Nameless Man in a Nameless Gorge

[Blondie]

Within the swirling tides of a freak sandstorm rides a solitary figure. The hooves of their steed produce a soft crunch against the sand below in a melancholic trot. All view of the outside world is completely blocked off, and so the unknown rider keeps moving forward, blindly, unable to even see the ground their steed is stepping on. And though the beast huffs in disapproval from time to time, their master remains in a stiff posture, bracing against the gusts and the showers of particles like an un-erodible cliff.

Minutes of this pass before the world reveals itself to them. Rays of blinding white shoot through the sandy veil as it collapses bit-by-bit in front of them, and they tilt the wide brim of their hat over their eyes, simultaneously tugging their steed into a stop with a gentle “Woah.” Soon the dust falls away, leaving the rider’s view as nothing but a harsh red landscape shimmering for miles all around; horizons shooting and twisting up into massive, impossible, sharply carved formations curving in on themselves; and above, a sky of a frustratingly sheer blue--not even a single wisp of cloud--no promise of rain in sight--and radiating from its center that white light that seems to spill from a crack leading to the very heavens.

The light reveals our sand-covered subject: a Caucasian man clothed in a whole spectrum of browns, most notably the beat-up pecan cowboy hat, the espresso poncho decorated with symbols of rectangular white lines, and the dull beaver-colored handkerchief pulled up to his nose. His face has been tanned into a crisp orange. Lifting up his brim, he squints out into the landscape, and with a gloved hand he pulls down his handkerchief, revealing the brown scruff across his face. The handsomeness of a man in his prime is apparent in his features--despite the usual grime of a well-traveled man--and yet a few deeper lines across his brow and on either end of his frown go against this ostensible youth.

His head snaps from here to there, and then he spins his horse around, scanning the entire horizon. This brings him no satisfaction, and he continues to look around for some time, until at last his shoulders sag and his arms fall into his lap. His expression is unchanged, except for a gleam of bewilderment in his eye. After a moment, he fishes through a small satchel on his belt, producing a cigar from it. He chews it like a steak as he then produces a matchbook, and striking a light off his rough jeans, he lights the roll of poison and thoughtfully puffs away at it.

Several more moments are spent idly, until a decision is made. Leaving the glowing cigar in his mouth, he takes hold of the reins and moves on in uncertainty, directly ahead, towards a path cleaved straight through a miles-spanning wall of stone.

 

[Blondie]

Through the jagged valley with imposing cliffs on either end whispers a sneaking breeze; an ambience of uncertainty in this unnamed passage of orange and red. The stranger guides his horse with care up a modestly wide side path, which has already risen far above the ground, yet still isn’t close to the top of this formation that is pulling him into its gullet. He keeps his scrunched gaze forward. Instead of downwards, into the points of the many tumbled boulders blanketing the ground far below. It is an unsteady, deteriorating canyon that this man has found himself in; with clouds of orange and red dust sailing past on that subtle wind; and a soft path that crumbles underfoot. Yet the path is well tread. He and his steed move with an unsung confidence.

Deeper and deeper they travel without missing a beat, the wide entrance to this path long lost in its sharp twists and turns. The trail eventually levels out, far up the height of the cliffs yet nowhere near their upper edges. Even later, the man finds the trail widened by a significant degree, enough to fit a wagon comfortably. Definitely enough for his horse to trot down its middle comfortably. The ground has hardened into clumps of thick rock, the sandier trails snaking their way through and all around their ranks. Numerous pebbles, pieces of angular rocks, and even a few tall pieces of wickedly shattered boulder are scattered all throughout this trail, their dusty monarch orange hues a match for the cliff face looming over them. It’s as if the solid earth itself made way for future travelers in a catastrophic display, and the stranger came just in time to wander through the rubble of its aftermath.

Whether this was all created in five thousand years or five thousand seconds, all is quiet now. Until the wall ahead bursts into dust.

In unison the horse rears back as the man further lifts it with a tug of the reins, and the man’s gruff shout of “Woah Benson!” melts into its whinnying cries. The shadow of a massive claw hidden in the orange cloud passes under Benson’s waving hooves, as the steed twists around and flies back in a gallop. Only for the ground ahead to erupt, a massive yellow stinger shooting straight at the pair. The man’s hand flies out, an iron in his grip. Bam! Bam! The appendage explodes in a blue goo, the tip obliterated, its trajectory pushed to the side. In the chaos of flying dust, the man sees before him a massive, yellow scorpion with a brown back; emerging from the soft ground, its mandibles chittering. And sat atop it in a saddle is a dark-robed man.

Benson twists himself around, avoiding a vengeful swipe from the furious arachnid, and instinctively flees only to see the other scorpion emerging from the dust. Its many legs stretch to either end of the path. There is a robed man on top too, spitting out a long wooden cylinder, whipping a small crossbow the stranger’s way. The stranger fires. The scorpion rider is thrown from his saddle, sliding down the scorpion’s back. The scorpion itself pauses, rearing both claws back as if daring him to approach.

