Across the Sands

"First, with me. Eventually, on your own."

Determination was etched in her face. It was declared in the squaring of her jaw, the lift of her chin and something deep in her eyes. There was no telling how long she would be with him before her path departed from his. If she said yes to Owen now, things were gong to alter again. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, she just did. They had started a certain path, Owen and she, and now it was about to curve. It all hinged on her decision. Part of her mind could perceive the work ahead. Hard. Grueling. Blood. Sweat. Pain.

The lines of her face softened again. She thought of her father and how he would tell her to follow her heart, wherever it led her and to whom. That softness remained in her eyes as she looked at Owen. Not many moments ago she was sure he was destined to her lover, for a night, for a day or for however long he chose to stay and now, she wasn’t so sure. Teacher. He wasn’t going to be easy on her, just because she was a woman. God, she wanted to walk to him, kneel down in front of him and tell him to kiss her. She wanted to know before she decided. She wanted to know how he tasted. She wanted to know.....

“I’ll go change.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

Regret filled her eyes as she turned on her heel and moved into her room. Opening the closet door, she rummaged around for a pack she had. Pack light, he had said. She did so. She brushed and plaited her hair before she added the brush to her pack. They were going to travel to Dodge City on an errand he had. Based on that notion, she didn’t waste time getting undressed. She took out clean clothes, the same type as she had worn yesterday. It was habit. Even if she was traveling with someone, she wasn’t going to flaunt she was female. No good could come of that.

Owen remembered the day he had declared his intentions. It was, even for a nine year old boy, a daunting task. A child carries with himself the countless dreams and aspirations of an undaunted spirit. They spin like threads within his mind, weaving into the thick tapestry of the imagination and finding root there. In her eyes he saw an echo of himself. Regrets. Small fears. The consequences of change striking the heart with such a potent chord that the world once familiar could reforge itself as foreign in the unyielding march of time.

It would be harder for her.

When he, when the rest had gone, they had gone as children. The course of a Champion's training was consuming. Owen had suffered many times from the intensity. He had faltered. It had been the guidance and belief of his father that had carried him. A man whose hands had not been destined for the blade embraced his son's desire to change the family stars. It was that bond, and indeed his childish naivety, that spared him the worst trials of training.

She had shown him, pointedly, the hurt that lingered in the momentary softness of her eyes. A fierce beauty, vulnerable, naked under the stretch of his masculine stare in such a way that all at once his compassion lifted itself and made itself known. Yes, it would be harder on her. He was surrounded by the entrenched roots of memory. The home, modest perhaps, carried with it the well-lived-in warmth of affection. It felt like a family's place. Safe. Apart from the world outside.

Owen readied himself for travel in silence. His sword, the rifle, and his small pack slung into place along his back where they belonged. Once more, lifting his mask into place until it pressurized around his rugged features, he was the faceless haunt to which so many knew him as. It was a comforting change from the intimate confines of their meeting. It allowed him to step back for just a moment and ensure that he was ready for her to join him. For her to be his responsibility. His ward.

"I'll be outside." He said then to the doorway where she'd vanished. The bedroom beyond still called to him. Visions of her body tangled, bent supple under his strong hands, as potent as they were abruptly distant. "Take your time and say your goodbyes. I will wait."

And he left her there for the desert morning, sun still low in the Eastern sky and already the air was hot and dry. The door closed in his wake; it shut on the past. It occurred to him that he would always regret not having her here. He had never been so sure of anything.

Jess heard him but didn’t reply. She heard the front door close. On a second thought, she took the short sword from the closet as well as the tomahawk. Both had been sharpened with a whetstone, spending many hours to give both the sharpest edge she could. She had been thankful that her father had taught her how to use one. She put both in the pack. Snatching it up off her bed, she gave the bedroom one last look, unsure she'd see this room ever again. Jess cast a regretful look at the quilt she had made herself when she had taught herself how to make them. Light he had said.

Stepping into the kitchen, the pack went on the table as she picked up the material she always wore on her head and over her face. Her hair had been put into a ponytail and then braided, making it easier to conceal in the wrap. Once again, the only thing to be seen were her eyes. Striding over to the refrigerator, she drew down her pistol, putting the clip back in before concealing it at her back. The quiver went over a shoulder. Snagging the bow from the wall, she restrung it. It, too, went over a shoulder.

