bella never left me.
No one said I couldn’t have fun with the Apocalypse.
Next morning found me on my way again. The weather was nice, sun beaming down on me, only occasionally blocked by a stray cloud that drifted across the vast expanse of blue above.
I had always been a heavy sleeper. That is to say, if I got the chance I tended to sleep to like two in the afternoon. On my trip so far it hadn’t served me that well since by the time I finally got my ass in gear the sun had already been up for hours. Well, at least it gave the weather a chance to warm up a bit before I got walking.
One could probably insert some joke about ‘sleeping through the apocalypse’ but right now I wasn’t laughing.
After Rāmkalni I had made decent pace. The terrain evened out after the bridges that merged the two main highways of this side of the county so it wasn’t the best for cart-racing. Still, I managed to get a few nice slopes along the way that sped up my progress significantly so there was that.
Really, the strangest thing about traveling through the same roads I had crossed again and again for literally my entire life was the stillness. There were no cars racing past our banged up old Mazda, no jerks going two hundred kilometers an hour on a ninety highway, no dogs sticking their faces out windows. Well... unless you counted Bella whenever we rode downhill.
The roadwork that always seemed to be happening didn’t slow us down much and besides singing a bit as we passed the container-box-house things I didn’t even bother slowing down or checking any of them. I did however check the three roadside shops/inns that I passed, but was met only with disappointment. At this point I doubted I’d ever even find a single living soul again.
Don’t you dare let me down, Riga.
Time passed, sun went down, shit got dark, but I was in the home stretch so I wasn’t about to give up so close. At some point I scotch taped one of my flashlights to the side of my harness-thing as a sort of pseudo-headlight and another one to the side of my cart. As good as my night vision had become I didn’t entirely trust it.
The entire way the wind kept howling in my ears, making both myself and Bella shiver. I took pity on the poor thing and wrapped her up in one of the bed sheets I had with me before continuing on. There was nothing more I wanted than to just bundle up in a blanket and pillows and sleep but I had chosen the stupid route and I was going to stick with it.
After about five kilometers of a straight road hugged by a forest on one side and old post-WW2 abandoned (or possibly still working) factories on the other, a vast parking lot opened up to my left. Bathed in moonlight the monolithic mall stood against the night sky. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face as I sped up through the car-filled lots and to the main entrance I knew oh-so well.
I unhitched myself and lowered Bella out of the shopping cart before walking to the huge glass doors marking the entrance to my own personal Bed & Breakfast for the near future.
I wormed my claws between the rubbers of the sliding doors and pried both sets open enough for me to push my cart through. The darkness that shrouded every inch of this once bright and people-filled pace made me as uneasy as ever so me being the absolute smartass that I was, I taped my flashlight to my shoulder.
Genius.
Once I had a bit of light and both Bella and I weren’t shivering from the icy wind anymore the exploration could begin.
My first stop whenever I came all the way out here had always been the electronics store just up the escalator (now stairs) and a few paces right around the bend. The second I saw my light glint off all those wonderful, untouched boxes of Xbox and DS and PC and PS4 games I swear to god I got the biggest griffon-lady-boner ever.
When all those heavenly things were back safely with the rest of my stuff I mostly just walked around a bit. Occasionally the stench of rot would waft up to me but I ignored it. Without light there wasn’t really much to see especially since most of the stuff here were just clothes shops and I didn’t feel like going to the A or B wings and most likely getting lost in the dark along the way.
Eventually I looped back around near the entrance on the first floor and I stopped by the huge Jysk that was there. Just thinking about all that furniture and garden accessories and beds and mattresses and pillows and blankets called out to me like a whale song or something as poetic as that. With a loud yawn I made my way into the store's furthest corner where I knew the display beds sat.
I picked out the nicest one and began hauling stacks and stacks of bedding to it until I had a literal mountain atop it. On a rather childish whim I grabbed some ropes and whatnots around the store and strung them up above the display mattress before throwing a bed sheet over them making myself a nice little tent. Smiling from a job well done I took off my jacket and laid it down on the foot of the bed with the flashlight close and pointing outwards. Finally I could settle in.
I bundled myself up in the blankets, scooting deeper into my ‘tent’ until I was sure the Dark couldn’t get me and I could finally relax. Pulling the pillows closer I sunk into their fluffiness and closed my eyes, letting the exhaustion of the day melt off me. I faintly felt Bella snuggle closer to me, her breath the only indication of the passage of time as I drifted my way into nothingness.
When I awoke the next (presumably) morning I felt more refreshed than I had once on my entire trip. That was a real, fancy mattress’d bed for ya’.
Tangled in my mountain of pillows and blankets I stretched and shifted until I freed the front half of my body. My fumbling around must’ve woken Bella because I was suddenly met with a face full of fur and eyeful of tongue. When I finally managed to get her off of me, with about as much swearing as usual, I could start the final leg of my journey.
After some morning shopping, of course.
With the flashlight still scotch taped to my shoulder I made my way back to the front of the mall. I checked to see if my cart was still there and it was as undisturbed as ever. Really, I didn’t know which of the two possibilities would have been worse. (And pants-shittingly-terrifying (although that analogy didn’t work as well anymore since I didn’t have pants))
Protruding from the side of the main mall complex lay one of the biggest superstores on this side of the city. Huge windows letting the pale daylight pour through stretched three stories high and at least a block out. Shrouded in darkness, the depths that even the light couldn’t reach lay a world full of everything any living soul could ever want.
Basically it was a Baltics equivalent of Wal-Mart.
And I was gonna’ raid it.
I grabbed one of the shopping carts left to the wayside by the entrance and with me on my back legs and my front claws wrapped around the bar I entered a shoplifter’s paradise.
I honestly don’t know how long I spent there just running down the aisles picking out random assortments of stuff. If it hadn’t been for the ‘End of the World’ this would have been the best day of my life.
Fancy headphones and a variety of toys went into my cart like there was no tomorrow. By the time got to the rotting fruit and spoiled dairy and pungent meat aisles I had long since gotten used to the stench. Cereals and hard cheeses were thrown into cardboard boxes I had been smart enough to grab by the entrance as I rode the cart past the long expired sushis’ and cooked chicken legs. When I made into the bread and cake corner I nabbed every box of chocolate cookies I could (after testing and tasting one to make sure of course) before riding down towards the grains. Rice, spaghetti and hot sauce went into the cart next and I giggled with glee as I slid to a stop by the candy aisle. From all the endless variety of chocolate I could pick I went with the Milka’s while also loading up with sour Skittles and Haribo Jellies.
I was about to head out when my eye caught the alcohol aisle in the faint gleam of my flashlight. Stopping my cart I walked my way to the shelves stacked with fancy amber liquids and a mischievous part of me almost choked on glee. I couldn’t help but grin as I browsed my way through this forbidden fruit, picking out any alcohol that seemed familiar or sounded at least vaguely interesting. I dint find any Jack Daniel’s, which was a shame but I nabbed three whole bottles of Captain Morgan’s rum along with a minimum of twelve different flavors and kinds of beer.
Eventually my cart was loaded up to the brim and I was getting tired just by pushing it so I figured I’d call it quits. As I was about to maneuver my way out past the long since melted ice cream freezers and through checkout lines I saw something shift in the corner of my greatly improved field of view. I’ll admit, I screeched like a little bitch and the only thing that kept me from bolting was a familiar yap and Bella slunk out of the shadows, a rawhide bone the size of her leg in her mouth.
Of course I cursed her out for scaring me and afterwards grabbed a few boxes of dog treats from the pet corner before finally leaving. A quick check outside and I came to the conclusion that it was already midday and if I was going to get somewhere I should get my ass in gear, pronto.
Properly packing my newest haul and attaching the second shopping cart to the first one I set off, Bella by my side and caravan rattling behind me on my way home.
The trip towards the center of the city was a pretty easy one, so easy in fact I had my lunch while walking which wasn’t actually as pleasant as it sounded when one was a quadruped. The terrain was level and the red bike lane I traveled was pretty decently maintained so I didn't have much problems. The entire way there I kept blasting any and all road songs I had on my Walkman and singing along as loud as I could. Part of me justified it as ‘maybe someone will hear me’ and the other part went ‘fuck it, I just really feel like shouting right now’. So I did.
By the time I made it to the railroad bridge so close to home I could almost smell the stale air of my room, the sun was mercilessly beating down on me. I had given up my jacket all together and just thrown it into my cart. The wind breezing past my face and through my wings sent an entire array of strange sensations through my brain. Most of them were pleasant.
Down the small side road I trudged, past the cemetery-turned-park that was my childhood playground, yet I grew more and more uneasy. My legs trembled ever so slightly and my wings twitched in the breeze.
Finally, past the trees the very corner of our apartment complex came into view. I swallowed a lump in my throat before switching off my music. Standing at the t-intersection, tall homes lining the side of the road, I had to bring myself to move.
There was just something about going home like… this…
Maybe it was just a part of me that still hadn’t given up on this being… not real.
That the only way this fate of mine, this insane journey and god knows what else to come would be sealed forever in reality, was going home. Passing through those doors, seeing that familiar hardwood floor and those white and salmon colored walls would make all of this so much more real…
What was I to do?
.
Don’t think about it.
.
So I didn’t.
Since the power was out there was no point in me even trying any of the brand new metal doors with fancy, glowing keypad locks the Apartment Ownership Society my mom was a part of had installed this spring so I went around back to the lot where we all parked our cars. The asphalt was a mess, but then again it had been like that since I was a kid. Finding my keys was the hard part but after fishing out my laptop/shoulder bag out of the mountain of stuff I had getting in was trivial.
“Bella, stay.” I commanded and I think the mutt might’ve actually listened, at least judging by the way she thumped her butt on the little patch of overgrown grass by one of my neighbors windows when she sat down. The door itself, heavy, brown, a bastard, was a little hard to push open with my tiny stature but I eventually stepped inside the concrete lined strainwell. Six steps up and I was on the first floor landing right at a simple wood door with a fancy little 9 at the topmost center.
My guts gave a little lurch but nevertheless I pushed my keys into the lock and after undoing the two separate doors I stepped back home.
It was surreal.
Despite the dust and the heavy, stale air it was like this pace had frozen in time. Gently dropping my bag on the carpet in the foyer I almost drunkenly stumbled the five steps needed to the right and into my bedroom.
Just as I had left it, my bed was a mess I never intended to clean up. Clothes on the floor, papers and brushes and oil paints scattered amongst my desk, money and lip balms and old checks I needed to throw out were on my bedside table.
Nothing had changed.
I was home.
.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this…
I breathed hard, dust going down my throat but I didn’t care.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this…
This was the part where I was supposed to wake up.
A lesson learned. I was supposed to tell Mom I loved her, I was supposed to start helping around the house again, study better, act nicer…
I WAS SUPPOSED TO WAKE UP!
My leathery knuckle connected with the door making the glass in its frames loudly rattle. I let out a shaky breath, biting back tears as they threatened to push out from my once gray eyes. Dust stirred around me and through this tomb of a life I once had.
Posters still covered the walls and books filled my shelves. Boxes of toys I was too old to play with sat atop the closets.
But this wasn’t home anymore.
This wasn’t right anymore.
A sharp inhale and I opened my bright red eyes again. The sun filtering through the closed curtains gave me enough light to see all the treasures that lay here. The graphics tablet and it’s accessories I grabbed off the desk wasn’t the same one I had spent half my savings on. The survival book I had loved and adored so much I knew it from heart wasn’t the one I had spent countless nights reading with a flashlight. The Nintendo DS and all its games on the bottom shelf of the cupboard had never been the one I had gotten all the way from America instead of a PSP. The three binders full of four years’ worth of pencil drawings sitting in the corner were never made by my hand. Photo albums I had never gotten for my birthdays and didn’t show the smiling faces of my tiny family went with the rest. The guitar we’d gotten for cheap, sitting atop the closet I could barely reach as human wasn’t the one I had spent my summer trying to learn. The snacks and soft drinks in a hiding place between the bed and the wall that I had not once in my life used went into the same pile as all the things that were never mine. The pillow I buried my face and beak into and screamed for the life I could never have back wasn’t the best pillow I had ever slept on since getting it at age eight.
.
.
When I stumbled back out into the parking space, shrouded from all sides by six-story-tall homes, the small lot filled with dead cars, could I finally breathe. Bella looked at me with wary eyes, not even wagging her tail. What was her problem? All I’d done was find some keys that were never mine with an address attached and had simply liberated that ownerless apartment of some rather nice books and tech that I had… And a wonderful, massive, fluffy pillow that was nearly the size of me, which was abso-fucking-lutely amazing.
I made sure I carefully packed my laptop (and now with an added graphics tablet) bag between some stuff that would cushion it as best as possible and tried stuffing the things I’d nabbed into the carts. Eventually I was satisfied and slipped the harness around my neck before setting off.
Bella’s behavior was a little worrying but I made sure to remember to give her some doggie treats when we made it to the Old City; aka my main goal this entire goddamn trip.
What was I even doing in this part of town anyway? Meh, doesn’t matter.
UP, UP AND AWAY!
…
Or at least forward in a rather slow and grueling pace… that works too…
I traveled far and long down all my old trails really wishing for a bike right about now. Eventually, after stopping by the Laima chocolate factory’s store a few tram stops from home and doing you can probably guess what, I found myself by the Dailes Theater house. I paused to look at the poster advertising some play I could never bother myself about before finally looking back at Bella who had been trailing me (and not walking beside me as she had most of the trip). She seemed a bit calmer now which was good, though I really had to figure out what had spooked her. Probably me leaving her behind a locked door had something to do with that, but she would eventually have to learn I wasn’t going to take her absolutely everywhere with me. Geez…
I resumed my rattling down the main road leading to the once thriving heart of Riga. It was a fair few blocks away but I still had plenty of daylight to burn so I was at ease with the world.
About a third of the way there I had to stop and look around because I could have sworn I kept hearing something. It wasn’t the wind whipping through the empty streets, that sound I had gotten used to. It wasn’t my MP4 either since I turned it off to save battery. With an involuntary shiver, making me give in and put my jacket back on I continued.
As the heart of the city grew closer and closer so did that strange noise. At this point I was getting seriously worried. That is, until halfway to the Old Town and my goal, something in my head clicked.
I didn’t even care that if I stopped I would get my scrawny ass mowed down by my two shopping-cart-wagons I was still somehow managing to drag with me, because for the first time in my meager existence on this entire fucking planet I knew what it was like to run for my life.
Maybe not just mine.
. I booked it.
. HARD.
. By the time I’d made it a solid three and a half blocks and was wheezing my lungs out through my ass the music could be heard clearer and clearer by the second, ever above my deadass panting. My pace slowed to what I could probably call a ‘trot’ and I struggled to catch my breath. I had gotten twice as good at running in gym over the past two years and it was the only thing that was keeping me going at the moment. At least my liver didn’t feel like it was imploding, so that was always a plus. That is if I had a liver.
I strained my hearing as best I could trying to pick out the lyrics. The destination was the same as my original one, if only I could figure out what was…
Kur latvju meitas zied, Kur latvju dēli dzied, Laid mums tur laimē diet, Mūs' Latvijā!/
I froze.
“Anthem…” I muttered to no one, stopping in my tracks, only now noticing Bella skittering to a stop beside me.
“Anthem.” I repeated, much louder.
I couldn’t help the unholy grin appearing across my changed face.
I picked up my pace.
. The buildings surrounding me from all sides stood as tall and imposing as ever before, their dark windows reflecting the midsummer sunlight across the pavement. I had managed to get my wits about me and had begun a steady pace down the main boulevard on this side of the city, leading to the very heart of my hometown.
The music was almost deafening now as a came to the intersection just past a park with a huge golden-domed church on my right and some probably political building on my left. I stopped once more and gazed up at the very embodiment of my nation’s sovereignty and freedom. A forty-something meter tall pillar of granite topped with ‘Liberty’ wearing our traditional garbs and holding up three golden stars symbolizing the three old Districts and built to memorialize the those dead in wars leading to our independence.
Aptly named the Freedom Monument.
Creative, I know.
Nevertheless it still filled me with a dead sense of pride.
It reminded me of home.
. The music was so loud here it made me put my headphones back in my earholes just to try and cancel out some of the noise. Wherever the speakers were, they were definitely close. I paused.
Unhitching myself from my carts I quickly rummaged through one of the bags attached to the side and fished out a hunting knife I’d gotten from a fishing outlet somewhere along the way. That said I was well aware of just how much of a pussy I am and knew right away if it came down to it I’d get my shit thoroughly fucked, but being prepared had paid off so far. I wrapped the belt of the holster around my chest for easy grabbing and hid the knife itself under my jacket and huge wing. I motioned for Bella to stay and she obeyed.
…
Here we go.
I scurried around the monument.
.
And froze.
.
Two… Things slowly trodded across the huge open plaza, flanked from both sides by parks and canal running underneath the way leading into Old Town proper. The biggest was the most human-like and for a second I felt nothing but pure, blazing fury at being turned into something out of a history textbook instead of remaining my old self, as shit as I was. That anger quickly simmered when I realized I recognized IT from said metaphorical textbook.
With the head of an oxen and the body of a human with dark, devil-looking cloven hooves I was looking at none other than a minotaur.
What I assumed was a he, from the massive, curved ivory horns, looked to have short fur all over his body colored gray with the slightest tint of brown when the light hit him just right, the only exception being a fuzz-less pink nose in a triangle shape towards his forehead. He had hair, much like a human, curly and colored a dark brick red, along with tiny little cow ears just before his horns coming out the side of his skull. He was about as bare as mua’, only wearing dark green cargo shorts with bulging pockets, a thin cow-like tail sticking out of one pant leg.
The person next to him was actually kind of like me but… not…
Something (terrifying) in my head compelled me to call it a her, and she seemed just about as big as me. Then again my sense of scale had gotten shat up the wazoo so I wasn’t exactly sure about that last part.
She looked sort of… horse-like, but all wrong, with a huge head and thick legs and bright neon yellow eyes about as big as mine (and equally as cool looking). She was pale violet and looked pretty fuzzy even from a distance, especially her absolutely humongous ears which reminded more of floppy dog ears only sticking upright. I squinted and saw what looked like those shit, over-expensive, Dre-looking and bright red headphones over said ears. She seemed to have stuck them on backwards, with the band sitting on her nape. Then again I guess with ears that big she didn’t have much of an option.
The rest of her wasn’t as noteworthy, with hair and a full, fluffy tail colored pale black with maybe a hint of purple, and patches that looked a bit like she was graying. She was holding something in her mouth that I couldn’t quite make out (it might’ve been a book) and wearing a thick-looking red skirt and some raggedy-ass socks on her… hooves, I guess… What really caught my attention was the two dark patches of leathery something tucked against her back. Looks like I wasn’t the only flying thing around here.
.
I stared at them for a bit. The minotaur was carrying a huge stack of those plastic boxy containers, all balanced atop one another and against his (actually impressively muscular) chest. There was a loud thud I managed to hear even over the music, as what looked like a five liter bottle of water he was carrying up top tipped and fell, crashing into the asphalt making the horse-woman jump back with a yelp, dropping whatever she was holding.
The minotaur said something to her but I couldn’t quite hear as he lowered the boxes to the ground. The bottle wasn’t even scaved but he still looked kinda’ guilty. I made my move.
With as much confidence as I could muster (and my very molecules shuddering in utter terror) I strolled out of my hiding place in the shadow of the Monument and into the open air. I added a bit more jig to walk than I was used to and it didn’t take long before the two noticed me.
They both seemed to freeze up, just staring, and I couldn’t help a giddy smile, no doubt flashing my razor-like teeth. The guy was the first to react, straightening his posture, his face lighting up as I came closer.
“Human!” he called out over the music in a deep, booming voice. It was so good to hear another Latvian again.
“Or, I don’t know, horse.” He added, eyes scanning me over as I stopped a good three meters in front of him. He reached to fumble for something in his pockets before finally managing to pull out what looked like a small remote. He turned towards Bastejkalns Park and gently tapped a button. Suddenly I realized I could hear again which was… pretty great because I was starting to go fucking deaf. The music stayed as background noise but thankfully I could tune it out.
“You are a Latvian right? You can understand what I'm saying?” he turned back to me, the horse-woman peering around his massive frame, which I realized might have been about three times my size. Shit, I was tiny.
“Yep.” I replied, suddenly unsure what to even say. We stared at each other for a bit just kind of taking in the fact that we were here.
“Ya know… um…” he stammered, “I still wasn’t convinced that I, I don’t know, didn’t just lose my mind at some point but…” He took a deep breath and smiled. “It’s good to see another person -eerrr- former person.”
“I share that sentiment like you wouldn’t believe.” Ahhh, deadpanness, you never fail me.
“Are you… alone? Where did you even come from? We’ve been blasting the anthem for like two weeks straight, I can hear it echoing in my freaking head even when it’s off.”
I hesitated. Trust was no longer something I did. Not again, never again.
“I’d say partially alone.” I turned to face the Monument and called out in a cutesy voice. “BELLA! BELLA BELLA BELLABELLABELLA!”
With a bark the white mutt rounded the corner and dashed at me coming to a stop at my side. She paused before looking at the two people-not-people before us and went to go sniff them all over. I managed to catch a pained look in both their faces as the dog twisted herself around the two’s legs. I wonder.