“Bastard!” Comes a cry from above. The stranger looks up in mild surprise to see a third arachnid emerge from the top of the cliff face, looking down on him with its two beady eyes. The rider on top peers over, her own crossbow raised up.

The cracking of fragile stone then guides the stranger’s attention to a fourth scorpion, emerging from the edge of the lower cliff. Benson backs away with a frightened whinny into the higher cliff face as the monstrous bug’s claws and head levels with horse and master, the robed rider on top peering over with their own crossbow. Finding himself utterly surrounded on all ends, the stranger’s expression remains unchanged. His iron and the cliff-bound rider’s bolt turn toward each other.

“Halt!” comes a cry from the injured scorpion’s rider. All weapons pause, and everyone’s eyes turn to him. He is holding the scorpion’s tail close, inspecting the massive hole torn in it. His own crossbow is clear in view, still clipped to his belt. He turns to a large, dirt-speckled pack tied to the front of his saddle and starts digging through it.

In this moment of calm, the stranger gets a good look at everyone. Even discounting the extremely exotic steeds, they are unlike anyone he would have ever met on either end of his home. Their robes that cover them from head to toe are more like rags sown together, disparate in shades (some patches differing as far as displaying bright reds or flat cloud-grays), unevocative of culture. Much like the black and brown fingerless gloves they all wear. Unlike the boots, sharp-toed like his own, which have the symbol of a scorpion scratched into them. Here the stranger discovers that none of the riders have any kind of reins wrapped across their chitinous steeds. Just a double-handled bar shooting up from the forward tip of their saddle, simply for them to hold on to.

The cowboy takes this opportunity to address the strange folk. His voice is husky, and too steady for the situation. “Clearly you don’t approve of strangers on your land.”

He’s interrupted by a quiet scoff from the cliff-clinger. “‘Our land’?” The rider, only a kid, mocks.

The stranger glares at him for a moment, putting the baby-faced rider in his place.

“This is nobody’s land.” The rider of the injured scorpion says. The stranger turns to him, observing as he piles yards of linen against the scorpion’s missing stinger. He is bulkier than the others by a good amount, his massive shoulders and the tree-like arms sprouting from them threatening to burst from his billowing robes. His hood is left draped down his back, showing to all the sand-brown helmet covering his head, an opening for the mouth and two oval holes on either side revealing a dark olive complexion, dotted here and there with sun spots. Wrapping a few extra lengths to secure the makeshift bandage, he pats the scorpion on the head and gently says, “That should keep you going til we make it back to base.” His voice is smooth, indicative of power and thoughtfulness, and with a soft accent not quite in line with any we’d hear on Earth.

The rider looks up suddenly at the stranger, who does not even twitch. His gun is held at shoulder level, pointed up in the air, its next burning payload ready for any one of the three. The helmeted rider says, “You’ve greatly picked a place to wander, gracilipes. The crimson and rust of this land rejects the very notion of life, and desires only death. None of us could even think to claim ownership of any of its trails or formations.”

“So you’re bandits.” The stranger interjects.

“Hm, yes. I admit that describes us well. Yet I much prefer you call us predators, much like our dear madrurus.” He strokes the top of his steed’s head. “Because death is what we both survive on.” His voice has darkened.

The giant scorpions are based on the Giant Desert Hairy Scorpion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrurus_arizonensis

 

[Blondie]

The stranger states, “I suppose, then, that letting me walk away is too much to ask.”

The leader’s voice twists further “Absolutely, after you shot one of my men, and mutilated my beautiful girl with that…” he waves in the general direction of the stranger’s iron. “...that unnecessarily over-complex thing. It twists my stomach seeing something so far from nature bring the demise of two valued comrades. I have no more words to say to you.” He caps his controlled anger off with a declaration to his fellow bandits: “Stay back, I will kill him alone.” They all lower their crossbows one by one.

The leader’s hand twitches toward his own weapon of wood, but the stranger’s aura gives him pause. Cool and collected, combined with his barely changed posture--only stiffened by a slight degree--the cowboy holds the stillness of a rattlesnake. All is frozen as the leader considers his will, gritting his teeth in hatred of this man and frustration at himself. The gorge continues its eerie wind song.

The stranger speaks up. “You can still turn away. Find someone else to feed on. From me, you and your buddies are only going to get three rounds to divide among yourselves.” His revolver remains in the air, ready to snap out like the bullet waiting patiently behind the barrel.

The leader’s frustration melts away. He suppresses a chortle through his nose, his eyes finally taking in the entirety of the middle-aged, unarmored, too-confident man before him. “You can only see through the eye of that hunk of metal, can’t you?” His hand shoots to his crossbow. The stranger levels his revolver. The bolt whistles toward him. Bang! The bolt falls out of sight.

The man in black goes down, lying flat on his saddle. The stranger looks down. The bolt has pierced through his chest, on the right side. A wheeze comes as he crumples in pain. Blood spills from his mouth in an agonized hurl, and he slides off his horse, crashing into the orange dust. His pistol has fallen out of reach.