“Heh, lucky, all we ever get are pigeons.” He paused while Bella dashed between his legs and then took off towards the park. “And cats I guess.”
…
Hurray silence.
The woman poked him in the back of his leg, getting both our attention.
“Maybe go sit?” My guess was correct and she was indeed a she, with a melodic but also firm voice, through what confused me most was her speaking in English. Along with that she had a strange accent to her, one that faintly reminded of my classmates’ attempts at trying to speak the same language I’d been studying since I was three. That and her sentence structure was shit, like, seriously.
“Yeah, good thought. We’ve all probably been on our legs the entire day.” It took me a second for my mind to switch gears between languages, but I managed with only blankly staring at the guy in front for maaaaybe half a second tops. He began to turn to follow the horse-woman but I spoke up beforehand.
“Hold up!” He turned to look at me and I choked on a sentence. “You guys have power right? Do you mind if go charge all my shit while were… whatever?”
He gave me a blank look and blinked before smiling. “Oh, yeah sure, totally. We have an outlet by one of the generators in the booth. Where is your stuff anyway? You’re not, like, magicking it under your wings or something, right?”
“Heh, no, no…” I rubbed the back of my head because I didn’t know what to do with my limbs. “It’s right around /Milda/, I’ll grab it.”
And so I did. Dragging two shopping carts worth of shit behind me and a faint smile on my not-lips as I came closer to admire the dude’s incredibly impressed ‘Holy Shit’-face. And by god did that make me feel good about myself.
He led me to some real shitty box-booth-looking thing off to the side by the edge of the bridge-square. Thing looked like it was made out of cardboard, a bunch of sports shit all over the walls, none of which I recognized since it was… well it was fucking sports. It had been cleared out it seemed, wires and gas cans stacked against one of the only two walls the thing had and a meaty-looking generator against the other. A table had been dragged out in the middle of the booth and under it, and above it, and around the side were like seven four-socketed extensions cords. What could you do with more than two of those? Fuck if I knew.
At least the place had a roof. And duct tape. A lot of friggen duct tape.
By god it was everywhere.
Guy motioned for me to park my shit ‘inside’ and so I did. It took me a solid five minutes to dig out the cords for my phone and lappy but I eventually got it all set up while myth-boy refueled the generator. I was actually amazed at how he knew how to work it. Then again, it couldn’t have been that hard, right?
He gave me a look before yanking a cord, like ones on lawnmowers, and the cocking thing almost made my ears bleed from the noise. I quickly plugged in my extension cord into the one of the holes in the generator proper and bolted.
Fucking ow.
“C’mon let's go sit down!” The minotaur shouted over the roar of the generator and I just kind of nodded as he lead the way away from the noise and into the park itself, closer to the edge of the canal.
There, under one of those white, semi-plastic garden tents, only twice the size, was one of the greatest hangout spots I’d seen in my life. The transparent plastic flaps of the tent were pulled back on one side, exposing a sea of rainbow beanbag chairs laid in a sitable pile. Near the side there was another table full of boxes and twenty billionty snacks and drinks laid all over it. Down by the corner there was what look to be huge TV screen and some wires poking out the box it was sitting in and all over the place with another box which what looked to be stuffed full of DVD cases.
In front of the tent a bit away from the entrance was the biggest fucking grill I’d seen in my short life, half-buried in the ground. It was full of ash and coals and a bit of stacked logs, a bigger pile of them by the ancient oaks nearby, half covered by a tarp and a plastic container with probably lighter fluid bottles in it next to it.
There were three beanbag thrones laid out near the would-be firepit, and horse-woman was just finishing dragging the last in place. When she saw us approach she smiled and walked back to the tent only to return with a basket full of bottles and chips in her jaws.
I kind of awkwardly shuffled in place for a bit, not knowing how to proceed. It was like visiting a schoolmate’s house for the first time and their mom was super nice trying to get you to ‘feel at home’ but your friend was busy taking the worlds longest shit so you just stood there in the hallway not sure what to do with yourself waiting for them to come back so you can pretend you were admiring the vomit stain they called art on the wall. Very similar.
Evidently I got over myself at some point and shuffled to the single unoccupied beanbag throne opposite to the two the ‘homeowners’ as it were, were occupying. I let out a long, deep sigh as I laid down and let myself sink into the cushion, stomach first.
Yes. This is what I needed.
The basket of what I saw were *ahem* refrushmunts (hon-hon) *cough*, got passed about a bit as everyone (two out of three (four?) of us since Bella had fucked off at some point during all of this) picked out whatever. The basket came to me eventually and I poked through it, picking out what looked to be a random beer. I kind of just tapped the cap and it came off (go me) and took a lil’ sip. It was okay.
“So, um, I feel like a bit of an ass since we haven’t exactly introduced ourselves.” Minotaur-guy spoke up while he popped the tab off a Red Bull (huehuehuehuehue), nearly taking the entire top of the huge-ass can off before he- holy tits he chugged the entire thing in one go. My expression must’ve betrayed the slew of swears of amazement going through my brain because the horse-woman started snickering from beside me. The minotaur did one of those quiet burps and took one look at my face and I swear he actually got kind of flustered.
“I need a lot of calories…” he lamely muttered as I was trying to get my jaw off the floor. It took several seconds of silence and I noticed he was working his jaw, about to say something so I just kind of vomited out my question in one go.
“So why are we talking English anyway? We’re Latvians in Latvia knowing Latvian and, and, and-”
“Oh, that.” He reached over towards the bottles leaning against the woman’s ‘throne’ as she nudged one with her leg (back hoof?) in his direction. “She doesn’t know Latvian.” He motioned with the bottle to our silent companion.
Oh.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, it’s not the best but at least we can actually, ya’ know, communicate and stuff, even if she’s preeeety garbage at-OW.” Horse-lady did not seem to like that comment as she had unfurled her leathery wings and slapped the side of the dude’s arm with the, actually kinda’ sharp-looking, tips.
“She has name.”
Like?
“My name is…” she hesitated as she turned to look me in the -ohgodwhyisshestaringintomysouldohgodmakeitstop- “Kaja.”
“Kaja…” I repeated back, simply. She just kind of looked at me. “Kaaaaaja.”
I blinked.
“No offense but it sounds really close to /kaija/, as in, which means seagull…” Now it was her time to blink. Blink. She furrowed her brows at me. “I'm sorry! It’s just the first thing that came to mind!”
Before anything could escalate there was snort of laughter from our side and the minotaur had his head leaned back and a grin of his face. “Heeee~h… Seagull…”
“Hey!”
“I’m sorry, Kaj, but eagle-lady does have a point. Ffff-hah, I can't believe I didn’t notice that.”
“Laugh, laugh, you two people. Maybe not tell all story.” She looked down into the beer bottle still clasped inbetwixt her hooves. I swear a caught a smile in the corner of her mouth and the tone she spoke in was that which I shared with my old classmates in our usual riffing sessions.
“C’mon, Kaj, story! Story!” Myth-man did a mock-chant. “It’s not like we have anything better to do.”
“You already hear it one time, stupid!” She shouted at him, but her smirk betrayed whatever she was going for. After about a second more of giggling her expression turned… dark. She cleared her throat and raised up her head in what was probably a dignified gesture. I wouldn’t know.
“Oke’. Whatever. Not long story. I am forty-three. I live in Tartu. Come to Riga with two friends for basketball festival and beer. Have fun. Wake up /lilla/ bird-horse.”
…
…
Wow that was underwhelming.
…
I chewed some air for a bit and just kind of let out a weak ‘huh’. I think they took it as a sign.
“My turn then.” The minotaur looked between us and then down at his drink. He paused before speaking, probably gathering his thoughts.
“Getting the basics out of the way: My name’s Carl /Jansons/, I'm nineteen, I used to live a few blocks from here in Old Town with my mom and brother when shit hit the fan and I’ve been camping here for a while… like, what’s it been-” he looked at Kaja who just kind of shrugged “-like a month or something?”
“But yeah. There was this basketball thing happening right in the Monument square and they had portable generators for the merch booth and two more for some stage thing and booth-thing down in the park. They're gas, thankfully so we run them a few hours a day to charge all our chargeable things, ‘n ya’ know. Just kind of making do here, as best we can with everyone gone.” He had sweet smile.
“'Kay, that’s us done. Your turn.” Carl looked at me expectantly.
…
waitwhat
.
“I.”
.
I.
.
I didn’t…
.
I froze…
.
Breathe.
.
“Diana.”
.
Breathe.
.
“I… I live a few kilometers from here. By /Brasa/.”
Breathe.
“Lived.”
Breathe.
“I went on a little weekend vacation to our summer home down to Vidzeme with my mom and oma. And then… then the world just decided to end so I… walked.”
…
“For three hundred motherfucking kilometers I walked to a dead and empty home after the fucking Rapture.”
.
“And now I'm fucking here and I don’t know what the ever-loving fuck happens next because the entire fucking world is GONE!”
.
I didn’t realize my hand was on my face until I had to look up from over my palm to see the faces of the only two strangers still left in the world. Their looks of sympathy did not surprise me. Not the slightest.
Everything was coming out like vomit.
.
“But you know what tho’? I don’t care.
I just don’t care anymore. Not a single teeny, tiny fucking bit. I am DONE. I am done keeping up appearances and I am done being nice to every little shitstain that comes in my direction because I'm supposed to.
I am done trying to keep up a nice looking oh-so public façade for a future I can’t have anymore. There is no more faking and forced interactions with proper people and constantly censoring how many fucking fucks per minute I can manage because there ain’t anyone around anymore to BOTHER.
That’s why I'm done with all this- I'm done with the life I had because there's nothing left on it.
I'm done pretending…
This is me. A bitter, selfish, swearing, insecure little shithead of a brat and I don’t care what anyone thinks of me.
The word is gone. Done. Poof. Nada. Fucked right off into space. And what's even the fucking point of going if I'm not true to myself, if I've never been. I don’t think I even remember what I am deep down. What I was. What I could have been. All I ever know is what I was supposed to look like on the outside.
Even for friends. Even for family… And now it’s over. Just like that. Like it should be. I'm done being… half of me… the asshole needs to see the light again and I'm just so tired of keeping her under lock and key.
It’s over. I am who I am. No more pretending to be better.
And if no one likes me that’s fine. I wouldn’t like a cunt like me either…”
I looked down at the grass between my fingertips. I think I might’ve dropped my beer during all this explosive venting, but like I said - I was done being anyone but pure, untainted me. Tumors and all. And I wasn’t going to cry over spilled beer either, the world was my oyster and even if the two bastards that still listened to all that, bless the fuckers, hated me… that was fine.
I was used to being alone.
I liked it, even.
Liberating.
.
.
We sat there in silence for a long time. I think it was too awkward for them to say anything. Meanwhile I picked out another bottle. I might’ve been underage, but it’s not like there were any coppers around to take me to drunk-kiddie jail.
Oooh, cherry.
I fumbled with my pocketknife’s bottle opener. Bless having thumbs.
After a fizz and pop and crackle and me having a nice, refreshing, flavorful sip that felt like something tart (that’s a word people use, right?) fucked something fizzy on top of a dark beer and exploded in my mouth and me going ‘aaah’ because fuck you that’s why, I cleared my throat.
Man, Carl looked like he was on the edge of a depression-induced meltdown.
“Now that that fucker is out of the way, want to hear how I went rodeling? I promise it’s slightly less depressing!” I am a fucking comedian.
“So, anyway, it was like, a day ago? Two? I couldn’t keep track of dates when I had them on every screen I looked at… So anyway-”
And I talked.
Because it felt good.
It felt so spectaculasly good to just yammer on about all the shit that mattered to me and have people there that at least pretended to listen.
So I talked and I talked and they kept listening and after a while the smiles came back and we laughed at how Bella freaked the fuck out of me on a daily basis and they yammered back of being chased by a flock of pigeons for two days straight once and I laughed so hard it felt like I was going to die. And the bottles and cans of beer and cola kept piling up, mostly thanks to Carl since he basically tanked like five in one go while me and bird-horse were queen lightweights, but it was okay because it felt amazing and I didn’t care I was going to ruin all this good by being the black, tainted mess of a human being that I knew I was, because for just one glorious evening I could be my deep down and the world didn’t give a single fuck.
That was not the noise I wanted to make, but it was the one I did.
Sleeping with this new body had been a bastard of a challenge until I had figured out that the good ol’ fetus position worked like a charm. Nice and comfy on my side, not turning my wings into pain-filled pancakes. That and I had always slept like some kind of caveman anyway, even when I was human so it wasn’t that much of a difference. That is, as long as I had something to molest against myself. Hello pillow.
I pressed my face deeper into my almost forgotten lumpy garbage-something of a cushion and breathed in the smell of home. It had dulled while I had been traveling and I felt like my nose wasn’t what it used to be either. Another thing that was in that weird limbo of ‘kind of not better, but not really worse either, but still kind of shit in its own special way’. I had to admit, I hadn’t really spent much time with my new body. Too busy with… stuff. Probably should figure that out while I was still here.
Wait.
Where was here again?
I shook myself out of my sleepy musings. I was on some kind of bed. I vaguely recalled going somewhere to sleep, but then again I had gotten my face thoroughly plastered last night so what did I know?
Blinking open my eyes against the bright sunlight pouring through the gap in the sheet nailed to the wall I tried to get my bearings. It was at that point that I realized I was in heaven.
At least for the ten-year-old inside me.
A good three mattresses stacked atop one another and lathered in fluffy, fuzzy and ever so soft blankets of all kinds - knitted and fleece and wool and silk and the white poofy ones with the diagonal stitches. There was a sea of pillows on every side of all shapes and sizes I didn’t even know what to do with.
Letting go of my pillow, I rolled onto my back and stretched, letting out even more noises as I crackled my spine. That felt pretty damn good actually. Then I rolled over to my other side.
And screamed.
.
.
Well, not screamed-screamed, more like a loud, startled yelp, but it was enough to wake bird-horse and have her yelp too, whilst throwing her hooves over her ears. I stopped my heart from having another fit, loudly gasping for breath and awkwardly shuffled backwards to the edge of the mattress, making sure the pillow wall was between us.
We stared at each other in confusion and slight embarrassment for a while more.
“O-oh right, wait I remember-” I started talking, but that only made Kaja curl in on herself even more. “We were talking and you guys decided to have me sl-”
“Shush.”
?
“Well that’s kind of-”
“SHUSH.”
I didn’t try talking after that, just kind of glaring. She breathed hard for a few more seconds like she was in pain or something before rising up her head to look at me. Man her eyes were fucking baller. Glowing bright gold, or maybe neon-something-yellow with fuckin’ slit pupils like a damn cat or dragon or something. Like, seriously, they were even cooler than my red ones and as we all know I have a fetish for epic eyes.
I was too busily telling myself how amazing they are I almost didn’t notice her motioning to something off to the side. I looked and there, on one of those ‘breakfast in bed’ trays atop a pile of fluffy were her read headphones and a bottle of water.
I took a guess and grabbed those shitty things, considering how Kaja was cupping her hands hooves over her earholes. I kind of awkwardly held them out to her, spread open and I guess she appreciated the help since she turned her back to me and shuffled into the headphones. I gently cupped them over where I figured the earhole was and let go. She took a bit to adjust them before turning to face me.
“Sorry.” She mumbled. “My ears are very strong. Big noise hurts.” She pointed at the side of the device. “Carl say this are ‘noise can-cuh-ling’. But I can hear all with it.”
I blankly stared at her for a bit before getting enough sense to nod.
“So, uh, how, how good can you hear anyway?” I stumbled out a question. She took a second, I swear I saw the gears going in her brain.
“Very. Before… ehh-head-phones I can hear very far and uhh… loud. Carl talking hurt to hear. He thinked up giving me his old this.” She pointed at her head. “Then found better this. Very nice.”
Well she seemed chipper about it. Honestly I felt kind of bad for her, I mean, Carl was basically as close to human as we could get and I at least had fingers and despite the winged quadruped thing was also pretty human-esque. And she was just… horse…
We sat there in horribly awkward silence for a while before she motioned to move before hopping out of the nest we apparently called a bed. Without another word she walked around the corner and down the sta-HOLY SHIT I JUST REALIZED WHERE WE WERE.
Okay, okay, so near what was basically the main entrance to Old Town proper, right near the Monument square was this little plaza-place. It was flanked on the left by some fancy hotel and was always filled with street musicians and Asian tourists. But that didn’t matter right now because on the right, sitting right on the corner of one of the more mid-timey buildings was the first McDonalds’ that had ever opened in the country.
I had just slept in a McDonald's.
Holy Mc’fucknuggets(tm).
The revelation filled me with a burst of giddy spunk and I hopped around the second floor of the ‘restaurant’. Looking out the windows I saw the empty plazas of my hometown and that fun spunk deflated very quickly.
I decided to look around the inside for a bit. Most of the tables on the farther end (where the ‘bed’ was) seemed to have been cleared out and the booths where the chairs had been screwed to the ground had been turned into beanbag nests or just stacked with boxes of who knew-what. There was a lot of stuff everywhere and it didn’t exactly surprise me. What did surprise me were those tiny, solar powered garden lamps that you stuck in the grass by the walkways stuck by the windowsills with, you guessed it, duct tape.
Whelp, that was one way to get light, I guess.
I looked around the edge of my side of the bed and found my plastic-y blue jacket and shoes/gloves. It felt pretty warm so I decided against the jacket. One problem is that I felt kind of naked. Thankfully it seemed Kaja had had similar problems since I spotted a pile of kid-clothes in the corner. After rummaging through those I came up with shorts that didn’t chafe for once so I ‘borrowed’ them.
By ‘borrowed’ I mean I wasn’t going to give them back even if she asked.
Eventually I forced myself to go downstairs. I had feeling there was going to be some awkwardness between us.
‘Some.’
…
Fucking ‘some’.
.
.
The ground floor of the place was just as I remembered, except the not-nailed-down tables and chairs had been vanished and everywhere was absolutely full of all kinds of useful looking shit. I felt like I was on an episode of Hoarders…
There, right by the stairs and to my left I saw my two companions. They were sitting in a window booth, the booth next to them having three of those one-ringed camper stoves and a bunch of cooking stuff on it. Carl was lazily spread across one of the seats, an entire cooking pot of what looked like oatmeal in his lap. Meanwhile Kaja was neatly sitting on her butt across from him. Well, as neatly as one could whilst face-deep in a bowl and making slopping noises.
Carl was the first to see me coming down the stairs. Well, more precisely, my ass, and the rest of me followed as I reverse-wildebeest-ed my way down. When I saw him looking at me I may have given a small smile, but with my beak I wasn’t exactly sure anymore. He smiled through, pretty widely.
“Morning’ Dian’.”
I just kind of made a noise at him. I stood at the base of the stairs, barely even seeing the two people over the bar-counter-things dividing the room. I heard a yap and Bella shot around the huge support pillar in the middle of the eatery.
Man, I fucking love this dog. She was like zero maintenance and all she ever needed from me was petting. Perfect.
Stumbling over to what I now dubbed the kitchen on three legs (the third molesting Bella as we walked and she tried to bite my fingers) I began looking through what we had. Eventually I came up to a plastic container full to the brim all kinds of variety and brands and flavors of ramen.
Fuck yea’.
The Knorr brand had always been my favorite so I dug up one of those with cheese. Grabbing a bowl from a stack of them under the table I threw everything from the package in it and emptied the still half-warm electric kettle over it. Picking a plate I placed over top the bowl and let it seep.
Now. The question was, as I continued absentmindedly rubbing Bella’s ears, weather to stay here staring at my bowl for five minutes like some kind of serial killer or go the table over and sit in silence by the others like some kind of serial killer.
Choices, choices.
I gave up midway through my train of thought and walked the five steps necessary.
Kaja scooted to the side, making room for me to rest my ass on the cushion. The two didn’t even talk among themselves and I think that just made it worse. The awkwardness was thick in the air and most of me I just wanted to die because of it. I mean, I know I partly brought it on myself but still…
“Soooo~” It was more of an exhale than a sentence but, ya’ know. An-ohgodpleasestopstaringatme-
“A-anything on our agenda today?” I asked.
“Ahh-gen-duh?” Kaja tried to mimic the word with… mixed results.
“You know, to-do-list? Plan?” I tried to offer something. Dumb people frustrated me to hell and back and to hell again a second time, but it was kind of dickish to call her that. I mean, I was basically retarded when it came to Russian so I couldn’t really blame her for not speaking English that well.
Ah, language barriers, the best thing about being European.
“Well,” Carl started, with his mouth stuffed full of the vomit people called oatmeal, “we’ve been doing just a bunch of random stuff mostly. Gathering food, clothes, tech. We did a gas run last week, we might have to do another soon.”
“Wait, doesn’t that need electricity or something?”
“The gas stations’ yea. I mean, I think so…” He stared off at the ceiling. “Honestly, I don’t know how any of that works, Kaja just works her magic on whatever and I do the heavy lifting.” He shrugged. I had just realized Kaja had stopped slopping down her breakfast.
“Then where do you, like, keep it or whatever, I didn’t see that many cans in the booth outside.”
“We have drums and tanks and stuff back at the stations. It’s not safe or anything, but ya’ know… making do and stuff.” he trailed off.
“Yes, because explody things are ‘making do’.”
“Do you have a better idea?” He raised an eyebrow at me.
…
“… No.”
“Neither do we, welcome to the club.”
Silence continued. Carl stared at me for a bit before returning to his breakfast. I just realized I could faintly hear the anthem still playing in the distance. Wow, Carl was right, you really did tune it out after a while. I sighed and hopped to the floor and the second I had all fours on the ground Bella was already between them, nuzzling herself under my stomach.
I sauntered over back to the kitchenette and lifted the plate off my bowl of breakfast, making sure to drip all the condensation back in the bowl. Then I came upon a problem.
“Ah.” I made a noise out loud. The quadruped thing.
I stared at the very rather hot bowl for a bit.
“Ah…”
I can't say I thought this through.
And then suddenly, an angel descended from the heavens to lend my damned unfaithful ass a hand. Or maybe it was just a gray mountain of muscle and testosterone named Carl.
“I gotchya’.” He said softly as he picked up my bowl by the sides and walked back to the ‘dining table’ and set it down next to Kaja who looked to be having seconds. I might’ve blushed but it didn’t exactly show through my feathers. (At least physics dictated it shouldn’t but I was a griffon so what the fuck did I know). I picked up a stray spoon from a box of silverware beneath the table and slinked to eat my food.
And then I tripped over Bella because I’d forgotten the scraggly fuck was tangled between my asscheeks.
Fuck everything.
.
“You okay?” Carl sounded concerned and the slopping had stopped, so I guessed Kaja was probably concerned too. I wouldn’t know, I was facedown on the floor.
Fuck you floor, what the fuck did I ever do to you?
“Diana? You okay? I would very much like it if you hadn’t broken your face and died.”
I gave him a thumbs up.
Like that movie with the lava and Arnold Swarchinager. Was it Scwarchneigher? I don’t remember if it was Swharchneahgger.
…
Schwarzenegger.
.
Anyway.
It got weirder.
Mr. Minotaur picked me up off the floor like I was a doll. That was an experience.
I think my brain blanked at some point because I came to, sucking up the last remnants of my noodles and for the first time in a long time the silence was comfortable.
I mean. It was pretty nice actually. It was warm inside and the sun was shining and summer was only halfway. I could smell the breeze passing through a propped-open door and it made me feel all weird. I was eating food I liked sitting in a place I liked and people around me were minding their own business. I was warm but breezy and just for a moment everything was nice.
Then Kaja burped like a motherfucker and all that went away.
I gave the horse-woman my blankest of blank looks while Carl giggled like a thirteen-year-old boy hearing the word ‘penis’. Kaja just licked her lips without a care in the world. Then she looked between the two of us, beaming all the way. In hindsight it was a little funny.
After Carl had regained his ability to breathe he tried his damndest to clear his throat and get our attention, but we were just lost to the world.
“Ahem, anyway,” he began, “Now that we have some food in us we should probably think up what we’re doing today.”
I had enough sense in me to respond.
“I thought you said fuel?”
“I was mostly throwing it out there, we don’t actually really need it. And honestly, it’s not like we’re going anywhere or anything” He started picking up our bowls. “And now we have you here, so that’s an extra pair of hands. Well, fingers at any rate.” He scooted himself out the booth, dirty dishes in hand. “Honestly, I'm really glad, you’re a, whaddaya’ called yourself? Griffon? I was afraid I might end up mushing Kaja when I helped her around, so I'm hoping you don’t mind being her fingers until we figure out…” he trailed off.
I did mind. But I didn’t say so.
Wait no.
Me, what the fuck were we talking about yesterday, eh?!
“I do… kind of mind, but whatever, we’ll be fine. Right bat-horse?”
Damn dem gold eyes looked nice rolling into the back of her skull via the power of sheer annoyance.
Yes, I have a cool eye fetish. Sue me.
…
Wait could that have actually been a thing?
“-?”
“What?”
“What?” Carl what-ed me back. “You zoned out, you okay?”
“Yeah, just thinking about dumb shit, what did you say?”
“I guess I wanted to say, you’re free to go look around the city but then I remembered you're from here so now I just feel really stupid…”
“No doubt,” I flatly responded. “But don’t we all?”
Kaja was over by the ‘kitchen’ busy rubbing Bella’s head with the bottom of her un-socked hooves while the rest of us had found ourselves by the actual food-ordering bit of the Mc’Dicks. It had been cleared off, the cash registers gone. I did a double-take while Carl vaulted the counter like he was some kind of fucking Olympian. Showoff.
In hindsight trying to get up over the counter whilst being barely a meter tall and with basically nonexistent upper body strength wasn’t my brightest idea but I wanted to be cool too~
“There’s box-stairs by the wall!” Carl called out from already deep in the kitchen.
Oh shit, there were. The wall to my left was one huge window but the right end of the counter had a little plaster wall and around it were chairs and a small table staked up to be perfect little stairs for someone my size. I hopped over to where it was right by the employee doo- wait a minute.
“You have a closed door, you fuck, why not prop that open?” I half-jokingly asked whilst climbing over.
“It’s electronic. When the power went out it basically deadlocked.” Carl called back from… somewhere.
“Oh.” I blinked. Maneuvering through the metal whatevers’ of the eatery I found our gray mountain between two sinks of water and a lot of water bottles. “Can't you just bust it down?”
“Well I don’t want to rip it out with the fucken’ wall, geez.” The amount of confidence that he used when saying such a hypothetical thing concerned me.
…
Eh, fuck it.
“You say that with such confidence.”
It was supposed to a bit jokey but the way he looked at me, there was something in his eyes I didn’t understand.
I didn’t understand people.
.
And then Carl did something… just…
He picked out the spoon I had used from the sink and…
.
.
…crushed it.
It just crumpled in his palm like paper and he let it fall to the tiled floor with a clank. A little ball of metal that once upon a time was a utensil. It was at that point where I realized how much of a paranoid pussy I was because I took a solid three, shaking steps backwards until I hit my ass on a grill.
I would have taken more.
“There… there's a reason I'm worried about hurting Kaja.” I couldn’t see his eyes anymore, brick red hair falling over them as he moved his head.
“A-and you too… but I'm guessing we won't be getting as touchy…”
He returned to washing the dishes and I finally noticed the bumps and dents in the pot and how the spoons were a bit wonky, like they had been bent back and forth too much, and the way he took his time placing everything down like it was made of, of, of- something fragile, but it wasn’t…
My eyes darted between his bare back and the room and I slowly crept backwards to the counter and vaulted the steps in one go.
Bella yapped at me as I ran out the open glass door and into the warm summer daylight. Clouds drifted above and there were birds singing along to the anthem still blasting from the park. And I ran because at some point my brain had flicked the ‘fuck’ switch.
My hands hurt from hitting the cobblestones and my footsteps echoed through the streets and my breath hurt my throat. My wings twitched by my sides and my feathers twisted all weird in the breeze.
As good as my stamina had gotten my body hurt and I slowed in the shadow of the mountainous buildings closing all around me. My head was jumbled and my thoughts didn’t work right. I had lost track of where I was, all I saw were flashes of architecture from my art history classes. The road was cold and my tail coiled under my stomach and I still couldn’t breathe. There were spots in my eyes and I leaned against a tree.
Hello, tree. Where did you come from? Where did the sky come from? Oh, I guess I was in one of the Squares. How peculiar. Wait, what was touching me.
Hello white blob. What is that in your mouth? Why are you making noises at me?
“Wh-what…”
Oh, that was my own voice. I sounded like shit.
“How did you…?”
My mouth moved before my brain.
Bella pushed my jacket harder against my chest. I took it from her to get her to stop. At some point I had lain down because the mutt curled up against me. I placed a shaking hand on her back.
She bit the edge of my coat and moved it in my direction. What? Oh. Pocket.
I pulled out a mess of wires and my banged up MP4.
Bella continued nudging my hand as I tried untangling my headphones. It took a long time and at some point I forgot to breathe but eventually I evened out.
By the time got the bastards into my earholes I could think again.
I looked down at Bella and stared into those black little eyes and I saw… I don’t know what I saw other than the slowly solidifying realization that this world wasn’t what it used to be. That the place I was in was never going to be the same home I had grown up in and the people I shared this world with now were nothing like humans.
---something straight out of a horror movie or something. As I moved between the perfectly untouched shelves I managed to kick up an entire storm of dust. How long had it been si|
I looked back up at Kaja. She was simply standing there by the corner of our shared ‘bedroom’, softly smiling. I exhaled.
Thankfully griffon claws had about the same material as human fingers so I could still work my lappy’s touchpad as I saved, minimized the document, double-tapped the desktop and closed the screen. I waited a second for one of the lights to change to soft red and fumbled to my feet. I placed my laptop on a nearby table I had cleared for myself and walked over to Kaja while picking out a wedgie and we set off.
. “You scare us today.” She said, matter-of-fact. I didn’t look at her, letting my head-feathers do their job of obscuring at least a bit of my eyes.
“You scare you too.”
I suddenly felt her touch my side.
“It oke’. World is scary.” I couldn’t not look at her and I raised my head. She was a good ten centimeters shorter than me. I hadn’t noticed that before. I still didn’t respond, only slightly narrowed my eyes.
We came to a stop before the stairs, the weak light from our makeshift windowsill lights not reaching even the third step. Kaja awkwardly thumped around a flashlight before she managed to flick it on with the edge of her hoof. She bent down and picked it up with her mouth before shining the light down the steps. I went first, backwards as usual, and thankfully she was courteous enough to not shine the light in my eyes. I made it to the first landing and sat on my ass, looking up.
Kaja shifted around a bit before awkwardly throwing the flashlight at me. Thankfully I caught it and lit her way as she reversed down the steps. She stopped next to me and looked at me, her eyes reflecting the light like nothing I’d seen.
“Jus’ go.” I muttered and motioned to the steps.
We eventually made it to the first floor and it was even darker than upstairs with the exception of our ‘kitchen’ corner. Carl had his back to us and was doing something at our dining table. I gave that entire area a wide berth and walked over to one of the main support pillars where Bella was, sitting in a half-empty bag of dog food kibbles, happily munching her dinner. I didn’t touch her because you weren’t supposed to touch dogs when they ate, so I just refilled her water bowl.
“Do you want tuna or peaches, Kaj?” Carl sounded dead inside as he asked. I assumed the question was for me as well as I slowly slinked closer to the two.
“Tuna!” Kaja excitedly exclaimed and I watched Carl pull open two cans of the stuff and dump it out on a paper plate, tuna juice and all.
He did the upwards nod when our eyes met. Now he’s asking.
“Peaches I guess.” I muttered and watched through my forehead-feathers as he pulled open one of those huge-er-looking cans.
“Do you want a bowl or…?” I didn’t say anything, just reached out and he handed me the ca- fuck this thing was heavy. I almost dropped it but I didn’t. I waited for Kaja to scoot into her spot and sat next to her. Carl took a seat opposite of us. The camping lantern sitting on the table next to ours gave off a pale yellow light, stark contrast to the blue moonlight pouring through the huge windows. It was strange living with so little light, especially since the colors went away when it got dark.
We ate in silence and Carl was refusing to look at me.
I glanced to side to see Kaja happily chowing down her tuna. I swear it was like watching cat in one of those fucken’ Purina or whatever commercials. Maybe I should stop calling her bird-horse? Wait, could horses even eat fish?
Holy- Speaking of catfood…
“Is that dog food?” I asked, breaking the silence, the disbelief clear in my voice. Carl looked up from the can and the spoon hovering above it. For a moment he looked confused.
“Oh, yeah, right, I guess we didn’t tell you. I can eat anything. Like. Anything.” He took a bite. “And I don’t really have taste anymore, so I'm basically a walking recycling bin.”
“Recycling… What like, fucken’ potato peels and shit?”
Kaja butted in before we could even react.
“Ye! He can eat anything! He say he eat rot-old meat one time and not go sick.” She seemed chipper about that and the minotaur just looked ashamed. “He eat old food so I can eat good food.”
Huh.
“Huh. I guess that’s kind of cool.” I paused. “Fucking disgusting, but cool.”
We returned to silence. I occasionally stole glances at Kaja’s yellow eyes. It was almost like they were glowing. Carl was the first to finish eating while I was barely a third of the way through my dinner. Canned peaches were sweet as fuck. Goddamn.
“Whelp, I'm going to sleep.” He stood up and stretched. He picked up one of those huge spotlight-flashlights that was sitting next to our lantern. When he turned it on Kaja and I both shrunk back like vampires in sunlight. I might’ve actually hissed.
“Geez, what’s with you two? You know I can't see shit.” he gave us an annoyed eyeroll before walking away. Now that I think about it, I had no idea where his ‘room’ was. He called out a ‘goodnight’ and vanished with his light somewhere over the counter into the McDonalds’ kitchen.
I poked at a peach with my spoon but I felt like I was going to vomit if I ate a single one more. In my peripherals I watched Kaja munch the last of her tuna and I slipped out of the booth-seat to let her get out. She picked up the paper plate in her teeth and trotted over to the door we didn’t use and dropped it into a garbage bag. How considerate.
I was about to slink upstairs but Kaja called out to me.
“Hey.”
I looked back at her.
“Want to walk?”
I stared at the stairs for a moment.
“Fine. Give me a sec.”
A quick run upstairs to grab my dark blue jacket and Walkman and another flashlight off the table we were out the door. Kaja had, at some point in the day, wrestled on a cherry-red zip-up hoodie.
As we exited our home base we were hit with a burst of cold air. Despite the very warm days, the night always brought a certain chill with it. Yet there was something spectacular about the night air. There had always been, even before the world had disappeared. We were soon joined by four tapping little feet. Bella stood in such stark contrast against the dark of the night.
I concentrated on the scent of the wind. I could just about make out the smell of salt and seaweed as the northbound winds brought an extra chill from the sea and if one listened above the crickets it’s like I could almost hear the river kilometers and kilometers to the west.
Three sets of legs filled the silence as we walked deeper into the Old Town. We absentmindedly followed the same path I had when I had my breakdown earlier today. I made myself forget that.
There was something serene about a walk in the night. Something illegal. Something scary. I wish I had my bike.
I wish I could ride a bike.
I looked over to Kaja. There was no doubt about it, those yellow eyes of hers were glowing. She seemed comfortable in the dark. Her mouth was agape and I could get a good look at her freaky, little vampire-fangs. Her tongue moved, like she was clicking it against the roof of her mouth but no sound came. Only now I realized she had moved her huge headphones off of her earholes and her fuzzy ears were pivoting in every direction.
I decided not to speak and rather look around myself. We had made our way to one of the churches, the closest to our base. As we stalked around the huge stone building in eerie silence I used my vastly improved vision to admire the stained glass windows. Sure, I couldn’t tell apart the colors much, but the designs were pleasantly intricate.
We came out into /Doma/ Square and were hit with another blast of colder air. Bella shivered and pushed herself closer to me. The three of us paused and out the corner of my eye I saw Kaja move her headphones back over her ears. We started walking again, towards the river, I realized.
“So,” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “How you feeling?”
I knew what she meant. I could have played the ignorant but at the same time I couldn’t bring myself to bother.
“Fine.” I mean. I was fine.
“Look…” She let her head hang to the side. “I know we stranger. I remember what you say last day, all that about…” she paused to look for words.
“Faking?” I offered. “About giving in and not giving a fuck anymore…?”
“Yes…” The world was still.
.
“I wish I could do like you.” She was so quiet. “But I can't. But I understand.”
She looked me in the eye. Hers were so damn bright.
“I know I old and I know we only three and I know we not friends and I know everything strange but I listen if you want.”
. I furrowed my brows.
.
“That’s it?” I said that louder than I wanted. “That’s it?!”
I didn’t know why that made me angry, all I know is that I felt all wrong. Not just on the outside but on the inside as well.
“I don’t need your pity, Kaja!” she shrunk back and I felt my feathers fluff up. “I don’t know what I need but it ain’t this shit!”
I exhaled some of my rage.
“Look I know I barged into whatever you and Carl had going on and just kind of… dumped all this shit onto you, and I know everything is stupid and no one knows what to do about ourselves or each other, but all I know is that we can't keep going like this.”
“I, I mean…” I rubbed my face.
“Look. I don’t know what to do okay? About myself or about you.” I looked her in the eyes. “You’re good people but I can't just sit around here like you.”
“I mean… I could have gone my entire life in a box with a fridge and, and, and an Ethernet cable but-but we don’t even have fucking power and light and everything is so fucking ramshackle… this… this isn’t living…”
.
.
“I know.”
I raised an eyebrow at her.
“I know.” she repeated, more firmly this time. “We not know what we doing. I not know what I doing. I not even from here. All I do, I help Carl but he not know what he doing. Then you come and you look like you know but then you say how everything wrong and you lost like us and that oke’.”
She smiled at me.
“We lost too. We scared too. I just want you know you not alone, oke?’”
.
That’s the thing, though.
I wasn’t scared.
I didn’t know what I was.
.
I wish I did.
.
I sighed.
“I… thanks…” I muttered. “I guess.”
She gently bapped me on the shoulder with a socked hoof. She smiled like a typical mom and I couldn’t help but smile back, just a bit.
“Hey, can I show fun?”
“Eh?” I wasn’t even done processing that thought when she was already off. I took off running after her. I heard her giggling as she disappeared around a building. Bella let out a few yaps from beside me and I sharply rounded the corner only to see a black tail disappear around the next.
So we ran.
My hands hurt from the impact but for some reason I didn’t mind as much. I continued my dash, I had lost sight of Bella but I could still follow the laughter. Another street, another corner and I suddenly came to hard stop. I hadn’t realized we were this close.
The full moon was bright, pouring silver across the dark city, its light dancing across the shimmering river.
I don’t think I had ever looked up since I awoke to an empty world. But while Earth might’ve been gone, the sky wasn’t.
.
Stars.
Stars as far as the eye could see.
They filled the sky like nothing before.
It wasn’t dark. It wasn’t the pitch black of night. It was barely gray, like TV static, full of light against the backdrop of hollow skyscrapers.
And I could only stare, for that moment I truly felt us hurling through the void of existence a billionty miles per hour.
Tiny little specks stuck on an empty rock amidst nothing and light.
I might’ve cried.
I might’ve laughed.
I might’ve felt the wind ride through my feathers.
Kaja laughed, and I saw her hoodie fall to the pavement and she unfurled her massive leather wings, as dark as the night around us. I didn’t even realize my jacket was off until I felt the cold wind around me.
Kaja was skipping in circles, flapping her wings, Bella running around her.
They looked so… happy.
They were waiting for me.
I unfurled my wings and the stars seemed so much closer.
I called out and we took off running through the night, our new eyes guiding us through the highways hugging the sparkling river.
Our day started with me almost breaking my neck running down the stairs.
I admired the look utter horror upon Carl’s face and the erratic thumping of a suddenly woken Kaja running after me.
All I could bring myself to do was grin, bearing my razor like teeth.
.
“I just had the most retardedly brilliant idea ever.”
.
.
.
.
.
“Well, I’ll give you one thing… You were right about the retarded part.”
“Shut 'yer mouth and enjoy this.”
“…”
“Lookit how much fun she’s having!”
. I didn’t believe I’d ever actually witness, let alone take part in the physical embodiment of the phrase ‘rolling along’ but here we were. The ‘taka-taka-taka’ of a dozen tiny wheels on the paved sidewalk filled out ears, occasionally broken up by a girlish giggle form Kaja or an annoyed grumble from Carl.
As for me, I was having the time of my fucking life.
Who knew quadrupeds would be god-tier at skateboarding.
I gave the ground another solid kick with my lion leg and took off, wobbling only slightly.
We were going down /Valdemāra/ Street heading towards the Old City, on our way back from the only place in the city I knew of where they sold these sodding things. Kaja was zipping in front of us, her wings held open for balance and the feeling of wind running along them. Mine were still strictly pinned to my sides but I did twitch them slightly open every so often if my balance went a bit off.
Carl, the poor fuck, got the shit end of the stick, as usual. He was sitting on the biggest and most heavyweight board we were able to find and moving by pushing forward with his arms. We had gotten him rollerblading wrist/hand braces from the same brand as my wonderful new fingerless gloves so we didn’t fuck up our hands too bad. (The missing finger still threw me off)
He was the single most hilarious thing I’d seen since I woke up.
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure why.
Didn’t stop me from laughing, though.
He was our pack mule for the moment, a huge camping backpack full of s8r st0ff strapped on and absolutely full. I also had a backpack, though I hesitated to call it that. It was smaller and was more of an ass-pack than a back one via how we had managed to fit it onto me without crushing my wings. My back legs were going through the arm straps and the entire thing awkwardly sat atop my tailbone, my actual tail keeping it from sliding across my crotch. It wasn’t the best but it was functional, especially considering I was one of two that could actually carry anything around since Kaja was such a lightweight.
If I didn’t know any better I would have said the woman was made from glass spun, air filled bones.
“Hey…” I looked to my side to see Carl pull up next to me and match my speed.
“Diana, listen, I never actually asked,”
Oh, anything that started like that was not going to end well.
“Why did it take you an entire month to get here from the wherever you were? Look at us now, three hundred kilometers would have been a breeze for you, right?”
I hesitated.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“You’re a griffon and I'm a minotaur. Try me.”
I exhaled and let out a short little laugh.
“Eh, yeah, I just wanted to say that out loud.”
He chuckled and shook his head.