 

[Blondie]

The canyon fades quickly back into silence for one long instant. The remaining two bandits stay where they are, shocked, looking to and from both downed men, the stranger slowly writhing in a quiet agony while their leader remains still. “Vaalicus!” The young man cries out, and with a panicked tapping at his steed’s side, it begins to scuttle him towards his boss.

“Stop--I’m fine--” Vaalicus’s voice sharply calls out, as alive and fervent as before, punctuated with pained gasps. The young bandit’s steed stops on a dime. His fear is gone, but stone-faced duty masks over his relief. “Make sure the lipe isn’t going anywhere.”

The young bandit turns to the stranger, seeing now that he’s much more aware, pushed halfway off the ground, staring past him in a frowning shock. With hat discarded, gritted teeth painted in red, and blood running down his chin, he watches Vaalicus slowly pull himself back up. The boss’s hand clutches the center-left part of his chest, right over his heart, and yet his robes are free of blood.

The stranger’s lip curls. His eyes glance to his pistol, his hand already stretched out towards it. Then his eyes turn to the tip of a bolt pointed his way, the young man already quick to draw on him; and then he looks at the set of two open claws on either side of him, and at the other bandit above hanging on tight as her scorpion gradually scuttles sideways down towards them. Defeat registers in his eyes, and he lowers himself back to the ground.

In moments the other two arachnid riders amble up over him. Surrounding him. Vaalicus looks down on him, with hand still over where the bullet supposedly struck true. The shade of his helmet masks his expression, leaving the impression of a beetle with eyes and mouth swallowed in a blank void, and looming in on what will become its tiny snack. The female bandit, her voice harsh and confident with experience, says, “Vaal--?”

“I said I’m fine.” He interrupts with a gentle sternness. “His weapon just knocked the wind out of me.” He raises his hand crossbow, removing his hand from his robes to pull out a fresh bolt, nocking it with one swift downward movement and pointing it down at the stranger. “Gather his things.”

As the other two dismount and descend on the stranger and his horse, like two calculated ants, Vaalicus’s attention turns to the discarded firearm. Tapping the left side of his steed’s head and then pointing to the iron, its claw twists over, stiffly clamping over the weapon’s barrel and then bring it to its rider. It drops the pistol in his open palm, and he examines it, his expression masked in the shadow of his helmet.

“Heh.” His gaze turns back to the stranger. “It’s pathetic, the amount of work that went into this thing, just to fire a tiny hunk of metal.” He flings it into the cliff. “Meanwhile any fool with a few hours and the right materials can make this,” He gestures with his crossbow, “and they’d have a better chance of getting through my carapace.” With his free hand he tugs at a thick knot at his waist--simply opposite sides of his dark blue outermost layer twisted together--until it is undone, and he moves its left half aside.

Underneath is a hairy material much like his helmet. And right over the heart is a pinprick of copper pushed into the armor’s sand-brown surface. Vaalicus plucks out the crushed bullet, holding it between his index and thumb. In bemusement he says, “Copper ants have never been known to get through the skin of Ironclad Beetles.” He flicks the bullet down the pit as well.

“That ain’t the only ‘boom’ stick he’s got.” The young man says, phrasing ‘boom’ in a goofy baritone, as he pulls something off the saddle and presents it to everyone. Resting under both of his hands like a long fish is a gray rifle, impressive in the length of its barrel and stock. He looks it over. “Man, talk about overcompensating. Oooh, I bet it’ll make a nice mess of this guy’s face. It’d be fitting after what he did to Strii.” He lowers the barrel’s business end mere inches from the stranger’s face, who goes awfully still, glaring stone-eyed into its black eye. His gaze travel’s up to the bandit’s hands, which are both awkwardly gripped around the trigger area and having both indexes draped across the trigger, like how a baby thinks a revolver is wielded.

“Do not.” Vaalicus’s voice cuts in harshly. The young bandit lowers the rifle and looks at him in a questioning shock, but does not dare to speak back. Vaalicus continues, his voice dropping back down a notch, without an apology. “No Arthropoda shall have their fingers stained by gunpowder, under any circumstance. You don’t forget that. What’s more, I have a worse fate in mind for this gracilipes.” Vaalicus turns his gaze slowly back to his bleeding victim, malice bleeding from his helmet’s vast dark eyes. The young bandit almost remains still at full attention, only for a tap from his more experienced partner to remind him of his duties, and he chucks the rifle over the edge of the trail before kneeling down to dig through the stranger’s pockets.

As Valicus speaks, the helmet’s open mouth, ever cold in its unchanging expression, sits in stark contrast with the venom in his voice. A venom that can only be produced by righteous conviction, seeped in gallons of broiling anger. “Do you understand the fate you brought on my girl?” It takes a second for the stranger to realize that wasn’t a rhetorical question, but he remains silent despite his efforts to reply; his jaw flapping uselessly as every attempt to muster enough air for speech creates immense pain for him. Vaalicus shakes his fist and shouts, “Answer me!”