“I…” this was going sound so fucking stupid out loud but… “I woke up a month after everyone had vanished. I-I don’t know how or why, or- all I know is I fell asleep human and woke up like this in a dusty house full of rotten food and overgrown grass.”
I was expecting disbelief but instead, his face turned thoughtful. Very thoughtful.
“And for what it’s worth, I've been trying my best to forget all this weird ass shit and just do whatever.”
…
Okay something was off.
“Why the silence? Do you… do you know anything about this…?”
“Kaja…”
He hesitated.
“Okay, this, this just got seriously freaky because…” Gulp. “At first… at first it was just me. All alone in the entire city, I checked, I genuinely did… When the power went out for good and I crawled out of our complex…”
He shuddered. We had rolled to a stop.
“I can still hear the howling… all those pets trapped inside…”
Ah.
“That’s… when I found the generators. When I tried thinking for the first time in days. I started dragging food from all over the place, stuff and equipment and whatever else.”
“It was a week after the Vanish, I remember because I found an entire box of those garbage 7-Days croissants and I thought ‘Man, I should celebrate surviving the Apocalypse / losing my mind’.”
“Anyway, I was clearing out the cushions in the Park because I didn’t want it to rain on them and that’s when I found her, passed out and drunk out of her mind under a beanbag.”
…
“Can you imagine? I found a drunk, purple, winged horse a week after the entire world had vanished… I'm honestly surprised I didn’t just lose it on the spot.”
“Do you…” I had found my voice again. “Do you think there's some kind of… connection?”
“There has to be.” He looked thoughtful. “I mean, what else do we have going for us?”
Whatever either of us were going to say never happened because that moment we heard the loudest scream since me.
.
“CARL! DIA!” .
We froze, locked eyes, and took off running, our skateboards and bags left strewn across the street.
When it came to speed, Carl was a better sprinter while I was a better runner.
All we had to do was follow the sound of barking and growling.
My stomach felt twisty.
.
“KAJ!”
.
She was just standing there, nervously swishing her tail and pivoting her ears like crazy while Bella was losing her mind at something in front of them. I nearly barreled into the woman before I could come to a stop and Carl nearly plowed us both down.
We all stared at the road.
.
“What.
.
The.
.
FUCK.”
.
.
It was the road leading right onto the /Vanšu/ (<Suspension>) Bridge. Out of the way enough for none of us to ever have ventured to this end of the Center.
The air felt all wrong here. I couldn’t explain it anywhere near accurately if I tried. Like static but taste-able. Not ozone and not sticking a battery on your tongue or even licking a headphone wire. More than the feeling of blood pulsing through you limbs, more than the feeling water sloshing in your stomach, more than your guts churning.
It was something deeper than that.
Something running deep through my core, making my chest feel tight.
It was strong here, stronger than ever, but it didn’t feel overwhelming.
At least for me it was.
Kaja’s slit pupils were like pinpricks, she wasn’t standing still and her wings were spazing at her sides.
Bella was still losing her shit, growling at the ground.
.
The ground.
. If I didn’t know any better I would have called it graffiti. It wasn’t exactly uncommon for teenaged shits to cover every corner is their worthless scribbles.
This wasn’t graffiti.
Not even close.
Besides, who would draw circles in the middle of the road after the Rapture?
I don’t think I wanted to know.
. It was circular, and a solid ten meters across. It had an outer rim a good meter thick and the center was empty save for what looked like soot ground into the concrete. It’s what was in the outer rim that gave me pause.
As stupid as it sounded, what little there was legible reminded me of the dragon runes from Skyrim. Strange, pointed hieroglyphs in seemingly random patterns of thick lines and dots and ninety degree angles, most of them utterly ruined.
There were smudges everywhere and large cracks along the ground. The circle wasn’t much of a circle, more like a misshapen blob, like someone had dragged a corpse across a freshly painted street marking.
The wind seemed sharper here and I didn’t like it one bit.
Carl and I both looked over to Kaja but she was gone to the world.
. Simultaneously, it seemed, we decided to book it. I clicked me tongue as loud as I could and got Bella to pay attention to me for just long enough while Carl yanked Kaja off her feet and carried her off like a limp noodle.
We ran.
. Far.
Far.
Far.
Far.
Away.
.
The world got quiet.
For a long time I heard our hearts and our breaths and the echo of footsteps.
The feeling of the world shimmering dulled, but did not go away.
The colors were… off…
.
We ran. Until we lost our steam somewhere in a park nearby.
The summer sun was pouring through the cracks of the foliage above and the long grass tangled between my fingers. I could hear our breaths, barely over my own as we came to a stop behind some flower bushes, Bella nuzzling herself under my floppy wing.
He laid Kaja down in the grass, on her side because we didn’t really know any better. For a long time we were still.
Eventually, Kaja stirred.
It was the twitching of the ears that happened first.
Eventually her eyelids fluttered and neon golden iris emerged.
“Hey.”
She weakly looked at me with unfocused eyes.
“H-he--hey~” she croaked.
“How are you feeling?” Carl asked. He sounded shaky. Kaja did not answer, only rolled her head to the side, staring through the grass. “Kaj?”
Nothing.
After a long while she moved again.
I observed her clumsily paw at the belt of her skirt until she managed to push something out of a tiny pocket on her hip. It fell to the ground with a slight jangle and she nudged it through the grass towards her face and shifted into more of an upright position. She leaned forward and pressed the tip of her nose to the object while using her hoof to hold it against herself. I realized I could vaguely make out that she was holding a white cross to her nose, the rest, a string of off-brown beads hanging against her leg. A rosary, I think.
It took her a minute or two, muttering under her breath as she moved the little string of beads against her face in different positions. I could tell she was done when she let out the loudest exhale so far and opened her still slightly unfocused eyes, letting the rosary loosely hang from her leg.
“Better?” I softly asked.
She didn’t respond. Rather she turned her head to the other side to where Carl lay sprawled out in the tall grass, no doubt staring at the patch of sky visible through the trees high above. He glanced at the both of us with dead eyes before squeezing them shut and sitting up.
“So anyone mind telling me what the fresh hell just happened?” as he said it we both stared at Kaja. The woman looked between us as if trying to decide something before slumping forward and burying her face in her hooves.
I opened my mouth but Kaja beat me to it.
“The colors.”
“Like…”
She kept struggling for words.
“I could see air in colors.”
“How it move around… ring… circle?”
“And I could smell better too.”
“Like night when I can see far, far, far, only not eyes but everything.”
“I think… I see colors still. We away but I can see little.”
“Here and here. Little colors moving.”
She finally un-buried her face but rather than looking at us she stared right ahead.
“I don’t know what happened. I don’t. Feel like everything go super.”
She fumbled her hooves before awkwardly motioning a sort of vague punch(?), swing (?), uppercut??
“Ya’ know? Super?”
She gave up at some point so we simply sat in silence still processing whateverthefuck.
And clearly, it was a something.
Something that couldn’t have been human.
Something that for some reason made me think had to do with our new selves.
Something else.
A something else.
.
We left. .
And we tried our hardest to not think about it.
.
.
At least I did.
.
Something isn’t right.
That’s why I'm sitting here in the pitch black of night by the light of my dying lappy in our shared ‘girls’ bedroom while Kaja’s running around in circles outside because she can't sleep and I don’t need to look to feel the unnerving-ness radiating off of all of us.
It is the feeling of cold creeping up the nape of your neck and the shadows seem darker and I think Carl wants to figure out how to lock the glass door.
We left a pillow there because that’s where Bella has decided to spend her days.
I'm glad I sleep on the second floor and I'm glad I'm still an apex predator.
Not much. It might’ve been a few days. Long enough for us to ease from our recent discovery, but not long enough, so to still keep it in the back of our heads.
I was outside in the plaza right beside the McDonald’s, stretched across a lawn chair I had dragged out at some point. It was tilted back with me on my stomach on the butt bit, my wings spread to my sides, soaking up the sun. I had my favorite gray not-baseball-baseball cap on and new, dark red shorts that went with my overall colors better. Fashion could suck it most of the time but it was kinda nice to have things match every so often.
Kaja was upstairs taking a nap because for some reason she could never really keep herself awake during the day, especially on slow ones like this. Last I’d seen Bella she had joined the horse-woman so I assumed those two were still sticking together. Carl on the other hand was… fuck if I knew where he was, somewhere inside I was guessing.
At the moment I was wreaking ass at Sudoku on my Nintendo DS, blasting music all the while. I was feeling like rock that day. At least I think that was rock.
I’d been at it for a solid two hours, just chilling, as you do. I had torn through my two liters of Coke a while ago so I was running a bit dry at the moment but I didn’t exactly feel like getting up.
Of course the universe had a different idea, because the light on my DS suddenly went red.
Letting out a loud-ass noise of discontent I snapped the handheld shut and placed the stylus back in its hole. I laid there for the two minutes it took for the song to end and turned my Walkman off as well.
It had taken me a while to figure out how to properly fold my wings. I had mostly just mushed them shut and instantly regretted it the moment after. I had forced myself into surrendering my pride and asked Kaja for tips. She didn’t exactly have that much of a grasp on the subject, as one did, but between the two of us we’d figured something out. I had no idea how to put something so complex into words, so just trust me when I say ‘shit’s complicated.
Crawling off the lawn chair was an ordeal in and of itself.
With my tech in my pockets I trotted back to Home Base making a throaty ‘hhhuuuuuuuuu’ noise all the way. Stepping inside, one could instantly feel the change in air. It was cooler, but not by much. The real difference was the stuffiness. As best as we tried circumventing it, you really couldn’t get over the fact that the place functioned only with the air-conditioning on. Every window we could prop open had helped, but we didn’t exactly have that many open-able windows in the first place.
I circled around the support columns and left my DS ‘n MP4 on the taller counter by our ‘dining room’. Looking up at the stairs I paused.
“Fuck me.” I muttered under my breath.
With a defeated slump I made my way to the main counter and over it into the restaurant’s kitchen. Like it or not I couldn’t really do that much without Carl’s help.
Still.
Ever since whenever ago I had been… weary of him… like, I wasn’t scared of the guy, at least I think I wasn’t, but then again I wasn’t scared of Police officers either, but the we all know how they make ya feel when you're right next to them. But this wasn’t the first time I had had to deal with folks like that. A pinch of fake bravado usually did the trick.
“AYO, CARL WHERE YOU AT?!” I called out, strolling through the kitchen. There was a hallway off to the side and I took it. “If you’re jerking it just say so, I’ll come back in like twenty minutes!”
I heard a faintly muted ‘what the fuck’ from nearby.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’!”
There were a few doors here. One was obviously the freezer, another marked ‘storage’. There were a few else but I followed the mess of wires running along the floor until I came to one marked ‘administration’.
It was ajar so I pushed it open with my shoulder and stepped inside. Only to see Carl on his knees in the middle of the room, half-buried in a black and gray pile and wearing a truly ‘wtf’ expression. I soon mimicked that expression when I looked around.
You could tell the room had relied on AC before because it felt like I had stepped into a jungle. Or at least the Tropical House in the zoo. The air was humid and smelled like sweat and dirty clothes and lots and lots of plastic. What I assumed to once been an office was cleared out besides the desks, a few shelves and a fancy looking desk chair that didn’t belong.
At least that’s what I assumed was there because everything was drowned in heaps and heaps of technology. The shelves were full of disc boxes and one of the desks had five different monitors piled onto it and at least two fullscreen TV’s. The other table had about a dozen laptops, all different brands and models and what looked to be at least there MacBooks’. Under it was a pair of printer-scanners and a couple of Wi-Fi routers and TV decoders. There were boxes overflowing with wires and five what I assumed were Xbox controllers hanging from a lamp. There were black boxy things all over the place with wires going in and out of everywhere. There were shelves stacked full of external hard drives, all of them labelled in scribbly handwriting. In another corner there was just a straight up stack of consoles just sitting there, another pile of wires and controllers by their side. Extension cords coiled all across the floor.
Posters covered the walls, mostly that of various gam-oh shit, was that the Wicther, where did he even get that? There were Collector’s Edition statues all over the free surfaces which was frigen’ cool. In the far right corner there was a nest-bed, like the one Kaja and I shared, of three mattresses and a lot of pillows and blankets. There was a tower of either coverless books or magazines or user manuals or something precariously stacked higher than it should. I ignored the three unopened boxes of tissues haphazardly half-hidden under a pillow. A multitude of fans were strategically placed all throughout the room. What surprised me was that some of them were actually working, and a few of those had colourful little led lights in them.
But the centrepiece of it all…
In the middle of the room against the far wall atop the biggest desk that seemed to be almost buckling under the weight sat one godly Battlestation. Three screens next to one another in a half-circle and the biggest TV somehow mounted to the wall above bathed the room in a soft blue light. Wires and three backlit keyboards and four mice (one of each seemingly crushed) and fancy headphones and speakers and controllers and USB fans and even a mic’ and both top consoles wired up, that all together created a cacophony of technology. Beneath the desk a veritable stack of black boxes that I realized were those UPS power things or something of the ilk.
.
Then I realized I had just barged into a Man-cave.
Oops.
.
Carl was still staring at me with an indescribable expression. Double oops.
Whelp’. Time to salvage the situation.
I made a show of looking around, trying my best to whistle but that just made it worse because I couldn’t fucking whistle. My gaze eventually wandered back to the room’s owner who was still frozen in place, hands full of wires.
We locked eyes for a moment.
“Hey.” I did the up-nod and wiggled my eyebrows.
“Uhh… hey…” Pause. “Did ya’ need something?”
I looked around for a bit more. For what it’s worth this place was genuinely cool.
“Kinda’ sorta’ ye’.” I twiddled my fingers and tilted my head to the side. “Awesome fucking room by the way, but no, egh, think you can power up the generator? I need to charge my shit again so I don’t feel like killing myself via knife or boredom.”
Well now he looked worried. Probably from the dead tone I said that last line with. Triple oops?
“I’ll probably just sit on my ass and rewatch Rick and Morty for the ninth time, but whatever… That’s how you know you’ve made something great, thing still makes me laugh.”
“Oh shit, you like Rick and Morty?!” his entire face lit up in an instant. Honestly, I don’t think I’d seen the guy smile for the last few days.
“Fuck yea’ I like Rick and Morty!” I'm pretty sure that was the most enthusiasm I had expelled since the Rapture.
“I… crap,” he looked for words, “what's your favorite episode? I'm like fifty-fifty between Lawnmower Dog and the Meeseeks one.”
I chortled, hand over beak. “Ffff the Meeseeks one was fucking great, but no. I, uhh, shit I forgot which was which.” I wracked my brain while Carl stealthily put away whatever he was doing. “Th-the one with the Council of Ricks, that was like the best one!”
“Wait, really?”
“Dude! Multiverse theory! That shit’s my JAM!” I excitedly hopped in place. “I'm still waiting for them to R-63 it next season!”
“R-si-oH! OH! The ‘everything will be the other gender’, oh my god yes I didn’t even think of that!”
“Yeeeeessss, you have no idea how bad I want it, just imagine lady-Rick…”
“Yeah and she’d just be the exact same asshole, f-hah!”
At some point we had sat down on the scraggly ass carpet, facing each other in the dark - giggling.
“I-I mean, besides the headcanons the episode was just overall awesome.”
“*Snrkt* people-chairs.”
We burst laughing once more. I suppose they could have been considered in-jokes. Well, for those that watched the show at least.
I didn’t even register what was happening until we were already deep in conversation. We both agreed on how we loved the natural-sounding dialogue and I rambled about my love for the heaps and heaps of dark stuff and black humor crammed into the show while Carl went on about the Sci-fi aspect, which I adored but obviously not as much. We traded theories on the return of Evil-Morty and how he might’ve been Rick’s original due to universe-shenanigans.
There was a beanbag and fluff throne opposite of the Battlestation that we migrated into and tore into a boxful of Pringles while we rambled about how the R63 universe might’ve played out. Well, it was me letting the writer inside pilot my mouth, but still. He had some nice ideas but it was more of me rambling and we traded ideas for names and I lamented how Reddit had nicknamed lady-Rick Rita while I stuck with Rachel. At least Carl agreed with me when I explained the idea that they might be the same person they weren’t the same person.
We joked about how we would live like Kings and Queens if we had the Meeseeks Box and at some point we agreed to rewatch the show together. While I ran outside to pee and get drinks Carl set everything up so we could watch on the wall TV. When I got back he explained how he used the portable power banks or whatever they were called to run his desktop and I tried whistling in amazement again. And fail again.
We watched and laughed and after a bit, when he was switching over to episode two I was hit with a world-shattering realization that made me legitimately burst into tears. As I lay on the dirty floor bawling, I managed to choke out the fact that we would never find out what happened to the Author in Gravity Falls since ‘Tale of Two Stans’ was supposed to air this month or so.
That’s when I learned Carl was a Faller just like me and we both held each other and cried for a pretty long time whilst I shouted every possible theory, shattered and un-shattered which I had spent a solid two years obsessing over, never to be confirmed nor denied. Goodbye Mystery Trio. Goodbye Grunkle4Grandpa. Goodbye Dipper's name. Maybe. Probably. Possibly.
Why was this word so ungodly cruel?
Having cried ourselves out we agreed to talk Gravity Falls another day, maybe even rewatch and analyze whenever we got the time and returned to our original goal of Rick and Morty whilst barely hearing anything over the industrial-sized bag of strawberry-caramel-popcorn Carl had torn open.
I mentioned how Anatomy Park wasn’t that funny to me and during it we exchanged the list of other shows we were fans of. Carl, turned out, was an anime person, me on the other hand, not as much. When I said I liked Steven Universe he made a sour face but nothing else. I could guess what he was thinking, fandoms being cancer and such.
We continued marathoning and I was a little put off by how much food Carl could put away. We joked about jokes or simply sat in silence, enjoying the cartoon.
Kaja came down at some point but we were busy watching the Cronenberg episode and when she saw those fleshy abominations she just turned around and walked out. We laughed about that too.
By the time we’d made it to the second to last episode I was almost out of it and I think Carl was too. We made it five minutes in and mutually called it a day. I was busy reminding my limbs that they were supposed to have blood circulating through them while Carl powered down his setup. We crawled out his room like cave-trolls emerging into sunlight and I came to the realization that oxygen was a thing that humans even mythology-people needed.
We sat down to eat, but it turned into me nibbling a few dried fruits while Carl chowed down a couple of three-day-old-opened cans of whatever. We watched through the window Kaja and Bella playing what almost looked like tag in the open space before the Freedom Monument and we decided to let them be, as the sun was beginning to turn the sky orange.
We sat outside on the steps leading to our main door as the colors of the world faded more and more. We talked about the different fandoms we were in while the Internet was still a thing. Carl didn’t consider himself apart of any except Fullmetal Alchemist and maaaaybe Gravity Falls while I chastised him for missing out on so much fun.
Kaja came over and sat with us for a bit while she caught her breath. We asked what she watched and she mentioned some Estonian rom-com or something. Then she mentioned one of the CSI series and we chatted about that. I brought up that I used to watch Bones a few years back and Carl ranted about how it had gone to shit which was hilarious to listen to.
Kaja left to wander about and we forced her to take Bella with her despite the doggo wanting to cuddle with me and after a while we returned to the topic of anime. Carl said he had torrented every last one he could think of before the power had gone out and I guessed correctly that that was what the hard drives had been for. He promised he was gonna get me to watch everything I had missed out on and I joked that he would never turn me into a Weeaboo alive.
The conversation wound down after a while as we ran out of frantic topics to exchange so we sat side by side in silence.
Carl grumbled how he couldn’t see anything despite the half-moon we still had. I mentioned my eyes were like a cats’ and he sighed and said he was jealous.
Unnaturally humongous birds passed overhead and for some reason that made me uneasy.
. Silence.
I offhandedly mentioned he was the first person I had ever met that shared at least a few of my interests.
He jokingly asked what about the internet.
I said that didn’t count, as much as I wanted it to.
He softly agreed.
.
I mentioned how nice it was to…
.
He muttered ‘same’ and we listened to the crickets.
.
After a long time he said he was cold and I guided him inside and found a flashlight. We parted ways with a smile and left for our rooms. Kaja was still out but I didn’t feel worried.
I turned myself into a blanket burrito and closed my eyes.
.
I don’t think I’d gone to bed that happy in years.
The two things, on their own, are great. Random example, for instance: sponges and baths.
A sponge is nice. It’s colorful, soft, useful, and all around great.
A bath is sweet too. Relaxing, warm, comfortable, fragrant and fun.
But when you put things together… Say, for instance a cold sponge-bath in a dark, derelict hotel room all alone and after the Apocalypse. Not very fun.
Well. I shouldn’t lie, I wasn’t alone-alone. Bella was just the room over sitting on the bed and waiting for me. It didn’t make the bath part any better though.
. A towel draped around my middle, pressed down by my wings as I trudged, still dripping water from the billionty super-absorbent feathers that I had almost all over me all while shivering from the wind that made it feel like icicles were being shoved against my flesh I left footprint after wet footprint in my wake. Barging through the open doorway to our base I ceased my grumbling for a moment as I saw both Carl and Kaja, in the middle of lunch, jolt in surprise, the shadow of fear passing over them, before they recognized the soaked ball of furious feathers as me.
That just made me even more mad.
“Jeez, Dian’ don’t go-”
“THAT’S IT!” I cut Carl mid-word. “I'VE HAD IT! I'VE FUCKEN’ HAD IT!”
They stared at me with varying amount of concern upon their faces as I silently walked over to where they were, climbed atop the table opposite to theirs and glared. I looked down at Bella standing attention like good little mutt that she was. I cleared my throat again.
. And stopped, my finger accusingly outheld in front of me. The two gave me enough time while I waited for the gears in brain to work out a kink or two. Satisfied I could function like a normal person again I continued.
“Weird shit has been happening and we can't keep sitting on our asses for whateverthefuck to come and happen all over us.”
I saw them uncomfortably shift in their pants.
“Something needs to be done.”
Silence.
C’mon work with me here.
“Fine. I’ll bite.” Thank you, you muscle-bound bastard. “What?”
“Simple.”
I grinned as toothily as I could.
Ya’ know. For show.
“We leave.”
. …
“Whelp, you are officially batshit done for, goodbye.” Carl made a show of returning to his breakfast which was the leftovers of my dinner.
“First off,” I waited for him to look back at me, “fuh-ck you. Second off: got a better idea?”
“…no.”
“Good. Welcome to the club.”
I saw the realization faintly pass across his face. “Did you just-?”
“I have a couple of ideas and since we’re basically in this together we should probably start running them by each other-”
“Okayokayokayokayokay, hold your fucking horses for like two goddamn seconds,” we both looked at Kaja for a split-second. Heh. “Why. Whywhywhy and where the hell is this even coming from? Leave?! And go where exactly?”
“What, do you want me get out a fucking map? Shit, I don’t know, south? South’s a good direction.”
“Oh South, well shit, guess that’s settled, we can just start packing tomorrow and move to fucking ‘South’!”
“Oy, don’t you back-sarcasm me!” I leaned forward and my beak almost touched his nose. At what point had he gotten out of his seat? “At least we have a goddamn direction, no pun in-fucking-tended, or would you rather sit on your ass and wait for it to freeze off in a minus thirty-something winter just around the shitting corner?!?”
“Oh, big talk coming from the pint-sized pillow! And how do you propose we go in this mythical ‘South’?”
I threw up my hands and backed off.
“Well shit son, why do you think I brought it up in the first place?!”
He did a very bull-esque snort and leaned back. He eventually did the thing where you press your fingertips against one another and press all that against your nose.
“You realize we don’t have cars, right?”
Yes.
“And the amount of shit we would have to pack is astronomical…”
I am aware.
“What do you want to accomplish? What is your endgame, I don’t understand, I just…”
…
“People.” My bravado was long gone. “Or something, anything,” I couldn’t look at him, eyes narrowed, “but I can't stay here. WE can't stay here, something has to happen and this is the next logical step.”
I'm pretty sure he scoffed at the ‘logical’ bit.
.
.
"I want to find my son."
That got us to stop in our tracks.
Kaja had been dead silent during our spat.
Her face was to the window, the rest obscured by a tangled mess of black hair. I noted the way the tips of her ears twitched and the way her wings tensed and how her breaths came sharp. She suddenly slammed her front hooves on the table and stood up in her seat, head hanging. When she turned to look at us with those bright neon eyes, she seemed so defeated.
"I know that people are gone, that we might be the last three on the planet but what kind of fucking parent would I be if I didn’t even try to find him?"
. We stayed silent for a long time.
Not long enough.
. “YOU'RE BOTH INSANE!”
His voice had reached booming levels.
“Why is it so hard for you to understand that we want to do something?”
“Well then why is it so hard for you to just sit down and think for a single damn second! You keep going on about ‘leaving’ but I'm not hearing any ‘how’s or ‘why’s or ‘what is the fucking point?’?”
“Well I ain’t hearing any ‘why the flying cunt should we stay here?’ you sodding fuck!”
“Sounds better than getting yourselves killed running around like maniacs in some random ditch because Missus Outdoorsy wanted to get off her fat ass!”
“Have you no ambition? Have you no curiosity?! Are you really content sitting here for the rest of your worthless life instead of going out there and trying to find out what happened? Find if there's any other people still in the world?!”
“‘Find people’. Yeah good luck finding some random dude in New-fucking-Zealand!”
A breathy ‘what’ escaped me.
By the way he recoiled it seemed someone couldn’t bite his tongue quite tight enough.
. “Carl.”
My voice was level.
Edged.
Like mom’s.
“What ‘dude in New Zealand’?”
He hesitated.
“Eleven.”
No…
“Eleven in a forum. I only recognized three flags, one was Aussie and another…”
Why did I have a feeling I knew what clovered forum.
“Being the genius that I am, I only realized that other people might be using the internet a few hours before the power started going wrong…”
“I didn’t get to talk much. And well, they weren’t talking much either, so between the bots and the shitposting I just kind of…”
I didn’t. I couldn’t.
“Listen, what does it even matter that there's some random fuck in Australia posting memes about the damn Rapture?”
“That there's people you absolute thundercunt! Actual living, breathing, fucking PEOPLE!” I snapped.
Everything snapped.
“Do you have any idea how long I've tried to figure out why the fuck the three of us of all people in the world were left?! AND NOW YOU'RE TELLING ME THERE'S OTHERS OUT THERE AND YOU DIDN’T MENTION IT A SINGLE CUNT-SHITTING TIME?!”
I stared at him in disbelief. And to think I…
I stared between him and Kaja who looked like she just realized Santa wasn’t real.
.
This wasn’t funny.
None of this was funny
. “To think…” I felt like there couldn’t be silence. “How could you?”
“I told you.” He leaned closer to me, “What.” I could feel his breath, “Fucking.” and the way his redwood eyes bored into mine. “Good. Does. It-”
Everyone is making noise and I think one of them is me.
I think that noise is screaming but I'm not exactly sure.
There is RED in the air.
And feels like RED in my mouth and RED in my nose and RED in my brain.
There's RED on my fingertips and RED across his face.
And I'm okay with that.
I'm okay with the RED on the floor and RED between us and RED in our voices.
What I'm not okay with is Kaja yelling at us and Carl yelling at us and Me yelling at us and Bella biting my tail and probably yelling in dog.
And RED is getting really annoying because I can smell it but everything else is telling me that I can't HAVE it.
I don’t think I want to know what this kind of RED tastes like.
.
What I don’t like is the way he’s holding my arm. It’s really starting to hurt and Kaja’s yelling is getting really obnoxious.
All the pink on his face is RED now and so is his chest where the RED mats his fur.
And my arm is really hurting where he’s holding it. Worse than all the times I've slammed myself into everything ever.
Fine you brown fuck, I can play.
My other hand is RED now and so is his but at least he’s stopped holding me now.
Distance.
Distance is good. Bella’s still biting my tail and that’s just pissing me off even more.
He’s holding his RED hand with his other and the RED across his face is slowing but the RED in his eyes is still there.
I'm sure so is mine.
I'm not liking the way he’s looking at me. Or the way his RED muzzle is scrunched or the way his teeth are showing or the way he’s breathing.
I nail Bella with my back leg and she finally lets go. Good. My tail can finally coil like it’s supposed to.
I finally feel like myself.
Like I can finally let go the RED inside.
.
.
.
“STOP STOPSTOP PLEASE STOP PLEASE JUST STOP JUST STOP PLEASE”
. I think it’s the way she sounds like my mom that makes me listen.
. Or maybe the fact that she’s bawling.
. Or maybe because she’s standing between us, wings spread and pleading with her teary eyes at either of us.
And for some reason I can feel the RED receding. Deep. Deep. Deep…
Down.
.
We’re a mess. There’s blood on the floor and we’re both soaked. I never realized how disgusting having someone else’s on yourself was. All four of my limbs are shaking but for some reason I don’t feel nauseous anymore. Or maybe it’s just ‘not yet’.
We both feel the humanity still left inside creeping back and we distance ourselves from one another and the pool of crimson across the tiles. Kaja’s still yelling and crying, but I can’t hear her over the ringing in my ears, nor all my senses going crazy because there's blood in the water and I they want need more.
I think I'm scared again but I don’t feel like it. It seems I should but I don’t.
Trembling but calm.
Like there's two parts of me both tearing my head in two directions and in the end I'm just stuck in the middle with nothing.
Overdrive.
Like a subset of panic mode, and I take off to where I still have my half-empty shopping cart parked outside. Can't call it instinct but I dig out a ramshackle first aid kit because fuck it, what was the point of taking classes if I can't do anything with that knowledge.
I'm back inside and the ringing has grown quiet but everything feels like it’s underwater. Well, the way movies portray underwater. I don’t notice whatever Kaja’s doing but I see Carl holding his sliced nose with his shredded hand. They only start paying attention to me when I dump my medical bag out on the ‘dinning’ table. I realize I'm leaving bloody fingerprints all over everything so I reach under the table for a five liter bottle of water and manage to dump some on my hands, enough to get most of the blood off despite some beginning to dry and cling to my fingertips.
I wildly fling about some gauze trying to get it out of its packaging. It eventually does, rolling along the table and stopping by a plate. Next comes a bottle of disinfectant and it makes a loud thump as I drop it in the ‘useful’ pile. I have some more bandages from the car’s first aid kit, the big ones.
I look over my shoulder and see the two staring at me, a good distance apart. Carl’s still bleeding, red dripping down his chest and leaving fat dollops on the floor. I motion him closer and to everyone’s surprise he comes and sits in his usual spot at the table. I'm not complaining, at least I can actually reach him.
I empty Kaja’s glass and fill it with fresh water. I pluck some fluffs from a roll of cotton and with the two combined I begin trying my best to get the blood off. He stops me. Taking the water bottle, he leans over the floor and dumps some of it on his face, washing away most of the runniness. I continue.
I don’t know how long it takes. All is quiet. Kaja’s sitting on the edge of the bloodstained table I had been standing on for a bit during the…
The way the cuts sit across his nose means I’d have to wrap up the entire end of his face to make sure they're covered. I realize that breathing might be an issue, especially as the three slices run just between his nostrils.
He scrunches his face up. Probably thinking while I'm doing what I can with my everything just to not do that. I migrate to his hand. There are three distinct punctures atop it and a slight tearing to one side where we had pulled away from each other. I hold his hand in mine and pour the disinfectant like whiskey because fuck if I know where my claws have been.
It sizzles and burns and foams and he whimpers and that just usually means it’s working. I consider that stuff like this might need stitches but I'm already miraculously not vomiting right now so I rather not push it. Tightly, I begin wrapping the thick bandage around his palm and such until it looks like it would hold the blood or whatever they really do.
His dumb face is still a problem since it won't stop fucking bleeding.
I give up at some point, because I just make him hold a wad of gauze to his worthless face for forever for all I care.
I roughly shove all the med supplies in a pile and get ready to gtfo until I hear the familiar thump of four sock-wearing hooves hitting the floor. She looks concerned so I give Kaja my best dead stare. It’s not exactly hard.
“Tail…” She mutters and awkwardly motions to the direction of my ass. I mentally command the extra extremity to drag itself closer to my face. Near the pink tuft at the end sits a distinct bite mark of a tiny fanged mouth. Seems like Bella managed to break skin in a few places. Little puncture wounds but nothing much, and in the back of my mind I pray that griffons can't get rabies.
After gauzing that up, with a generous lathering of some healing cream, I leave.
Far.
Because my brain has just about caught up to myself and the last thing I need is to be around people when the full snapback happens.
For once I don’t head into the Old City, rather the park just by Home Base. The Canal makes the air feel soggy and the sun reflects against the water in strange angles. I'm glad we hadn’t turned the anthem on today because the last thing I needed to hear was that godforsaken thing.
I fall down in the tall grass by the hill dropping down to the water. It smells ever so slightly like hay so I close my eyes and focus on that. Even with my eyes clenched I can almost feel the motions of the world around me. The way the wind brushes through the grass and the way the insects chitter amidst themselves, free for the first time in forever, the way the still water laps at the wooden posts holding the bank.
I hear wings and I can almost feel my red eyes narrow as they snap open.
Ducks.
An entire flock flitters into the waters just by me. They splash and quack and flap and for some reason I feel captivated.
For another reason I feel a guttural need to pounce them. I don’t know what to make of that.
Time passes. They shuffle and dive and fix their fathers and take off and I find myself being jealous of them. Then I remind myself that duck in teriyaki is delicious and the jealousy goes away incredibly quick.
The crunch of grass beneath four rhythmic points makes me reluctantly turn. It’s Kaja. Of course it’s Kaja, at this point it really couldn’t be anyone else. For multiple reasons.
Wait no.
Bubble, bubble goes the fury.
One can still see where the dried tears tangle her fur. Her socks are red with blood and there's dark marks under her dull and reddened eyes. I don’t know what to make of that.
She stops a fair distance away from me. I feel like a cornered animal. In the sense that I'm being treated, like I’d either die of a heart attack or pounce, I mean. That hurts more than anything I've done so far.
Animal.
That’s all we are anymore.
.
.
Animals.
And if anything, Carl and I just proved that, in a way. Then again I probably would have punched him had I been my old self. At least not in the face. I actually valued my fingers.
She stared at me, occasionally pursing her lips or chewing the bottom one with her fangs. I already knew why she came and I'm not one to waste time. Mostly. I got up, shifting to my stomach and pushing myself upwards with four legs.
I'm suddenly with my face in the grass again with molten pain radiating all throughout my left front leg. A desperate whine escaped me as I breathed hard trying to ignore the feeling of having my arm(?) viciously hammered with doorframes in the darkness and asphalt in the daylight.
I writhe and whine and Kaja’s desperately trying to figure out what's happening. Eventually the searing pain fades to a low throb of punched bruises and slammed finger joints. My gasping levels and I weakly push myself into a sitting position, still clinging my upper arm with my other. She asks again and I try to push my fur away to see my skin. Since it’s incredibly short it doesn’t exactly work, but between the two of us we figure out that entire half of my limb has already swollen, what little of my off-gray-pink skin we could see had turned a dark, black-blue, bloodshot mess.
I wonder, had Carl squeezed me a bit harder he might’ve crunched through bone.
I very much did not like that thought.
. She helped me back to Base, acting as an impromptu crutch so I wouldn’t have to put a single iota of pressure on my leg. That, I didn’t mind. I realized I hadn’t spoken a word since screaming my throat raw and I didn’t mind that either.
He was hunched over and lying on our dining table, a bundle of bloody gauze still held to his nose. The floor was still running red but it was beginning to turn dark as it dried. He saw us approach and quickly averted his eyes. Bella had shrunk herself beneath the table with as much grace as a quivering dishrag. Sorry doggo.
“Now.” Her voice was clear.
“We will talk like adults.”
Authoritarian.
“No more screaming.”
I got comfy beside her in our usual spots.
“We now vote on what we do.”
“For fuck sakes Kaj’, we already know the fucking answer.” His voice raised a few decibels but not much. “You two want to leave like the retards that you are and my opinion doesn’t fucking matter.”
“It does matter.” The way she insisted upon it, one couldn’t help but agree. “Dian’ was good when she say ‘we in this together’.” She shifted in her spot, her demeanor softening. “I un-duh-stahnd you don’t want to go but that not mean we not listen to what you say.”
He sideways glared at her before while Kaja cleared her throat one more time.
“All that want leave?” She raised her hoof. I followed suit with my usable hand. Bella crawled out from under the table hopped on the spot, as if she was trying to stand on her back legs. Hah, stupid dog.
“All that want stay?”
Carl unceremoniously raised his bandaged hand.
“This is patronized as shit.” he muttered, and I was inclined to agree.
“Alright. We leave. We now start plan on how we leave and where we go.” She glanced at me for a split-second whilst straightening her spine and refolding her wings. “I want to go to Tartu.”
“I know it get cold soon so I want leave soon. I need to see home. I need… I-I… need…” The way her nose wrinkled and the way she swallowed hard or how much she blinked. It made me feel better about my decision. This wasn’t just about me, was it?
I think Carl realized that too.
The three of us sighed, almost simultaneously. Any other time I would have pointed that out.
“Alright.” It seemed like talking hurt him, by the way he tried not to move his jaw and how he muffled his words by not opening his mouth much. “Step one is find how we’re going to be traveling.”
“Cars are out because we don’t have keys and even if we did the batteries are long dead.” He stared at Kaja. “And I'm pretty sure none of us know how to hotwire a car because if we did we would have been using one by now.”
“And no shopping cart wagons either. It was brilliant for about a day but it’s just stupid and makes me feel like goddamn hobo at the end of the world.”
I feigned horrid insult.
I came here having a not so great time and I was honestly feeling so attacked right now.
I smiled.
Just a bit.
I think either of them said something else but I was too busy staring past Kaja to the park outside. My mind kept drifting back to those ducks and for once I was sure it wasn’t just a craving.
If only Carl had wings and if only Kaj’ and I could actually use ours, we could just pack a few bag and fly off.
Far.
Far, to wherever the world would take us.
Like ducks.
. Wait.
Ducks.
I shot up and slammed my usable fist on the table, making both my companions jump and shut up.
They stared at me like they could see the gears of my brain through my eyes.
Click, click, went the thoughts.
Twinkle, twinkle went my razor like teeth as the unholy grin crept its way back onto my face.
Ducks.
I opened my mouth.
My own voice surprised me. It was raspy and strained and itchy and I hated it for far more reasons than one.
It had been overdue for a while now. The way the air grew pressing and how the wind shifted sharp. Distant rumbles carried by the absence of sound all across the globe.
How my feathers fluffed up and Kaja’s coat grew stiff as a heaviness set itself deep in our glassy bones.
The way the invisible agitation grew between us.
Craving.
Waiting.
Urging.
When it broke and spilled across the world and finally washed away all the mess in humanity’s wake I felt clean for the first time since I woke up.
A good feeling, to say the least.
We sat in the open doorway, fat raindrops drumming against the glass wall and our noses and beaks and muzzles, held into the soggy world outside, and the rest of us cozy in our not-so-stuffy-anymore home base. Carl sat aside from the three of us girls, leaning against the wall. Last time I checked he was reading something on a Kindle.
It had only been two days but his nose was already looking better. The flesh had closed together and three dark scabs ran the length of his soft, pink muzzle. I had re-bandaged his hand lathered his face in my favorite brand of healing cream earlier this morning while we all had been yearning for rain.
Neither of us still knew how we felt about everything.
Although, I was rather content to simply ignore it forever.
. The day had been gray through and through, with the faintest hint of blue and light. A welcome contrast to the blazing bright days we had grown used to for the past while. I had brought out my repertoire earlier in the day, ever so softly playing along with the rain. These people were the rare few that didn’t mind the same song on repeat, if they had, one of us would have gone insane.
. Peace.
.
Peace…
. It seemed like it was something we had been lacking for the past few days.
Leave it to rain.
…
Gotta’ say, there's a damn good reason people used to worship it.
.
After we had silently marveled long enough at the world around us we got together and took a nap. All of us.
I despised naps.
They were such a worthless, senseless, disgusting, revolting, horrid waste of being alive.
But with the rain pounding the windows and the utter silence enwrapping the world all around us, I couldn’t help it. Torchlight II didn’t seem very appealing compared to a fluffy blanket and a nice, big pillow. And Bruno and Bruhņo the plush turtles, of course.
I had gotten used to sharing a bed with Kaja. At worst I just pretended I was sharing it with Mom.
Horse.
Horsemom.
Hah.
We had a pillow divider and only once had I found myself pressed against that most sacred of borders and that had been because I had thrown my blanket off and was freezing. In spite of the entire feathers dealio.
.
. Once upon a time I’d been a history person, ya know. Well, as much as one could be while having six different classes on seven different kinds of history for the last two years straight.
Riga had always been a port town. As far back as our written history went this city had always been the heart of trade. Ships and all kinds from all across the known globe passing through for centuries upon centuries. Invaders and occupiers coming and going, always desperate to claim this prize for themselves.
And while our legacy had faded through the modernization of the brand new world it had always clung to us. Like the seawater itself ran through the veins of the natives of this ancient place, carrying within them a forgotten legacy.
.
The rain ceased early evening.
But it was the heart of summer so ‘evening’ didn’t really happen until a solid ten PM.
We set off, our mismatch of footwear splashing through the puddles snaking between the centuries worn cobbles, as old as the city itself. The air was fresh and brisk as we all took in deep lungfuls of the warm humidity still clinging to our city. Clouds passed above, the wind chasing away what little darkness of rain still remained.
I walked with a horrendously noticeable limp and Kaja made sure to stay to my side just in case I, for some unholy reason decided to use the one of my four legs that I had classified as ‘don’t even acknowledge it exists if you're not ready for pain’.
Our dear pack mule Carl had gotten himself saddled with a humongous backpack full of anything and everything and one of my trusty shopping carts with a mysterious crate and supplies to last an unspoken overnight trip. And so we walked, followed by the rattle of shitty trolley wheels across uneven ground and Bella constantly shaking off the water she soaked up from puddles like one of those dreadlock-mops. You know the ones.
. Eventually. We reached our destination.
Sitting on an outcropping of land peeking into the river lay /Andrejsala/. Close enough to the city center and the actual cruise-liner dock to be paradise for any and all yacht owners and water enthusiasts. Safely tucked in the calm bay waters we were greeted by a sea of pearly white masts and neatly folded sails of every variety imaginable crisscrossed amidst rickety wood footbridges.
I honestly don’t know what we expected.