The stranger squeezes some words out, hacking up blood midway through. “She’ll --ack-- die from her injury.”

“Yes, but potentially not directly. Whether her injuries prove mortal or not, her fate is ultimately death. A scorpion cannot hunt without their stinger. They would be useless. My dear Lily, just like all the other crippled arachnids, will be cannibalized after a long, fifteen hour trek back home. Can you imagine how it must feel to know your remaining time is so limited, that there is so very little left for you to accomplish?”

The stranger says, “Well, it’s a fool’s errand to place blame on the man you attacked.”

Vaalicus does not miss a beat. “You are correct. But I told you, we are predators. This is how we survive. It was inevitable that we would hunt you down. It follows that it was inevitable that you would shoot my girl. Therefore, your punishment has always been inevitable. I will let you live. It will be a short, sad few hours for you; only a quarter of the time she has. You’d better start finding a comfortable spot. Because it’s the only joy you’ll have left.”

Soon the bandits are finished picking and choosing what to keep, things like the dollar bills and extra ammunition being tossed off the cliff with the others, the faded greens scattering in the wind. The modestly-sized bag of gold coins, eliciting a greedy chuckle from the two, is kept. The whole thing is capped off with the experienced bandit taking firm hold of the bolt in the stranger’s chest and yanking it out of him. A horrified gasp turns to groans of agony, as he places a hand over the wound and squirms uselessly in the dust.

The bandits go on, unbothered by the sounds of suffering. The woman scoops up the stranger’s hat and replaces her head scarf with it. “How do I look?” She asks her young partner.

After a pause, he says, “Cute.”

She laughs, then jokingly slaps him across the face, himself flinching in an exaggerated manner. “Remember your place lil skitter.” The bandit says in bemusement, before leaping onto Benson. The horse is timid, and is quick to obey the pull of a new rider on his reins.

Next thing the stranger knows, the whole group gallops and skitters off down the way he was headed, the riderless scorpions following without a command. Turning himself around on the trail, he presses his hand into it and lifts himself up, watching them leave. He reaches out, his arm shaking, as if to crawl forward. But his chest slams into the dust, and he grunts in pain, before slowly curling up. There must be no doubt in his mind that he is going to die. But he remains wordless, and all that shows through his stony veneer is pain.

Vaalicus is named after the Parabuthus transvaalicus, aka the Giant Deathstalker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabuthus_transvaalicus.

Strii is named after Paruroctonus silvestrii, aka the California Common Scorpion. No wikipedia article this time because he’s a bit too dead for what he’s named after to be important

 

[Blondie]

It is difficult to say what, if anything, goes through the stranger’s mind as he lays crumpled where he fell. In several hours, he has not moved a single inch. The gorge nor the sun does not care. The sky only brightens into an incomprehensible gold as the sun moves in its normal path directly over the canyon, which greedily captures and absorbs every ray, its surfaces transforming into a white lightly stained in crimson, until the air shimmers with heat. The stranger is very slow to nudge his blood-soaked poncho over his face to prevent it from burning off. His expression is one of an uncomfortable sleep.

Under the oven-like conditions of his shelter, after an unknown period of time, he begins to hear a squishy shuffling noise--like paper crumpling in mud--approaching closer and closer. He does not react. Soon whatever is making that noise stops beside him, and from it a pair of boots drop to the ground. His cover is lifted, and he cringes in the sudden shock of a blinding desert. All that he can see looming over him is a black silhouette. “Thank goodness, I got to you just in time.” A soft, effeminate voice says to him.

The mysterious samaritan works quickly, removing the stranger’s poncho and shirts in order to dress the wound, smearing the inside of the linen with a strange sticky substance before applying it. They then, very carefully and yet struggling so hard their legs quiver, manage to drape the stranger over their steed. His wounded chest unfortunately has to lay down on the creature’s back first, and then get pushed across its smooth surface with only his poncho as cushioning, waking the stranger back up with an agonized groan followed by hacking up some more blood. “Oof, sorry sir.” The benefactor apologizes before draping a spare robe over him.

As the stranger wordlessly recovers from the sharp spike in pain, he notices the stick leg below him, its sheer black a sharp contrast to the bright sandy ground. He manages to twist his neck upwards for just a moment, looking across the steed’s length. It’s a black beetle as long as a horse, and about half as tall as one. He sees the silhouetted person leaping onto a saddle on its back, the same kind of saddle as the scorpion riders with a double-handled bar taking the place of any sort of reins. Then the stranger’s strength runs out, and his head dangles back to the dusty floor.

The beetle scuttles with its squishy sound without a verbal command, and the stranger is left with only the occasional hurried word of encouragement and the blur of a dull glow below him. His hands dangle in the air, pale and cold. Despite the excitement in comparison to the silence of his 0-inch grave, it is only now that the stranger’s eyelids grow heavy, and the glowing white of the canyon darkens.