Still, this was only step one. Many, many kilometers downstream, nearing the Gulf of Riga was the entirety of the Freeport. A vast expanse of shipyards and rail lines and cranes and warehouses and terminals and dry-docks and god knows what else.
Our true goal.
We searched. Every building. Every nook. Every boat. The wind picked up.
We had to find something. Some way to get to where we were going. One hope towards any kind of usable vehicle. It turned to be a lot harder than we had realized.
Again. I don’t really know what we’d been expecting.
And that sinking in my stomach was about the same volume as my grand plan dropping down the drain.
. But it seemed that whatever god I’d been cursing since day one decided to not be a dick and by sheer miracle we came upon some unattentive bastard who had left his keys in the whatever the specific control panel that boats had was called, to his decently sized vessel. I say we could have fit about two and a half Carls’ in there. The motor gave a few dying spurts in response to us turning the key and the result was… not much of a surprise.
So we thought.
Kaja had brought this strange… thing with us. In broken words she had managed to explain it was something of a portable charger for car-type batteries. She had found it wandering at some point after my debut, so that’s why it hadn’t come up in conversation much. With that in mind she had jerry-rigged it to function god knows how or why and in what way and as much as I boasted myself to be an amazing tinkerer and mechanical mind I couldn’t really figure most of this stuff out.
I was beginning to see far too many glaring holes in my supposed knowledge.
And needless to say that was not a very great thing.
.
After far too much back-and-forth we had a working boat battery.
And I couldn’t fucking believe it and I don’t think Carl could either.
The following steps were easy. We loaded the cart of supplies in the cabin-bit of the boat and I leashed Bella to a metal thingy just on deck. We raided the guard cabin for life vests and after roping three adult ones together for Carl and fitting Kaja’s melon through the head part of hers we were ready.
Whilst Carl was undoing the mooring I monkeyed my way to the topmost part of the yacht where the front window bit curved backwards for aerodynemecism. The sound of water lapping against the boats was truly a unique one. I swept my gaze across the entire lot and the hundreds of vessels forever to be forgotten here and somehow that was the part that saddened me the most.
. /Andrejsala/.
I had passed here some many times for no other reason than to see it. See these strange white tubs that humans adored.
/Andrejsala/…
It had always amused me, just the faintest bit, that the peninsula shared the same name as my Dad.
Silly coincidences, were they not?
.
. We set off, and it wasn’t even that dark yet.
. Between the three of us, ‘sailing’ turned out to not be that hard. It had taken us a couple of jumpy escalations to figure out how to manage the speed of this thing and it had a steering wheel like a car so we weren’t exactly worried.
Okay, we were a little worried, but that had become par for the course as of the last while.
Slowly but surely, and defiantly horridly loudly, we made our way towards the Sea.
Between the three of us manning the wheel I stepped out every so often just to feel the salty wind ride through my feathers. The yacht jostled and skipped but we managed and eventually I called for the two to slow down.
We slid along the side of the river marveling at the sheer scale of the metal beasts around us, ever more frightening for Kaja and I as we had lost a good half of our original size. The warehouses and cranes and freighters the size of stadiums hanging precariously on scaffolding was enough to make us all keep our distance as the groaning of untouched machinery echoed across the inky waters.
The sky grew dark as we neared the wide waters near the delta. It was Kaja that spotted it first, those bright gold eyes of hers guiding us in the dark towards the other side of the river. More dry-docks, but in place of freighters there were fishing vessels.
Just what we had been looking for.
.
See, the day after our grand bloodshed, we had not, in fact, sat on our asses with faces in blankets wanting to die, oh no, no, no. Right across the river from Old Town we had a library. But it wasn’t just any other library. It was THE Library.
The Glass Mountain, nicknamed by the people after a peculiar bit in our most important of folklores.
An impressive building worthy of the name it bore. Spiked slopes of shimmering bright finish and windows stretching the entire fifteen-something stories, it was a sight to behold. And within…
We had done our research. More research that I think I’d done in my entire life combined. And for once I was glad I was as old as I was (and Carl too), because had I been a few years younger I probably wouldn’t have known how to operate a library.
We had done the general stuff initially. Armed with two backpacks full of flashlights and an extensive list of words for Kaja to match with any covers she could reach and drag back. We’d studied sailing, historical initially but there was a lot of modern day stuff too. We’d rounded up maps, studied currents and the behavior of water and above all else - the ships themselves. With us we had dragged back two carts full of materials on the types of vessels and their use and everything nautical we could decipher with our severely limited understanding.
It was fascinating in a way, just how much knowledge one could gain in such a short time. We had spent the night chattering amongst ourselves, sharing what we had found as Kaja typed out the cliff-notes on the MacBook she’d deemed hers. For moments at a time one could almost forget the fact that Carl would probably have a scarred nose for the rest of his life I wouldn’t be able to move my entire arm for a very long while.
Almost.
.
. He was a good jumper.
And his psychotic strength could really show as he dragged the entire yacht by a single rope to rest against the tires nailed to the side of one of the smaller docks.
Birdhorse and I disembarked shortly after. Unleashing Bella and setting up mine and Kaja’s ‘lighting harnesses’ took not ever two minutes as we had gotten a lot of this down to a science.
It was cold here.
I was so glad I had brought my darling blue jacket and even Kaja wore her backwards-hoodie, wings sticking out the half closed zipper on her back. At some point I’d joked she could put some snacks in the hood part hanging under her chin and never go hungry. I think she had actually considered it.
It took us about twenty minutes of wandering in the dark in a shit-thyself-creepy boatyard before we found the one specific boat Kaja had spotted from across the shore. It was hard to make out anything about it in the pitch black nothingness of night so we ended up hanging one of our flashlights on the path leading up onto the ship and tried our best to memorize the location before heading back.
The night was uneventful. Carl slept on deck with Bella while Kaja and I snugged under a single huge blanket in the… cockpit? Yeah, let’s go with that.
When morning broke we were too hyped to even function. I chugged some lukewarm tea I’d taken in a thermos with us and Kaja nibbled some biscuits while Carl tanked three liter-cans of corn and we left within ten minutes.
Bella sniffed her way around the boat as we clambered aboard, taking in the size of the thing. I was reminded of a gif of a boat not unlike this one dumping a netful of fish in the containers below only to find a very confused walrus amidst its lunch. Now that’s what I called entertainment.
I think we all had the same thing in our brain as we booked it for the main bridge. This was the part where everything we had worked for was a single moment away from falling apart.
Carl and I stayed in the doorway, not even caring we were side by side again as we fidgeted like never before. Kaja had her space to paw around the controls and whatnots as we had decided she had had the most experience with anything mechanical related, even if it amounted to knowing how to change the oil in her old car.
Yet it was beginning to be obvious she was about as clueless as the rest of us.
I mentally recalled reading about this ‘Air Start System’ that was supposed to be a given for large vehicles much like this one. To my vague understanding it replaced batteries, which was what we had been banking on. Hard.
With everything to gain at this point, I stepped beside Kaja and went over the main controls which consisted mostly of levers and buttons and the occasional dark screen and microwave-looking things with a sea of wires. I scoured the rubbed-off labels for anything that could even remotely resemble anything we had tried our best to learn.
I spotted something that looked promising and before anyone even noticed I smacked it as hard as I could. Live without consequence, right?
.
There was a deadly pause as none of us dared to breathe. And as we stood there, frozen in uncertainty we began to feel it. A soft whistle and then, faint at first, the deep rumbling grew, slowly in crescendo, until one would have to be dead to ignore it.
It was as that point I'm pretty sure I let out the loudest ‘YES’ this side of the planet had heard as the trembling of the metal beast began earnest. And like hyperactive children on Christmas we jumped around and screeched and hugged and shouted and cried, and by God was it well-earned.
“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that question.?”
I popped on the plastic lid of the giant, faintly purple tupperware-looking box as best I could before kick-shoving it towards the open glass door with my back leg before turning to Kaja. The horse-woman had asked me to do her hair up in a bun as it had constantly gotten in her eyes whilst working and I don’t know what black magic I had summoned to do it the way I did, but she looked like the single most adorable fucking thing on the planet.
GG, me.
At the given moment she was using a stylus to meticulously tipity-tap away at her newly beloved MacBook, doing spreadsheets on all the stuff we were moving to our newest plaything: our own motha’fuken’ fishing freighter!!
… Okay maybe not freighter, but still a pretty big damn boat.
Honestly, I was still reeling from the fact that my insanity had birthed this amazing and functional idea out of all things. And on top of that, everything had been progressing as smoothly as pancakes, and I didn’t even care that I might’ve just jinxed everything because I felt un-fucking-jinxable.
Because that is a word.
Yep.
Kaja finally stopped typing. She glared at the screen for a solid three seconds before spitting out the stylus in the pillow next to her for that exact purpose and looked at me. I couldn’t help but smile at her. I’d been doing that a lot since we’d hauled that metal monstrosity back over to Home Base a few days ago. Right now it was resting a about a kilometer across the city in the river, moored to some concrete steps leading down to the water that were usually used by touristy-joyride boats. (God, those things were awful, I remember riding them when I was a wee child and they felt more ancient the Soviet era junk we still had left over)
. “What. I zoned out again.”
Kaja only sighed.
“You can push cart. You should help.” She motioned outside. “If we move all box we should be done next day.”
I let out a few disgruntled noises. “Whaddabout you then? Not gonna help?”
She gave me the flattest look yet and motioned at her MacBook, screen filled with a billionty spreadsheets of stuff and amounts and math.
Defeated sigh it is. I stood up and brushed the dirt off my butt and limped over to the outside with no further complaints. Oh hello Carl. Where the fresh fuck did you materialize from?
After some waaaaay too long eye contact we both looked away. Just in time, of course, for Bella to bounce from Carl over to me and then back to him, possibly deliberately ignoring the palpable awkwardness between us. Dumb dog.
I awkwardly shifted on the spot as Carl moved the ready boxes to one of those supermarket two-pronged wheely-lift things.
Trolleys… They're called hand trolleys. What the hell is wrong with me?
This went on for a while until he came upon something heavy. The box was opaque and I ain’t got time to remember all the wild shit we’ve packed since we started doing the ‘this is our life now’ jig.
Lugging around something that came close to my weight didn’t seem to faze him though. Eventually I shuffled closer and sort of awkwardly held out my arms and did a ‘gimmie’ motion with my fingers.
He gave me a look. Hmph, right back atchya’, friendo.
Carl picked up some off-white things shambled together in a package and wordlessly motioned for me to get on all fours. I did and he placed the package between my wings, giving me enough time to adjust my balance with the thing, whatever it was. It looked kitchen-appliance-y. I guess it was going to have to do.
He quickly threw the rest of the boxes onto the trolley and we began to walk, or in my case hobble, with Bella running in circles around us. We took the long way around, down the boulevard beside the elevated train tracks so we didn’t have to deal with the uneven cobblestones of Old Town. Sure it was a bit of a bend but we had parked the boat appropriately after all.
Carl and I didn’t speak the entire way and that was fine. I mean, it was probably because we were both straining with our loads but still. I don’t think my legs had gotten this much of a workout since whenever.
. We rounded the last corner and gazed upon our beauty once more. Our boat swayed gently with the calm waves and I felt a sort of giddiness pass though me. That or gas. Emotions were weird.
Neatly and un-neatly stacked boxes among other types of packaging were laid down all throughout the street and down towards the steps that lead down to water and the boat itself. A plain wood plank we dubbed a walkway leaned at an angle letting us walk onto the deck.
One of the cranes the freighter had could be worked with hands and we’d been mostly using that one and a lot of wooden pallets to actually get stuff onto the boat and into its cargo holes (one of which was almost entirely water containers, yay~).
And by ‘we’ I meant Carl because why-do-I-have-to-keep-explaining-why.
We stopped by the ‘unsorted’ pile and unloaded, Carl freeing me from my manual labor prison. While he was doing that I shuffled over to the steps, went down a few and sat back with a sigh.
I pulled out one of my fancier snacks, a protein bar I’d gotten from a store downtown, along with everything in the store, really. If worst came to worst we could just mix the wild array of powdered protein flavors of pure calories with water, though hopefully it wouldn’t have to come to that, as we had packed crates and crates and CRATES of long-life food. Nevertheless, the array of bars were better to just stick in a bag and have on hand at any moment, considering the adventure we were about to embark on.
Oh, I probably should have mentioned my badass new thigh-bag we’d found. Minus the slight chafing and the weirdness that was putting it on when your hips and legs met at a ninety degree angle it was the best thing that could have happened to me.
Minus the gun.
Oh yeah, we had guns now.
Now that was an adventure in itself.
Well, not, like, with us at the moment, we had these fancy secure boxes for them upstairs in my and Kaja’s bedroom. Didn’t stop me from getting the feel for the holster strapped to my other thigh.
The idea had been mine (because obviously) and Kaja of all people had backed me. See, my old home apartment was around the block of a police station so I figured we try and arm ourselves.
Well… Me and Carl… Since we had thumbs.
Kaja I'm so sorry, why did you keep getting the shit end of the stick?
In any case we’d found a few while ransacking the place as security doors, or any kind of lock or metal things really, didn’t stand much chance against Carl since he just ripped everything out with the hinges. Dat minotaur strength tho.
I kept being reminded how easy he’d gone or my arm.
. We were now a couple pistols richer. See, I knew what they were. I think. At least the ammo box said 9mm so that was a thing. A solid start considering both mine and Carl’s knowledge started and ended with FPS-es and /k/.
Not exactly a good sign but… ya know…
Guns.
They sure are great.
…
Trigger discipline, yo.
…
.
I kid. I knew some basics. My great-uncle took me out to dick around with his old hunting shotgun last summer. That was fun and terrifying and may or may not have aggravated my tinnitus.
.
Mwap. Eeeeeeeeeeeeee~
. Anyway.
I ripped open my chocolaty-overload-and-lemon protein bar and simply stared at the specks of sunlight flickering across the black river as I munched. For some reason the water unnerved me more than usual.
Maybe because we’d be setting off soon. That was probably it. We even had a course plotted out and everything. Between the three of us we’d manage to vaguely figure one of the nav computers up in the bridge and our plan was a straight line up via traditional compasses until we hit Estonia’s southwest shore and then glide along between the islands and the mainland, keeping it in our right sight at all times until we hit Tallinn, which would be very hard to miss. Pretty simple.
Hopefully.
As I was enjoying my fake-citrus snack Bella sneakily nuzzled under my arm, pressing her tiny frame against my side. I had to stick the protein bar in my beak so I could use that arm to pet her. I didn’t exactly trust my mushed leg to be up to par, and I’d gotten pretty good at ignoring I even had a limb there anyway.
Some more minutes passed. Carl had sat down for a snack a ways away as well and seemed to be done as he simply got up and walked away, dragging the trolley with him. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
. This ‘people’ stuff was bullshit, I tell you.
I didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with interpersonal drama. They should’ve been glad I unvocally owned up to this garbage. I mean, I did kind of go for the face, I’ll admit to that, but in my defense I didn’t exactly think my fingertips were like boxcutters. (only thicker and hella sharper).
Why couldn’t we just forget all of this, huh? I liked Carl better when we could gush about cartoons. I mean, he was such a douche canoe anyway, not telling us about what he saw on the chans’ and god knows where else. Probably some hentai shithole too. Hmm, I wonder if he pirated any por-
FOCUS.
I mean, who the fuck does that anyway?! We witnessed the Apocalypse and he had the titanium balls to keep his fucking mouth shut about something as important as people. I mean, hell what if Kaja’s kid was one of the ones left? She never said how old he was but he’d probably be fucked, while we’d be aimlessly dicking around here for months. I mean, shit, I was planning on setting up a tv and some consoles and DVD players downstairs and make ourselves an entertainment room, god knows how long that would’ve taken. Something-long, something-colossal-waste-of-time.
I mean. I didn’t really care about the other people out there. On a people level, I mean. But I needed to know. Like the main character of any story, I had to know. To try.
Zombies, I could’ve bought. WW3 a la Fallout style I could’ve bought. Aliens? Easy. People being turned into Greek mythology? That’s where I drew the line.
And shit wasn’t making sense either. Why disappear? Why leave some random fuckwits anyway? Why mythology? What was with the time stuff???? This wasn’t Doctor MotherfuckingWho!!
. Wait what the fuck was that noise?
Oh. Whoops, that was the sound of my teeth grinding. I eased my jaw and relaxed my knuckles from their deathgrip on the steps, my fingertips having gouged tiny white lines in the concrete.
Bella licked my hand as the color returned to my joints.
I was so tired.
I just wanted to know, was that so much?
I mean, I knew the answer was yes, but still.
. I sighed. We had something going for us at least. So what if Carl was a worthless bag of dicks. I wanted to say it to his face, but we still had shit to do and I needed him to hang up some screens in my captain’s quarters so that could wait. Until we got the Kaja situation sorted, at least. I dreaded what we’d find in Tartu so I had to keep my peace with Second Mate Shithead until then. It killed me to go against my entire M.O. since the Rapture hit but… hgnnNNN- NO. NO.
I CAN'T DO THIS SHIT AGAIN.
EAT A BAG OF FISHY CUNTS, UNIVERSE
I CAN'T GO BACK TO SILENT POLITENESS. IT WAS ALL IN ALL THE TIME, WE PROMISED.
WE FUCKING PROMISED.
.
. *STOMP*
“FUCK.”
Fuck! That hurt!
I fell back on my ass, splaying out my wings and crushing whatever intact snacks I still had in my side bag as I cradled my own limbs with my limbs. Yeah, it wasn’t very effective.
Go brain. What part of you decided slamming everything on stone steps would help anyone?
And then I heard voices. Oh for the love of-
Since I was a bit lower on the steps I could heard the two coming but I'm pretty sure they couldn’t see me. I caught words about me and champagne and throwing and -bored now-
Fhu’ck all’yall’ I ain’t dealing with this shit.
I hopped up to my still sore feet and lowkey sprinted for the footbridge leading up to the boat. I had to pause for a moment before stepping onto it because fuck everything a single strip of wood connecting a huge-ass-ship and planet fucking Earth over water and something like an entire story up stood for.
Easy does it, it wasn’t that high, dumbass.
I thumped halfway up the slope before they noticed me and called out. I heard Carl’s voice the clearest but I didn’t even bother listening to the words. I felt my blood boiling, as it had for a while now.
Actually, you know what?
Fuck you, Universe, I play by my rules.
I inhaled and spun around, my face scrunched with either barely contained fury or emotional constipation. Either worked.
“CARL, YOU ARE A PIECE OF SH-”
I tried to stomp my lion foot down for emphasis. What I didn’t realize at the time was the fact that I was standing on a very rickety and narrow plank that wasn’t even secured that much. I also still didn’t quite have the hang of my dimensions in their entirety.
My back leg slipped off the side of the plank along with most of my weight from the stomp, quickly followed by the rest of me as I lost my bearings, smacking my chest and stomach on the edge on my way down, knocking the wind out of me as my one functioning claw uselessly dragged across the plank without catching any bit of grip.
There might’ve been a voice on the way down but it didn’t exactly matter when everything went cold and wet.
The worst that’s ever happened to me was ramming my fingers in the car door, finding a bunch of harmless snakes in our sandbox when I was eight, falling off my bike and cutting up the side of my leg, and falling off my bike again and banging my foot up real freaking bad.
I played life safe.
I was terrified of getting hurt.
I didn’t want to die.
. I never learned how to swim.
.
.
.
.
.
It’s weird when you're underwater.
I can't say I've had much experience with it since I hated the fucking thing.
I hated the coldness. I hated how it got in every hole. I hated the hour it took for my hair to dry afterwards. I hated that I was too skinny to float. I hated it because fuck you, that’s why.
. It’s the bubbles that are freaky. How they move how you do. Like its air but it doesn’t do anything. Just there. In the water.
Useless.
Like me.
. And it’s like you're in a nothing.
The absence of everything but yourself and nothingness.
Because the nothingness is a somethingness.
So color me surprised when there was something else there.
.
A shape against shapes. It was there. In the nothing.
Just… being…
And it reached out.
And I felt starlight all around me.
And I felt the warmth of the moon.
And I heard the sound of the universe above.
And I saw the pain radiate from its very being.
And I could taste the wind and it was static and ozone and blood and color.
And I saw it stare into me with the night of its eyes.
And then came the pulling.
And then came air.
And then came sound.
And then came cold.
And then came pain.
And then came nothingness.
And then everything went kinda blurry.
.
.
.
.
Did you know bats could swim?
There was gif once upon a time, but it’s gone now. Just like the rest of the internet.
I miss the internet.
I think I've said that before.
…
I'm stalling.
I know.
Mostly because if I think too hard about all the shitwater in me I want to puke.
And I don’t want to puke.
It’s not very fun.
Can griffons even puke?
I think I might’ve, but I don’t remember.
…
So… um…
Kaja pulled me out.
Well, Kaja and Bella, from what I've been told by said saviors.
.
Gah, this stupid situation is a mess all around. I just don’t understand. I feel like I'm still underwater. Like I'm floating through nothingness but it’s not me this time it’s just my head. Is that what dying feels like? I don’t want to die. This is a shit way to die. If I drown at least let me drown in a storm in the sea. At least that’ll be poetic. Not this. Not drowning by the shore of a shit-filled river in fuckall nowhere.
.