For a brief moment, light seeps back into his eyes as he feels the benefactor’s hand shake his shoulder. “Hey, hey, don’t go out on me. Uuuuh, right, introductions. That’ll keep you awake. The bandits call me Pillio, because I complained about them a lot, but I prefer going by Pokey. What’s your name?”

The stranger mumbles out something. Doubtless not even he knows what he just said.

“...Mamba? Wow, what did you do to earn such a cool name?”

The stranger does not respond. His eyes finally relax, and he is left in temporary darkness.

The beetle that the mysterious benefactor rides is based on Eleodes, or desert stink beetles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleodes

 

[Blondie]

The average-sized man known as Pokey; with green scarf protecting his youthful dark olive face from the flying dust; black head wrap shielding his cranium from the blinding sun; and his thick dark robes billowing in the wind like a cape; rides his dark beetle with haste through the crevice, and out into a vast land of spires and blocky outcroppings. There is no time for rest, with meals (consisting of chunks of stale bread, made soggy with water to make them easier to chew) being eaten on the move, Pokey reaching down to place his steed’s share of the food in its waiting jaws. He knows this is stupid, both pushing his steed so relentlessly and going against Vaalicus.

But to him, it would be even stupider to let a fellow being die. So he rides on, the heat and the exhaustion in his back paling in comparison to the pain he feels for the dying man behind him. Having been unresponsive for far too long, Pokey has resorted to taking hold of the man’s wrist in order to constantly check his pulse, and this he does for hours on end. Through the bucking of his saddle as the steed climbs up and down the unfamiliar terrain, through the choking heat and the dust storms that ride on it, through the blast of the sun’s rays as it gradually angles itself down to face the three head-on in the many hours that pass. Until the day finally loses its splendor, the blue fading to black as an orange glow fires up across the western horizon, as the beetle crawls up the large rubble of a collapsed section of mesa, into a tiny ravine that contains a humble cabin at the very end: the homestead of Pokey’s Grandpa. The only one who can help this poor stranger, along with the many others like him.

Inside, in a tiny sitting room at the end of a dark hall, dimly lit by candle light and packed with a work desk and a bookcase filled with various medicines, Pokey’s Grandpa sits in a peaceful solitude on his rocking chair. He is a short, shriveled man, dressed in a loose cotton short-sleeve tinged with reddish-orange, along with a worn pair of grayish-brown suspenders. His short flatly-combed hair has remained fully on top of his head after all these years, but it is suffused with gray strands. Despite the land he’s in, in this moment he is truly relaxed.

He rocks slowly in his chair, his scrunched eyes on an old, small book held tight in his gnarled hands. Its cover has worn away, and the small smooth handwriting within its pages is in a language and a script that nobody knows besides him. His focus on the pages is waning, however, along with his wakefulness. Rocking himself to sleep, his book slowly finds itself in his lap, as his head starts to nod.

The slam of the front door and his grandson’s cry of, “Pops I got another one!” shoots him to his feet, immediately awake, and not at all surprised.

“Din-demmit,” he complains to himself in a muttering, rough accent with a fluid interpretation of pronunciation, “et’s elweys when I’m snoozen you cem vesit, elweys wit a wounded berd.” Yet he jumps into the situation with a surprising burst of speed, wordlessly helping lift the stranger and carry him into Pokey’s former bedroom. Once the stranger is laid down, the Grandpa asks, “Whet’s theh wound?”

Out of breath, Pokey states, “It’s a bolt, I think… looks like it pierced a lung…”

“Wes et dem Erthrepedes?” He asks as he places an ear against the man’s shallow-breathing chest.

“Yes.”

“That’s the seven n tenth one. Ye’ll get us both keeled Pokes.” The Grandpa says with a matter-of-fact tone, not seeming to care about that dreadful potential future, as he begins pulling medical supplies from a nearby drawer with machine-like efficiency.

“You know I can’t just leave victims of those bastards to die.”

“En thet’s why I’m proud ef you,” responds the Grandpa, “now whet eh ye doin? Put sem demn gloves on.”

 

[Blondie]

It was a quick surgery, despite the complicated steps, including piercing the stranger’s other lung to ‘belence pressure en both ef them’--an immensely shocking procedure for Pokey despite his undying trust in his Gramps. But it was all done in record time, and now Pokey is sitting in a rickety chair out in the hall, tense and raring to go, but panting and wavering with exhaustion. He’s long discarded his head protection and his upper robes, showing his short black hair chaotically sticking out in every direction, along with a thin longsleeve and long pants that he wishes would hide his feminine figure better. His Grandpa steps out the door, wiping his hands with a wet rag, having just finished applying the sticky Mlerm paste and bandages over the stranger’s tightly sown wounds. “How leng heve you been ewey?”

“Too long. All day.” Pokey breathes out.

“Pokes! Ye bette get beck now befere they get eny mer sespicious!”

“I know! I know… but I’ve been riding for half a day straight…” he gives in to the aching agonies in his back and sinks into the chair, his muscles relaxing. “...I don’t know if me or Ellie can make it back…” His beetle, indeed named Ellie, has this entire time been standing still as a stone in the exact spot where Pokey dismounted it. Such is the way that many bugs rest.