BATS.
BATHORSES CAN SWIM.
Who knew?
Also griffons float. Since… since apparently even if my feathers soaked up so much water and I went down like a rock I just sort of… stayed in this one spot until Kaja could dive down to me.
.
Oh and Carl can't swim. Just want to point that out. He’s also scared he’s so much muscle he’ll just sink. I can see the reasoning.
We should… we should probably re-fit some life vests, huh…
…
I'm ignoring it aren’t I?
The thing in the water.
I want to say it was just a nightmare of a dying child but I can't.
I remember how the colors tasted like.
It was a familiar thing.
As familiar as the rune circle.
.
We need to leave.
It’s not… safe.
Which is ironic considering everything that’s happened put into context. Feels like we’re running from the monster under the bed. Something there, on the edge of our existence, causing… this… And like kids we need to get away. And you know the worst part?
I never believed in monsters.
.
He’s coming up the stars.
Carl. Not the monster.
I can tell by his dumb, stomping footsteps.
He’s staring at me and he’s staring at you, lappy, and my fingers still dancing across your keys.
Oh, food. That’s nice.
I'm still not saying anything. Mostly because my throat’s still sore, but also because reasons.
He’s asking me if I'm okay. The fuck do you think, I almost drowned of course I'm not okay.
He’s telling me they're worried about me. I know Kaja is. You I'm on the fence about.
He just asked why I'm not saying anything and I think he’s looking at my fingers to see what I'm spel
What are you doing
No stop dont close my screen dont you fucking dare snap my fingers in my own fucking laptop if you do this i wi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
“If you ever close my laptop when I haven’t saved and minimized everything again I will fucking end you.”
Yeah that didn’t sound very good in a strained voice. Or maybe that just made it better, what did I know.
“Aaaaand, you're alive.” He said with a twinge of sarcasm, but the worry was still evident all over him. He sighed. “So are you going to tell me if you’re feeling better?”
I didn’t reply for a while, dutifully examining the pack of my favorite bacon jerky, a cola and a can of whateverthefuck.
“We need to leave.” I stared up into his dark redwood eyes.
“Yeah, you’ve made that pretty clear.” The deadpanness was back.
“I'm serious. Now more than ever. We need to leave before weird shit hits maximum.” I croaked, turning away.
“As if it hasn’t already? What with you throwing yourself overboard.”
I didn’t reply.
“If I didn’t know any better I might’ve thought you were trying to kill yourself which would have wonderfully stupid considering you managed to get me and Kaja off our asses, as per your violent instruction.”
My knuckles had been slowly balling into fists the entire conversation, but I had only now noticed because my claws were starting to puncture tiny holes in the blanket covers.
“Seriously though, get a grip, were about to set off for a months long trip with us packed like sardines in a literal sardine-tin-can. There's already plenty of crap between us from whenyou diced my face in half.”
Hgnnn don’t do this shit to me, universe.
“I get that you hate me for whatever stupid reason but you’re no saint either.”
Oh fuck this.
“Ya know what?!”
I sat up straight I stared him right in his dumb fucking red eyes with every last bit of fury inside pouring out.
“You are a piece of shit.”
He recoiled.
Man that felt good to say out loud.
There was a pause.
His brows furrowed, mouth floundering like a fish.
Then a snap to senses.
“Fuck you!”
Huh…
His anger gathered.
“FUCK. YOU. YOUR DUMB ASS ALMOST DIED AND I'M TRYING MY BEST TO BE NICE TO YOU AFTER ALL THE FUCKERY YOU’VE SAID AND DONE AND YOU CALL ME A PIECE OF SHIT?!”
He knocked over the food he had brought as he stood up.
“You are the worst! You are so incredibly, impossibly entitled its insufferable! Always thinking you're soooo great just cuz’ some of your batshit ideas worked, well guess what, being right does make you any less of a CUNT!”
“Oooo look at me, I'm so much better than this dumb neckbeard and this retarded old lady, well you fucking ain’t! You're just as bad as the rest of us mortals!”
“In fact, you're worse! Because at least we try to be nice to each other but you just don’t give a fuck do you? You showed up one day and we gave you everything we had what do you give us in turn? You shit on me for trying to debate with you, you turn our lives upside down because of what? Some grand imaginary quest? FUCK. OFF. You're not fucking Luffy and this aint’ a Y.A. novel so stop acting like you're some unkillable destined princess deadest on finding the secrets of the universe. You're a nobody. Just like the rest of us. So act like it!”
He snorted and it almost seemed like steam billowed from his nostrils before he snapped around and left, shoving over a chair and sending it sailing across the room as he went.
. I watched him go and listened to his stomping footsteps echoing through the window to the plaza outside. When they faded is slid my laptop back in my lap and cracked open the screen and started typing those last bits.
With that done I ripped open some bacon jerky and munched.
. Whelp…
That was a situation that just occurred…
…
I feel…
I feel like I should be feeling something, but I don’t?
I mean…
I kinda’ already knew all the stuff he said?
Like…
I did kind of warn them? Like…?
What did he plan to accomplish?
I mean… what did I plan to accomplish?
Maybe I should have elaborated?
…
Yeah probably should have elaborated why he was raging pile of horsecocks.
I still felt like mostly garbage considering my arm and the amount of shitwater I managed to both swallow and waddle in. That stuff really soaked into ya’. Oh and the entire lack of oxygen kinda messed with my head and I wasn’t eating as much for a while. I was probably going to rectify that on the way, as, thankfully, none of us were seasick.
Didn’t very much help at the moment, tho.
Neither did the wind. It was kinda creepy actually. Especially how the trees moved. Frigen’ eldritch demons…
Or maybe that was me and the weird thingy in corner of my left eye. Hi thingy, were you here to take my soul? I still kinda need it- oh it left…
…
Meh…
. At this rate I was going to go only by having a fistfight with the Grim mo-fo Reaper. Granted I'm still a grade-A pussy with sharp hands and gun, but I'm sure if it came down to it -what the absolute fuck am I even on about anymore-?
I was standing in the shadow of the Freedom Monument just by Home Base, which, by the way, was no longer going to be home base since we were all packed up. Well… we left plenty of things there, and some notes too in case some unfortunate soul were to stumble all the way here (why I don’t know since we were and still are the bumfuck-nowhere of the Baltics).
Right, yes, Monument. Or as we Latvians lovingly called her /Milda/ because I don’t really know, it’s just a thing that we do. The wind was really going and it was making me even more nervous than I was thanks to not sleeping, because my body and brain hated me.
At least I wasn’t cold, which was the one thing I had going for me. I was wearing new kid-sized sweatpants with my bag and holster over them. Mutilated wool socks over my fingerless gloves and an extra sock in the fancy mid-length kid boots for my back legs. Head feathers stuffed under my baseball cap on the back of my skull. And of course, my trusty blue jacket which I had ‘Kaja’d’ aka zipper on the back party in the -no-
My brain was in the process of melting, I'm not sure if you could tell.
I did look like a hobo but then again I did that on a regular basis so not much of a change.
“There you are.”
Oh hey twatface, nice of you to pop up and ruin the moment.
No. Be nice. I couldn’t risk my other arm.
“Did Kaja send you again?”
“Yeah. She’s really deadset on making us make up.”
“Well tough shit.”
Silence as the dark minotaur walked up beside me. He too was dressed warmer. Thank you fat people clothes stores, he now had shirts that he didn’t rip to shreds just by existing. And a single jacket. Not that he needed it much, dude was a walking furnace, but you know, modesty sakes. Mostly because the way his pecs’ rippled when he moved made me feel all flavors of weird.
“We’re almost ready to go. Mind telling me why you’re wasting time here or am I not worthy?”
“Keep being snide and you won't get jack, buddy.”
“You started it…”
I only laughed.
It was a hollow laugh.
Wind.
Wind and silence. The two went together pretty well.
. “Mom once…”
My voice cracked.
The way the overcast sky tinted everything blue… it made the Monument that much more beautiful. Carvings of farmers, soldiers, singers adorned the sides of the massive stone blocks. This was our history. Our home, our legacy, a piece of history that no one managed to take away from us all throughout our brief existence.
It fascinated me. It always had, since I was tiny. There was a majesty about it that was hard to put into words.
“I remember mom once told me Dad was in the Honor Guard.”
Two dark stone squares around the front, one on each side. Once upon a time there were soldiers standing there every single day. Unmoving, unflinching, always vigilant.
. Empty now.
“He was over a meter eighty, as tall as me, with broad shoulders and… and I quote ‘a gorgeous man’…”
I laughed.
It was a desperate laugh
“I think… I think out of everything I regret most is not asking her about him. Because now… I’ll never know. And I’ll never have the chance to know.”
I ran my hand through the feathers falling over my eyes.
“And that’s the part that hurts the most.”
.
.
.
“I'm being stupid aren’t I?”
Nothing
“Get. I’ll be there in a minute.”
He hesitated. Eventually though, he left, his heavy footsteps fading away.
I faced the Monument.
I straightened my posture best I could with this strange body.
I was getting so sick of it. It was everywhere. The city the sky the water the boat UGH!
We still weren’t moving. I was sick of that too. I’d been begging to leave for forever. It’d gotten so bad I’d stopped sleeping because I was a nervous wreck. It felt like something was constantly on our heels and we needed to MOVE.
AND WE WEREN’T.
ARGHFGHGFHFFGHHHHHHHHHHHN~
I slammed my forehead down onto my hands that had been crossed and resting on the edge of the boat’s back rail. Move. Move you piece of -no- be nice. Be nice to the boat so it doesn’t kill you, yes. I came close once and I wasn’t very interested in fistfighting the Reaper.
Hah hah. References.
To me…
Umm…
. “Hey.”
“JESUS!” I jumped a solid half meter straight up and fell flat on my ass on the way down. For fu-
“For fuck sakes Kaja I almost pissed myself!!” I yelled, clutching my heart and soul through my clothes. The woman gave me a bemused look and it looked like she was on the verge of apologizing anyway. Yeah, this was on me but still. I was jumpy as hell as of late, there was no way they wouldn’t have noticed.
“Christ all-fucken’-mighty are we ready go or what? I'm literally going to start tearing shit up if we don’t go in the next now.” I stomped both arms down for emphasis, the clank of metal echoing through the empty streets.
“Yes, yes, we going. I heat up engine to go. You can stop doing a freak, now, okay?” Wow if Kaja was getting short with me that meant I was really grating on people’s nerves. Maybe I was overdoing it a bit?
Uhh… actually file that little revelation for ‘never’.
Now where was I? Oh yes. I was in the process of hugging Kaja. How I ended up here I don’t know but it was the least worst thing that could have happened.
Aww she hooked one leg around my back, how sweet. What I didn’t quite understand was why I felt this horrible tightness in my chest and behind my eyes. I didn’t feel like crying. I had no reason to cry, really.
I was perfectly fine.
. Suddenly Kaja seemed to freeze, her leg still locked around the back of my neck. I couldn’t see her face but I could hear her rapid breaths right in my ear.
The next few seconds were hell.
Because the singular word ‘people’ had never held that much weight as it did that moment.
.
I can't remember if it was a whisper or a shout or telepathy but she took off running. And I took off after her, screaming for Carl the entire way off the boat, down the same walkway that almost killed me. Evidently Kaja’d gotten mastery over her quadrupedness because holy shit could that bat go. I wasn’t that out of shape and I couldn’t keep up for squat. I only followed the purple and red blob retreating in the distance because I sure as shit couldn’t see anyone anywhere.
Thankfully for us the road along the river was a straight one and soon enough I saw a tiny shape that almost got run over by half a ton of mom instinct. I slowed my pace as I did so, trying to not wheeze out my lungs.
Then came barking. And a scraggly white blur with a leash dragging behind her that beeline’d for Kaja. Following that came a slew of miniature earthquakes as Carl tried desperately to catch up the rest of us girls.
By the time I’d made it to Kaja and our mystery human, Carl had caught up to me and was the only sensible one of us to yank a crazily barking and jumping Bella by her leash and away from the action.
That was finally the point where my brain registered the crying. And the fact that the other person was small enough to fit and hide in Kaja’s embrace. And it was small. And four-legged. And small. And black and white. And small.
My spine went a little cold.
.
Kid.
It was a kid.
. “H-elp help he-elp” the little thing kept repeating between hiccupping sobs. What struck me as odd was the way they pronounced the words. Like they’d never actually used them normally, kind of like me whenever I tried out saying ‘help’ in Russian. Carl and I cautiously circled the two horse-people and I got a better look at the kiddo.
Dude was straight up a zebra.
They were off-white with dark brown-ish stripes and messy, multiple-toned hair. They had ill-fitting jeans and an orange t-shirt awkwardly hanging from their frame. I managed to catch a glimpse of their dark-purple eyes that gave away the fact that this was definitely no normal animal.
The kid kept hiccupping, pushing themselves harder against Kaja while the woman angled her head to look at the rest of us.
“Well. Talk to him.” Kaja hissed at me as Carl was busy restraining Bella who was in process of losing all her shit.
“Wha-”
“I can't Latvian, you talk.”
“I, uh, I-I-I-I-I-” I sputtered, taking a step backwards. When Carl suddenly shoved Bella into my arms I almost dropped the poor mutt in surprise. The minotaur kneeled down next to Kaja, trying to make himself as small and non-threatening as possible, with mixed results.
“Hey, hey little guy, don’t cry…” Carl spoke in his softest possible voice, which wasn’t far from his usual deep rumbling.
His name was Adam Pļava <Field>.
We eventually managed to figure out that this kid was in the country with his mom, visiting grandparents. They’d been walking somewhere until one second it was a normal day the next he was a zebra stumbling back and forth along and empty bridge begging for help. Thank fuck the kid was british, because it very much helped with language barriers. That and I very much pretend to not notice just how quickly Kaja seemed to latch onto the lil dude.
I’d completely forgotten Carl had a little brother but it very much helped us with the kid. After a whole lotta bullshit the three of us found ourselves in the captain’s quarters, aka my room.
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“Well it’s not like we can leave him.” Carl gave me a half-horrified look.
“Yeah no shit you fucktrumpet, I never said we should!” I snapped back. “But for what it’s worth we are basically kidnapping the thing.”
“That’s what I'm saying! If he suddenly appeared logic says his mom might too and what are we supposed to do in that situation? Leave a note saying ‘hey we kidnapped you kid on a trip ‘round the world, hope you don’t mind’?” Carl waved his arm.
“So we take him with us! It’s not like we have options!”
“Yeah except the big glaring one.” I swear he looked so unintentionally smug as he spoke. “Stay.”
“FUCK NO!” I shouted, flaring my wings. “We are not doing this shit again!” My wings puffed up even more. “We’ve already fought enough about this, and I didn’t almost drown just for us to stop in our fucking tracks when we’re a few buttons away from finally gtfo-ing!”
“You almost drowned because you're a fucking retard not because of whatever stupid reason you made up this time!”
A sharp clatter of hooves on metal made us freeze.
“SHUT UP ALREADY!”
Kaja was staring us down, fury dripping off her very being. Whatever protest either of us might’ve put up was squashed just by a single glance.
“I am put my leg down! I am tired of you two yelling about this! Decision was made already before! We take Adam, we leave, NO question! And no think about argue because I take leader-ing now and I say stop fighting, stop yelling, listen to me and we go! UNDERSTAND!?”
We both stared at Kaja in abject horror. I barely managed a weak nod and I didn’t even dare glance at Carl what with Kaja burning holes though both of us with those golden eyes of hers. She gave a few more angry snorts before quickly cooling down.
“Carl, go take rope off -uhh- stone beach, Diana go rope Bella so she away from Adam, I go talk to him and explain to him, oke?”
“W-what about his mom then?” Carl sputtered. Kaja looked at him and then stared ahead blankly in thought. “Dia,” she turned to me and I involuntarily shrank back, “can you make note and we leave at bridge?”
“Won't it just get messed up by the weather?”
“We need try.”
I nodded.
“Good.” The old woman smiled, just a little bit. “Last thing. You two make happy now.”
“Eh?”
“I think she wants us to make up.” I gave Carl the side eye as I guessed at her meaning.
“Why?”
“I mean, we have been at each other’s throats for a while.” I annoyedly grumbled.
He didn’t say anything, only fidgeting with his hands as he suddenly very much did not want to look at me. Huh. Now it was my time to give an angry snort that sounded much more menacing what with my anatomy. Carl was on the verge of saying something but I to cut him off.
“No.” I glared right back at Kaja. “I am not five years old anymore, I don’t need adults telling me to make up with anyone. I go by my own judgment and if I have to make up with anyone I'm doing it on my terms.”
The way she exhaled it seemed she almost visibly deflated. “Oke. Oke… just… lets go do thing now, oke?”
“Tch. Fine.” My feathers were still fluffed up in agitation. We lingered in silence for a few more moments before I simply walked out of the room followed by Kaja, and Carl slinking behind us.
We went about all our tasks. I scribbled a note and gave my forgotten skateboard a spin as I took the plastic-wrapped paper all the way to where Adam said he had come from. I taped it somewhere noticeable and headed back. By the time I got there Carl had taken care of Bella and untied all but one rope mooring us to the coast. I gave the area a onceover before boarding the rumbling freighter followed by the suddenly very quiet minotaur.
It was time for us to set off.
Finally.
And good fucking riddance.
. The three four of us crammed in the bridge. Carl hung back in the doorway and Kaja let Adam poke some buttons as we got the huge lump of rusty machinery to get going.
And going, it got.
I took the kid and hung around the front of the ship as we slowly made our way towards open waters. I wasn’t sure if it was a diversion tactic on Kaja’s part or what but he seemed pretty happy just looking around and enjoying the wind even with the entire Apocalypse thing notwithstanding.
We took shifts of two making sure we were sailing in the direction we were supposed to. The day dragged on into dusk and we downgraded to just one of us making sure nothing went too wrong. I fed Bella twice and spent an hour trying to teach the kid Sudoku, which was more me just trying to get him to learn how to hold a pencil in his mouth. In hindsight I probably should have left that to Kaja since I had opposable thumbs.
Hey, at least we had an even split now.
Kaja set up a room for him next to hers while I decorated mine. And by decorated I mean I made a proper nest for me to sleep in. Pretty sure it had something to do with the bird part of me, but then again I’d like nesting in things even as a human so whatever.
I also made a small sitting area for myself at the back of the ship where there was a small dip. I got some pillows, a blanket, a tarp to throw over it if it rained and a big ol’ umbrella for the sun tomorrow.
I released Bella from being confined in a tiny room below deck and brought her out to what I was going to call my patio from now on. The two of us spent the rest of the evening there chilling, doodling, drinking and watching the last faint vestiges of our home fade beyond the curvature of the earth.
The sun set to our side and the world grew darker and for the first time in my memory I was surrounded by water and nothing but, from all sides. A strange ball formed in my chest and the longer I gazed upon the horizon the more it grew and grew until it spread out to my arms and spine and throat before suddenly vanishing. As if I’d suddenly made peace with the vastness of the world around me.
The alcohol probably helped.
. Slowly stars began to light up around us. Bella began dozing off so I ushered her inside before returning to my lovely drink of rum and coke. No ice, no lemon, still good.
We had agreed to keep our lights as dim and nonexistent as we could, which helped with enjoying the night sky especially as my eyes adjusted more and more to the dark all around. I knew it was Kaja’s turn to man the helm, as for the two guys, I took a wild guess at them being asleep.
Of course I was proven wrong almost immediately, so screw me right?
He was trying to be so sneaky it was almost comedic, the way the metal groaned under his weight as he slowly made his way over to me. I just laid there, nearly catatonic. I was almost done with a two liter bottle of coke and a good sixth of a big ol’ rum bottle, which in hindsight was probably a bit too much for my tiny body. I sighed.
“Oh for fuck sakes, what do you want?”
He froze. After a few long seconds he shuffled over to where I was, settling down by a part of protruding metal next to my lovely chill-spot. I lazily glanced at him while he continued to fidget in silence for a good while.
“I…” It sounded like he was fighting his own words when he finally decided to speak. “I-I-…”
. “I'm sorry.”
Eh?
“Pfff, for what?” I tried very hard to not sound condescending and I think I might’ve succeeded.
“A… bunch. I've had some time to think and… I shouldn’t… some of the stuff I said, w-when you drowned I mean, I shouldn’t”
“Just shut up, you’re killing both of us here.” I took a swig to wash away the cringe. “Seriously though, why the hell are you apologizing?”
“Look I was just fucking worried okay?!” He snapped. That got my attention. I sat up, which was mistake because evening went a bit spinny, but anyway.
“I-I was… I, I'm scared. I'm scared of what's going to happen and what happened and I don’t want anyone to get hurt like you almost did, okay?!” He was nervously running his hands through his curly hair, looking anywhere except my direction.
“I don’t know what's going on or what to do or anything! I'm mad at you because you're so stupidly reckless and I don’t want you to die because there's only the thr-four of us and I-I'm scared of being alone again okay?”
He hid his face in his hands.
“It was terrifying before I found Kaja, okay? I lied, I lied about the stuff I did before her, I just sat at home and cried because I didn’t know what was going on, or what to do or where my mom went and then you showed up and I was scared about telling you other people because of this-” He vaguely gestured to the open waters, as far as the eye could see.