The Grandpa sighs with uncertainty. Suddenly a moaning and the shuffling of sheets comes from the bedroom. “He’s alredy ewake?!” He quietly exclaims as he runs into the room. After a moment, Pokey finds himself pushing up against the arm of the chair, fighting through riders’ pains and supporting himself on the walls and furniture in order to follow after his Pa.


He sees his Grandpa holding down the bleary-eyed stranger, saying, “Celm down sennie! Ye tek a pretty bad enjury there, ye’ll live but--” Suddenly he feels the stranger pull down on his collar with surprising strength, meeting them eye-to-eye. In this instant, the Grandpa gets a harrowing look into the gleaming green eyes of a killer. Likewise, the stranger gets a good look at the softness of the old man’s eyes, which shine through his hard features, revealing a kindness that neutralizes the sinister effect that the blood-red of his irises would have had on his expression otherwise. The instant passes, and the stranger lets go without an apology, sinking back into his bed as well.

The Grandpa pulls himself back up, dusting his shirt as he relaxes his shoulders and goes, “Phew!” He looks at Pokey, seeing the fearful surprise already fading from his face. “Et’s ell good, our friend was jes shocked, thet’s ell.” He says, before looking back at the stranger. “Jes set beck and relax, we’ll tek cere of ye til ye heal. Well, I’ll tek cere of ye most ef the time, cause this one’s always eway.” He points at Pokey. “Oh right, intredections. I’m Felix, and thes here is my grand--”

He suddenly pauses while in mid-gesture toward Pokey, looking over at him. He quickly notices that Pokey has wrapped a robe around himself like a shawl, despite his tired condition, clearly hiding a couple of his more feminine characteristics. One of his slender hands is hidden in his pocket as well, the other preoccupied with pressing against the wall. Pokey mouths, ‘son’.

Felix quickly looks back at the stranger, and as if there was no pause at all he continues, “--my grandson Pokey. He’s theh one who saved ye. So whet’s ye neme?”

“Ehhhhh…” Clearly not understanding the old man’s speaking style, which is not helped by all the pain and exhaustion and dehydration he must be feeling, the stranger just keeps up that tone for several seconds.

“He told me his name was Mamba.” Pokey says, now hobbling forward, pulling a nearby water can from a shelf.

“...sure.” The stranger responds, quickly accepting the name Mamba, as Pokey sets the can on the nightstand and pulls a ladle from it.

“Try not to drink it too fast.” Pokey says as, with a shaking grip, he delivers a scoopful of water to Mamba’s mouth. He takes an appreciative gulp of it, but some of it runs down his face and drips onto the bedsheets.

“I’ll take care of thet, go tek a rest.” Felix says.

Some time later, once Mamba’s needs are met, Felix steps out of the room once more and observes Pokey laying back in the chair. His features are softened by exhaustion and twisted in agony, and he looks about ready to fall into an uncomfortable sleep. Felix does a deep old man sigh. “Poor, poor Pokes. Ye were right, ye shouldn’t try te go beck until termorrow.”

“But they’ll definitely know something is up then. If I get back tonight, at least then I can say I just got caught up with lizard hunting.”

A candle lights up in the old fellow’s mind. “How bout ye jes tell em you got word yer old man was sick, end ye had to ceme spend the night? I’ll even write a letter fer ye.”

Pokey smiles. “Hopefully that works. If nobody’s been paying attention to--”

“Shhh,” Felix kneels down and places a hand on his grandson’s shoulder. “den’t werry about et. Save yer energy for temarrow. Now I’d offer te set up a hemmock fer ye, but I thenk I already know the response to thet.”

Pokey’s smile widens as his eyes begin to shut. “No thanks.”

Felix stands up quickly. “Ef course, ye young lads and lasses are ell the same, never appreciating yer old folks’ pampering. Ye’ll regret et in twenty years when ye get a bad back. Well, I’ll just say gednight then.”

He begins to stomp off, as Pokey, laughing on the inside, says, “Goodnight pa.”

Midway to the stairs, Felix stops. He then walks more softly back to Pokey, who is already sunken all the way in the chair, and in a whisper he says, “By the way, sorry for nearly revealing your secret to that guy.”

Pokey’s smile, though little more than a smirk by this point, finally drops into a frown. He wishes that his Grandpa didn’t bring it up again. But Pokey bears with it anyway, knowing he has good intentions. “It’s okay, I’m sure he doesn’t know.” Pokey responds in a drained voice. Reassured, Felix wishes his grandson goodnight again, and heads up the stairs to his bedroom, each creak of the steps slowly coming one after the other. Pokey fades off into dreams full of self-consciousness, and is fated to have at least three missing-clothing dreams by the time he wakes up.

 

[Blondie]

Mamba awakens to the sensation of heat and dust in his throat, along with pleasant steam rising through his nostril, and his unblurring vision is greeted by a humble breakfast tray laid out before him in the candle light. It consists of white rice raised halfway out of a medium-sized wooden bowl, a mysterious black square with a strange shiny texture sitting on top of an old handkerchief, and a glass jar filled with water.

“Morn’n felle.” Felix’s voice comes from right above Mamba; he had just set down the tray. “I’m gled to see you’ve got en appetite; that feed woke ye reght up.” He says with a grin.

“Thank you.” Mamba says in a weak husky voice before immediately digging into the rice, rinsing each spoonful with several gulps of water.

“Serry for not heving more fer ye. Rice and bug meat is all we got, end our family hesn’t hed the stuff te make sauce fer the rice in generations.”

The mention of ‘bug meat’ has no effect on Mamba’s voracious eating, aside from a long glance at the jerky thing on his tray. He soon puts the rice bowl down and picks up the slice of dried bug, analyzing it for a moment before casually chomping down on it. It snaps off in his mouth, and it crunches like a cracker against his teeth. Mamba’s ever-present frown is barely changed. Felix takes this opportunity to top off his water jar.

Another moment goes by with Mamba remaining focused on his food. Felix finds himself filling in the dead air, asking, “So whet brought a felle like yerself to thes dead part ef the world?”

Mamba pauses in his chewing. He takes a long draw of his water, seeming to purposefully stretch out the moment for several long seconds, until with a big gulp he gradually responds, “...I got lost, I suppose. Last I knew where I was, I was in the Chihuahuan Desert. What is this place?”

“Well, we heve no name fer this place. We’re jes’ in some ass-crack ef the world, a barely liveable pertion ef land near the south edge of this gedfersaken reck.”

“And what do you call this, ‘gedfersaken reck’?” Mamba imitates the old man’s pronunciation in complete earnestness.

Felix’s sunken sockets lift as his eyes bulge. “Ye really are a strenger. Thes es Mesa Roja, one ef the Worlds ef the Crossreds.”

Mamba just stares at him for a few seconds, not eating, and his eyelids slightly lowering in thought. “...And where is the Crossreds?”

Felix doesn’t even know how to express his further surprise. He can only repeat, “Ye reeeeally are a strenger.” He then begins a long spiel, speaking of planets and space travel and intersections between parallel worlds, every sentence obtuse even without his ancient accent. He’s so lost in his explanations that he fails to see the eyes on Mamba’s stone-cold face glazing over.

“Gramps, you better give him the short version.” Pokey suddenly says, having just stuck his head into the room, leaning against the doorframe with his elbow. His face is scribbled on with the story of a rough sleep.

“I am, Pokes, I am! I wes just getting to the Erbiters. G’mernin by the way.”

“He’s gonna be pronouncing their names incorrectly if I let you do the talking. Also g’morning.” Felix is taken aback, more by the realization that Pokey is right than for any sort of impropriety on his grandson’s part (though he wishes Pokey put it more politely). Pokey steps into the room with his toes dragging across the floor, before pulling up a chair and sitting down by Mamba’s bedside, who brings his full focus onto the young lad. Pokey says, “Alright, tell me what planet you came from.”

Mamba pauses, but his face doesn’t show why. “Earth.” He finally says.

“Okay, shit.” Pokey mumbles to himself, turning away so only his Grandpa can see the look of doom on his face. After a questioning look from Felix, wordlessly asking if he should take over, Pokey turns his face of concern back to Mamba, who shifts in his spot. Pokey says, “...so I don’t know how to put this. The Crossroads is a solar system consisting of several planets we call Worlds--including the one we’re on right now. But Earth is not one of those Worlds. Whatever brought you here has taken you a long way, and it cannot bring you back.”

“You’re fucking with me.” Mamba replies with a stern edge. “My horse’s shoes never left the ground.”

“I’ve heard thet before.” Felix comments.

Pokey explains, “All that is needed for you to end up here is if our Arbiter deems it as such. How it happens doesn’t matter, even if it only takes the blink of an eye.” The sincerity in his voice is impossible to ignore, and life is breathed back into Mamba’s dull eyes as they shine with understanding.

“...so why I can’t I go back?”

“It’s just not possible. There’s no better explanation for it; everyone who strays too far beyond the edge of the Crossroads is simply pulled back towards its center, no matter how fast their vessel is.” Mamba’s face stiffens greatly as he drops his utensil on the tray and puts his hand to his chin, hiding his mouth’s expression as his eyes look off nowhere in particular. Pokey lowers his head down, saying with a sad quietness, “I’m sorry.”

Soon, Mamba lowers his hand as his eyes focus back on Pokey. His expression has barely changed. “Why would an ‘Arbiter’ want me here?”

“We don’t know. It’s all part of a plan beyond our mortal understanding.”

“Sounds like a certain God we like to worship back home.” Mamba dryly says.

“That’s in essence what they are.” Pokey replies. “Gods.”

Mamba looks away for a moment. “Well, if they’re anything like my God, we don’t have to worry about them. What has my concern are the bandits that stuck an arrow in my chest. What do you know about them?”