“I don’t want you to h-hate me… I don’t want to keep y-yelling at you I just want the world and everything to go back to normal because that way at least I… I knew… I had… I-I-I-”
“I'm sorry okay, I-I-I don’t want you to hate me, p-please, please don’t hate me…”
He’d curled into a tiny grey and red ball and I could do nothing but stare. An exasperated breath escaped me as I limply fell back into the blankets, the sky spinning in circles.
. “I don’t hate you, you moron.”
. “W-what?” I caught him looking at me though his fingers.
I laughed.
It was a bitter laugh.
. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“Look at you. Being so nice and sweet tryin’ to apologize n’ shit even if I've knowingly been acting like a raging cunt and giving no fucks about it.
It’s actually kind of funny in a really retarded way. You know all the stuff you said about me being entitled and all that? I've never actually had anyone say that to my face. It was frigen’ bizarre I gotta give it to ya. I was actually floored that it was you out of everyone I've known that had the balls to say it out loud…
Hey… Do you… do you remember the day we met? All that stuff I said about pretending?”
Silence.
“Nothing’s changed, ya know. I made my choice when the realization of having lost everything started setting in. And it’s that decision to stay true to whatever void deep down there is, is what's keeping me in one piece.
I'm cold. Cold and selfish. I've always been. Because it makes everything so much easier when you only have to look out for yourself.”
. “N-not even your mom? You talk about her a lot…” He was so quiet.
“BWHAHAHAH, fuck me, if only you knew… I mean, it’s… it’s not like I ever did it on purpose, at least at first, or to hurt anyone but…
She… she was… my driving force, ya know? When you summed everything up she was… everything. Because I was her everything. I was her world because I was the only thing she still had left. And I always hurt her the most because she was the closest. Because deep down I knew she’d always put up with me no matter what I did.
We always fought, because, let’s face it, I was and still am a piece of shit. Sure she pushed too hard for me to excel in a school that didn’t matter and sure she was overly strict, as much she could while working herself to death so I had everything I could ever want.
I still remember when she told me she was okay with the fact that I didn’t love her… That… hurt… Because I did. Do. I just… didn’t know how to give back. I don’t think I ever did. I don’t think I CAN.
All I've known is how the world takes. That’s all it does. It took Dad. It took my innocence. It took… you wouldn’t believe it, but I used to as bright as the sun, once upon a time. And the word decided that that was too good for everyone involved, so it decided to ruin that. And it ripped and tore and stabbed and betrayed and muddied and destroyed until all that light in that tiny little girl that wanted the best for the world and the people in it was long gone. It took my future. It took who I was. And then it took my future one last time. The only difference is that this time there is nothing to bounce back to. But that’s okay. It doesn’t hurt anymore because there's nothing left to hurt. The shell where my light was isn’t even scratched. Why do you think I've taken everything in strides? There's nothing there anymore, inside or out, do you understand?
And all that nothing? That’s where I came from. Nothing but tar and nothing but nothing.
And it’s fascinating, almost, to see all these sparks in the void of the world, fighting against the inevitable, desperately holding to their light. It’s kinda’ sad actually, how hard some people try. I guess in some fucked up way I admire them, because there is this tiny part of me that still thinks I could have been one of them.
But I'm not. I never was. Never been.
And that child of light I told you about was never really me.
I don’t know what me is beyond what I told you back when. A bitter, selfish, swearing, insecure brat that gave up trying to do better because there’s nothing left to lose but her life full of hollow pleasures and even that is slipping between my fingertips.
But hey, you can try to be Mom. You can try to care if you want. I might care back but it’ll be a passing thing with no noticeable result, and face it, it’ll probably be easier to just be miserable alone.
Because one day… one day you’ll get sick of me. One day I’ll push too hard and something will break. And I’ll walk away. Because I never belonged anywhere in the first place and you’ll just keep being good people, and you’ll feel bad about me when the dust settles and that’s okay. That’s what separates us. Because I’ll be long gone and you’ll be nothing but a passing memory. Nice, sure, but hollow just like the rest of them.
And I’ll keep moving forward.
Alone.
Like I've always been and always will be.
And that’s okay.”
.
I took another sip.
Sweet.
After a while he just kind of shook his head and left.
I stayed here.
For a long time.
The void above was nice and black.
And the stars looked ever brighter.
.
Mom always did say I’d die alone.
.
o.O.o
that's all she wrote (future chapter summaries + ending + author notes)
just so were clear, i'm stepping out of character for this (not that there's much difference ha ha ha)
in december of 2017 when i was on a small trip to london our apartment was broken into and my laptop was stolen along with stuff and yadda yadda it probably contributed to the speed at which i had already begun spiraling into a soup of apathy and abandoned dreams as i’d grown deeply disillusioned with the world and my future and the future in general.
i am seeking help now.
its been a long time coming and only been under a month now but i'm seeing a psychiatrist and i hope i can somehow fix whatever is broken inside my brain
with that said the spark for this story died a long time before that.
i'm sure some of yall had figured out Dia was very much a self insert. well. in a sense. an amplified, more negative version of a self-image, fictionalized just enough to work.
i’d begun writing this story when i was in mid-high school, coming into my own as a person after years of extensive bullying that left me a shell of a human. though this i examined my new philosophies and to some extent myself, or at least what i saw as myself at the time. it helped greatly in grounding me and my views on the nature of the universe and examine my faults as a person
i grew as a person through writing this, and it will always be an important part of myself
and however long it has been now i always found myself coming back to this. something inside me wanting a definitive end. for your sakes or mine i can't say
so that's it today. everything i had meant this story to be, laid out for closure because sometimes something so little is all you’ll ever get in this life
a book must be closed for the last time. join me.
.
.
Where our Light is Spent
in this chapter we reached tallinn. within the city the crew came upon two new survivors an earth pony and thestrial. Kaja was the only one able to speak with them. the survivors got kaja a working car after hearing her story but she was unable to drive it due to her body. dia confessed she’d been taking driving lessons before the end so she and kaja cautiously set off to tartu to look for kaja’s family
they first reached kaja’s parents apartment, looking for them or kaja’s sister but nobody had been there so they headed for her home. it was also deserted. dia gave her friend some space and decided to gather some personal things. she found a framed picture of a blonde woman and a black haired boy.
some time later dia approached kaja, saying she couldn't find a picture of her son and husband, only her. in turn kaja gave dia her most haunting look, confessing, it was not herself in the picture.
the truth was that kaja had actually been a man as a human, Koit. when they’d met Carl after the end of the world they’d blurted out their mother’s name instead of their own and it had stuck. they confessed as uncomfortable they were in their new skin they’d simply accepted it. all they wanted was to see their family.
not knowing how to respond dia simply said she would keep the secret, while admitting that kaja/koit could probably tell the rest of the crew about it. kaja thanked her but decided against it. she was who she was and all she could do was keep moving forward.
later dia helped write out letters to leave for kaja’s family if they were to return and the two soon departed in silence.
.
Where the Lonely Roads End
when dia and kaja returned to tallinn they were greeted with more than they were expecting.
a silvery white dragon with pink eyes, about the size of a car was waiting by the boat. her name was Lilith Free. she was a british woman in her early 20s who’d been studying in scandinavia for a law degree. she’d been on her way home during the event and had heard from the two tallinn ponies that there were travelers. she bluntly said that she was joining the crew.
stuff happens and they agree. Lilith is a foil to dia in a sense. she is a harsh, unpleasant woman, with a deep hatred for her ‘bumpkin’ family and a disdain for others wrapped up in a superiority complex. she exists in a sense to contrast dia’s flavor of caring harshness. the two very much dislike one another.
the crew pick up a radio signal from St. Petersburg and decide to head there. they find the city fortified and dia, carl and kaja enter deeper, seeking its residents, finding a hardy band of russians armed to the teeth who very much do not like the arrivals. they meet Dennis, a pleasant young man who acts as their translator/gude/vouch and Sasha a cold police officer
the russians are all griffons and one earth pony, and their leader an old man is not fond of any negotiation. during their time there dia and dennis befriend one another quickly. they have made decent living in the city with farm animals and stockpiled food. the crew help hook up a satellite phone network for easy communication before the leader makes them leave
stuff happens and the old man dies of misc illness and dennis and sasha take over the community. they agree to join the network of survivors as long as dia travels the rest of europe to find any. they happily part ways
.
Where There are Strangers
the crew are on their way to tallinn but they stop in some ports along the way for exploration. during the stops they encounter weird magic shenanigans that leave them confused and unnerved.
in the final stop dia gets into another fight and storms off. carl eventually finds her and they have a soft conversation where dia tries to convince carl that she will destroy him if he keeps trying to befriend her. he half-jokingly says she can't break what's already broken
he believes dia to be good deep down but she harshly dismissed the idea, giving up on keeping him away and agreeing to re-establish their friendship. they joke around about him being her squire and return to the boat.
they spend some time in tallinn helping the two people there settle. the following morning they are awoken by bella snarling above deck. they find an intruder, wearing perfectly fitting pony armor, confidently standing on their boat. a red-pink unicorn with green dreadlocks, her cutie mark is a scimitar crossing a rose.
she singles out dia from the group, pointing at her
she says that dia is the one
the one to come with, the perfect candidate.
to see the world of the ponies and learn the truth of the Event.
.
where we find out every̕t̛h̨in̵g̷
the unicorn is named rosie.
she explains she was sent from her world to seek specific survivors. she was part of a royal guard unit of pegasi and another two unicorns but they abandoned her. she says she’d been trailing the crew for a while now (explanations to some strange events earlier in the story), since riga even and she is confident that dia is the perfect candidate for whatever is needed.
everyone is very sceptical and hostile. they ask her what is happening and about everything
rosie confesses she was never told what was going on, only instructions to bring back with her an exemplary person. there is a vague implication to what has happened but no one involved is given solid facts (they eventually find out enough to understand the time-disappearances)
dia says she will be the one to go to the pony world. there are murmurs from the crew and dia snaps saying she's not changing her mind and she needs answers and no one is going to stop her from going.
the team says that of course they want her to go. they have come to see her as their driving force and she is the one who can get to the bottom of all of this. they were going to vote for her to go even
dia is confused. why would they see and treat her that way?
they make some arrangements, say words, goodbyes. carl timidly squeezes her hand and asks her to come back
dia nods with determination
the chapter ends with an explosion of light as dia and rosie cross over to the pony world.
the journal picks up in the tail end of the equestra trip. dia has been showered in gifts but not a single answer.
the only gift she likes is a magic necklace that she can shape by concentrating on it. she turned it into her symbol and has kept it that way. (that symbol would eventually become her signifier/flag)
it is the final day and she is brought to canterlot, only to be swiftly rejected from whatever is going on for not being a pony.
rosie is scolded for her mistake but dia is not taking a no for an answer. she becomes enraged, charging forward through the castle until she comes upon princess Luna. dia wastes no time screaming at her, in few words blaming her for the death of the entire human race
as dia is pulled away from the castle by the guards she says how humans need one another to survive and this strategy of spreading them though time will murder more than the chaos of a sudden transformation. Luna gives her a sympathetic look before glancing at her sister. as the doors close dia catches a glimpse of a strange mishmash-creature appearing from nowhere and intently staring at her.
she is told to seek out Lonely Day.
she swears like never before, promising to make the pony princesses pay for their genocide, some way, somehow.
.
home
dia and rosie return to the human world to see her crew waiting around for them
dia decks rosie
everyone scrambles to make sense of what's happening. dia explains what she learned and saw etc, saying they need to make it to america to find this ‘Alex’. she then turns to rosie and says to get out of their sight, murderous scum.
rosie doesn't move
stuff happens and rosie explains she was a criminal. she had been a pirate near equestria’s waters. when her ship was captured she sacrificed herself for her crew and was imprisoned in the deepest dungeons. she was only released because this mission to earth needed powerful unicorn volunteers and if she agreed she would be pardoned, but exiled from equestria forever.
rosie says she can't go back because there's nothing waiting for her. she says she wants to help the crew, they were wronged by the equestrians much like she was in a way and she is in love with this brave new world
dia doesn't believe her
the crew take a vote. it comes down to adam, who votes to keep rosie. dia is furious but she concedes.
some time passes. they gather supplies, plan a route, plan in general, radio their allies and ready for a very, very long trip.
dia sits at the back of her ship chillout spot contemplating everything that has happened.
she hears heavy footsteps and finds carl. he holds out a tiny, shabby cake with a candle in it.
it’s august 15. it’s her birthday. she is now eighteen.
an adult.
the rest of the crew emerge and say they wanted to do something nice after everything that's happened.
something inside dia breaks and she starts crying, unable to understand what is happening and why everyone is acting like this. she is an awful awful angry and vengeful person who is nasty to everyone and the only reason anyone is around her is because she is slightly competent
the crew say that's not true. she is a thoughtful, kind, generous, righteous girl. she is funny and she cares deeply about the people around her despite her hard words and general antics and demeanor she is truly a good person, just a bit messy around the edges
they are beside her because they care about her.
dia still doesn't truly understand. not entirely. but for the first time she believes them.
for the first time she feels like she is around people that care. at least in some way.
the darkness within her does not recede.
but there is a tiny spark inside.
and it's a start.
it ends with a promise to see the world
no matter what it takes
.
the one where i end up writing a book
this chapter was more supposed to be an epilogue/sequel hook dia alludes to some major events that have happened over the years etc
. Roadtrip: Around the World in 80 Years // Roadtrip: Lost Volumes
this story was supposed to have a sequel or two. mostly consisting of random snippets of a variety of events and things the crew would've gotten themselves into, living their lives in this strange new world. examining a different philosophy. what that would have been i have no clue but it would have been something incredible.
that said here are the major things / life events that would have been covered in mosty chronological order .
They call their ship the Humanity
the crew take and incredible round-trip to the Mediterranean. they pass through the Baltic sea, london where they find people living in the metro tunnels and connect them up with the satellite phone network
they end their trip in a coastal city near rome which they too visit. there they find a man named Priest, a priest that had been shown equestria who now believes celestia had been the biblical god and acted accordingly. along with several people who had seeked rome and their god and answers. a notable pair is a father/daughter backpacking pair, now a changeling queen and her drone who join the trip back north as autumn begins.
the Humanity hunkers down in london for a time, arranging a telephone meeting of the newly found communities. dia explains what she and rosie know about the Event and how they will head to america to seek answers as it begins to turn to winter
during this time Dia and Carl have become a couple as both realize they will not do any better and they are more or less on the same brainwave anyway. Kaja has grown deeply attached to Adam and no one is surprised when she eventually confessed she sees him as a son. kaja and rosie have grown very close as well. lilith is still a jerk but she works together well with the crew. bella is a good dog.
the crew brave the atlantic. they stop at iceland where they find threstrials, a pregnant woman and two old fishermen. they take them with on the trip. the baby is born at sea and with it signals the beginning of a new age.
dia learns to fly.
they pass the east coast, only to see humanity’s metropolises burning and in ruins. dia is deeply distraught seeing human’s legacy destroyed and regresses into a deep depression. they crew get into many shenanigans trying to get to the landlocked Alexandria. the final leg of the journey is taken by dia lilith and kaja as they are the flyers of the their group.
Dia meets Alex once and for all.
they have many heated conversations over a long timespan. dia is a very stubborn person and she finds alex to be a ‘horsecocksucker’, solidifying herself as a very anti-equestria figure. she gets all the info books a way to contact the other side of the globe etc and returns to europe.
many many years pass
Dia becomes known as the Great Uniter
she ammasses a self-sustaining fleet that travels the breath of europe’s coasts and the atlantic. she keeps peace between the budding nations of the continent and slowly becomes more and more well known. a lot of it coming from publishing her books and memoirs of Equestria and the Event and return and everything she’s done during her life. as well as her participation in many skirmishes, protections, advancements, saving and general fairness when it comes to politicking
during this time:
The crew grow to consider one another family.
Bella passes away at 23, very old for a dog.
Dia and Carl have four daughters and a son. (Marceline, Elizabeth, Juniper, Annabelle, Christopher) all four girls are red/pink griffons, each with a different father, one of them being dennis, the second one of Priest’s followers the latter two irrelevant, though all of them consider the minotaur their father. their son is carl’s and another minotaur’s who kidnapped him and vanished for nearly twenty years. they were eventually reunited by sheer luck and the boy was absorbed into the family
Kaja and Rosie hook up. between the two of them they have five kids, four boys, a daughter and Adam who has grown into an incredible young man. Kaja gains her cutie mark, two overlapping speech bubbles as she is capable of mastering pretty much every language. they are very happy and Kaja has become a surrogate mother for Dia
Lilith is still and asshole. but a nicer one. she keeps all the paperwork and agreements legal stuff etc for the whole continent. she has tripled in size and flies along the fleet when needed but mostly lives a secluded life somewhere. she and dia somehow became very good friends
Carl is the first to pass.
He gets sick when they're out at sea and dies at 72 surround by all five kids. Dia becomes much colder and harsher after that day. their youngest daughter, only fourteen then, heads to america by herself and vanishes.
Kaja is next to pass. the whole rebuilt city that has become the hub of the fleet the Humany III mourns her and she is given a viking funeral.
Dia meets Alex for the first time in ages. Dia is old, Alex is not. she asks if Alex will remember her. as a person instead of her legacy. Alex says she remembers everyone. they share a drink.
The world has grown and changed a great deal. Dia has spent her life piecing the remnants of humanity back and in some ways she has succeeded.
. On a calm night out at sea Dia feels it. at age 217 she grabs a life boat and silently stows away from the last parts of her life’s work. she lays in the boat, old and gray and failing and she watches the stars, like she did so many years ago.
this was never the life she wanted but she did the best she could. so much struggle and blood and sweat and tears and it's all over just like that.
she hears her laugh.
she raises her cloudy red eyes and there, on the other end of the boat sits a young girl. pale and freckled with mousy brown hair and steel gray eyes.
they speak.
about nothing and everything.
and Dia watches the grey eyes melt to crimson and gold.
a memory from too far back.
it speaks, male and female overlapping, her own voice young yet warped, another, old and clear, the one from her dreams. it asks her for her deepest desire. they both know the answer
it asks again. the price is yourself. you will be you but you will be me but you will be different.
Dia says they both know the answer.
it extends a griffin claw and she takes it.
she ceases.
it storms that night.
and it storms there for decades.
and amidst the storm a lonely girl gets her wish.
.
.
Roadtrip: Ascension
“The Human Spirit is a boundless thing.
In an Earth of monsters and magic and ponies it still burns bright in the souls of the Returned. It echoes through the minds of those who've only seen humans as pictures on a screen. It is what drives those alive today to say 'no'. To not lie down against the fate bestowed upon them by a merciless universe and false gods that doomed our kind to fade to nothingness, never truly understanding our nature and our minds and our absolute refusal to ever be limited by the fabric of reality itself.
Chaos runs through our souls.
And only fools see it as a bad thing.
Fools that will soon be reminded of their roots whether they like it or not.
A new being is born. One that will lead humanity to fulfil its true potential.
To their ascension.”
Eris (/ˈɪərɪs, ˈɛrɪs/; Greek: Ἔρις, "Strife") is the Greek goddess of strife and discord.
When the spell fired during the Event, the piece the original Discord had sacrificed in its making was released upon the world. It wove itself into the fabric of magic and remained as an observer for two hundred years. He was just like his original self, only weaker, aware that he was a piece but unbothered. His power began waning eventually, and he seeked out a human he had trailed more than most.
A young woman full of ambition and rage against the gods. He had visited her as she brushed with death many times in her long life, and he once more found her on a boat upon the glassy ocean, as her heart slowed one last time.
She was Discord. Impossibly powerful, mischievous, eternal. He was Dia. Unhinged, driven, wild.
Human.
Dia became what Discord had been. Their souls merged together, creating an entirely new being.
Eris.
They together were the great balancing act of the universe. A force of nature. They were the chaos to order. They were not evil. They simply were.
Eris was everything Dia had dreamed of. And Dia dreamed. And Discord dreamed. They were two parts of a whole.
Eris spent much of her time reminding humanity of their origin in their own special way. She helped, she killed, she played, she lived. She raised family with puppet bodies. Had children, faked her death. Wrote books, music, traveled, told stories, burned cities to the ground.
She reminded Sunset Shimmer she was not god. She reminded Alex she was human. She treasured the HPI and her two-legged children.
She not so much straddled the line of insanity as she swung back and forth hanging off of it. She did everything and anything. She was limitless, immortal, eternal.
When they reached the stars she was among them. When they reached the homeland of her killers she bowed to them. And when she saw the creature that had birthed the immortality within her they smiled at one another. When the princesses greeted the children of the race they had doomed she reminded them of her promise.
One from a girl long gone who’d lost her world and her future and her people.
She crossed the stars by her own power.
She returned to her planet and she played life again and again until the sun burned out.
And she trailed her people through the stars for an eternity till the stars burned out.
And within the emptiness she swam, herself full of stars, of souls, of life.
till she found her father.
Her half, her piece, her creator.
Discord extended his claw as he had a forever ago.
And she took it as she once had.
and they became the light at the start of everything.
and humanity was reborn once more.
.
.
.
all of you
thank you so much
this community in which i had the privilege of growing up in
this community which shaped me as a person for the better
this community which has and forever will be the best i have ever been apart of
thank you
from the bottom of my heart thank you
to my little pony gen 4
to bronies
to all of you who've read this or anything i've ever written