Pokey pauses. In part because he’s almost awed by Mamba’s steadfast composure. It’s impossible to tell whether he’s completely nonchalant about the news, or has been hit so hard by what he’s learned that he cannot grasp it. But something else has a hold of his tongue. He doesn’t know how to tell Mamba that he’s a part of those bandits.

 

[Blondie]

The pause has gone on for too long; Mamba certainly knows something is up. Felix is watching Pokey expectantly, and almost turns to Mamba to speak for his grandson, only to turn back to him. The suspicion in Mamba’s eyes only continue to grow. Pokey finally says, “...I don’t know how to put this…”

“You’re involved with those bandits, aren’t you?” Mamba’s voice is anything but kind.

Pokey’s voice squeals in defensiveness. “I grow pot for them, that’s it. I haven’t so much as scratched another person for their sake, in fact I’ve risked myself so often, eavesdropping on their plans and tailing them for miles, in order to save many people that they’ve left to die. Those bandits are not people I want to be associated with.”

“So why associate with them?” Mamba’s tone veers closer to neutral, but Pokey interprets it as accusatory and his face grows hot.

“It’s the best deal me and my Gramps were able to get out in this dusthole. Killing others is the only way to survive here, so the fact that we at least don’t have to get our hands dirty makes us lucky. But by Din, that alone makes me sick to my stomach.” Pokey cringes and turns away, his fist clenched, feeling tears coming and refusing to let them out.

“I assume leaving to a better land isn’t an option?” Mamba asks.

Felix chimes in. “Cerrect. Though north ye’ll find vegetation and preper cevilizetion, the folk ef thes region would jest chase us out. We are Wastesettlers ye see; the culmenation ef generations pushed out ef the habetable lands, some fer good reasons. Those bendits who attecked ye, the Erthepedes--”

“It’s Arthropodas.” Pokey corrects him. If only he knew that Mamba already learned the pronunciation.

“Thet’s whet I said.” Felix replies. Pokey relents with a shrug and a roll of the eyes as his Grandpa continues, “Those guys ere our kin, eleng with ell who barely cling te these parched lands, most even werse than the Erthepedes.”

Pokey adds, “So as you can imagine, the Northern Ones will just lump us in with our monstrous cousins.”

Mamba, as he goes for his glass, says while keeping his eyes on the rippling surface of his drink, “So I should just trust you to be one of the good Wastesettlers.” He takes a long draw from it as if he were puffing on a cigar. Neither Pokey nor Felix know how to respond to that. He lowers the drink, and licks the moisture off his lips, the light in his eyes unchanged. But there is something different in his tone as he looks up at Pokey and says, “I suppose you did save my life. But can I be certain that it’s not so you could expect something from me?”

Felix says, “Now listen here senny, Pokey has seved plenty ef folk before ye, and--”

“Gramps, Gramps, it’s alright.” Pokey gently interrupts, gesturing softly toward his Pa with an open palm. “All we’ve got for him is our word, and the word of two strangers is barely any good around here.” He looks toward Mamba with a certain sort of kind intensity. “But I can assure you, you will find that we will keep to our word like a tumbleweed keeps to the wind. We--”

“Mainly me.” Felix interrupts.

Pokey keeps his stride. “--he will help you recover, and all we expect in return is a kind attitude and nothing else. We are no Arthropodas. My parents, and my Grampa’s parents, and their parents and so on up the family tree, they survived in these cruel lands with a code of honor. As bent as it is right now, we refuse to be the ones to break it.”

To the two’s relief, Mamba reveals the subtlest of smirks, and nods his head respectfully. “No need to say more. I think I can rest easy under your roof.”

Unfortunately the moment passes too soon, as Pokey remembers the time. “Well I should get going now.” He says with a groan as he achingly pushes himself back to his feet. “Thank you for understanding Mamba.”

“But I still have questions about those scorpion bandits.” Mamba says.

As he goes toward the door, adjusting his boots along the way, Pokey says, “I wish I could answer them, but I bet they’re getting more suspicious by the minute. Grampa knows plenty about them.” Halfway out the door, he briefly turns his head to say, “I love you Gramps, see you soon!” And then he’s out of the room. In moments he’s out the front door, hauling a white bag of feed and a too-small disk-shaped canteen onto Ellie, who had not moved from its spot by the door. As he swings himself on top of it, his heart flutters with the knowledge that he’s done the right thing, as his stomach fills with dread. Not just for his inevitable confrontation with his bandit ‘friends’. Whatever Mamba wants to know about the Arthropodas, it can’t be for a good reason.

Back inside, Felix looks off sadly out the open door. “Alas, how lettle I get te see her--him.” His face, quickly turning red, whips back to Mamba, desperately searching for a questioning look or vibe where neither exist, the mistake having only produced the briefest of eyebrow raises from the stranger. Felix quickly changes the subject, “So whet de ye wanna know about the Erthepedes?”

“Do you know where their base is?”

“Now why de ye wanna know thet?”

“They took my horse Benson from me. I’m getting him back before they feed him to their scorpions.”