“Let’s go, Dog.”

Pack in hand, she opened the front door. The wolf came to her side and stood quietly. One last look was cast around the place she had called home. Eyes, filled with emotion, moved slowly around the room. Memories came flooding back like a kaleidoscope and her will almost deserted her right there and then. A slender hand griped the door tightly, a physical manifestation of her emotions.

Jess stepped out into morning, Dog at her side, pulling the door closed and locked behind her. Maybe she was being fanciful, but for just a moment before she stepped out, she thought she felt her father’s lips on her forehead.

They did not share words for some time.

The Big-I stretched on straight from here to Dodge City, filthy and broken like everything else in the New World. It was a remnant of a time when cars had zipped families of four up and down from the big city to their rural homes. Men made long commutes in to work. Women took day trips for shopping. These were memories of a life he had never known as more than stories. Cars, rusted and scorched, lay strewn haphazardly beside this particular stretch. They were ghostly sentinels of the past. Eerie, long-neglected headstones for the dead.

The Great Neon Signs of the Casinos along Dodge City's strip towered over the rest of the mostly flattened city. They served as beacons to the lost and the weary. At night, lit up and set amidst the heavy ebony sky, they were a radiant vision of hope across an otherwise desolate land. From here it was more difficult to make out the boundaries of the slums. Battered, tin structures full of desperate men and women. Most were addicts. Some were simply lost.

She'd find him entirely content in the silence. Unobtrusive. His eyes, when they strayed to her, strayed to hold her own and did not relinquish them right away. Owen had never been timid. He had only been patient.

THey were roughly a mile out when he paused. His eyes cut a sharp appraisal of her form, took stock of the non-existent curves. The words that left him sudden as he pulled from within his pack a pair of reflective lensed aviators.

"Your eyes might give you away." The compliment was briskly made. A simple observation. "They are very feminine."

They didn’t talk. That had been fine with her. The silence between them wasn’t uncomfortable. Dog trotted along side of her though he darted off now and again to investigate something. He never let her out of his sight however.

Jess had never been to Dodge City before. When there was need, her father had always gone. He had always left her at home with the wolf. She had asked him to take her along, but he always refused. Dodge City, he said, was no place for a girl like her. After a time that girl became a young woman. Terrible things happened to pretty girls like her in Dodge City, he said. After her father died, she never felt the need to go. Perhaps it had been out of respect for her father’s wishes. Perhaps it had been because she always managed to get what she needed from the traveling merchants or by scavenging.

Owen’s eyes found hers often and she couldn’t find it in herself to look away. She was reminded, each and every time, that he wanted her as a man wanted a woman.

She had sex only with one boy before she came topside. They had been in love or so she thought. It had lasted until a couple of months later when she caught him fucking some pretty little thing. She had been devastated. She had turned on her heel and walked away with the boy’s voice in her ears trying to explain. She didn’t want to hear it. She was done.

Owen, wasn’t a boy. Nothing about him resembled a boy. Her eyes were appreciative. Even encased behind those red lenses he had a pull on her senses. At some point he stopped, took out a pair of reflective aviators from his pack.

"Your eyes might give you away. They are very feminine.”

Simply spoken. A compliment as well, she supposed or maybe just an observation on his part. She took the glasses from him, gently tugging the material away from her eyes before she slipped them on and readjusted the material until it was snug again. She glanced at him. Now, he couldn’t read her eyes. That should have been a good thing.

Like grave robbers in a cemetery, scavengers appeared amidst the ruined outskirts of Dodge City. When the war had come to this place it had come suddenly, without warning, in a flicker of fire and a rising mushroom of smoke and cinder. In an instant over 30,000 people and their homes were wiped from the world. Owen lead them on, ignoring the dirty faces staring at them. Battered hands, wrapped in rags in most cases, picked through pummeled concrete and the husks of what had once been the suburban outskirts of the city. A few homes were standing, their siding stripped in places and bent and hanging in others. Fences lay twisted and ruined like skeletons. Mailboxes were askew, bent here or there or entirely missing.

The nightmarish landscape continued for miles and much of these the pair walked in silence, edgy, not only by necessity but by the presence of one another. This was unfamiliar ground. Only Dog, long-bodied and sleek, seemed to have any real cadence to his stride. The animal never strayed far. It flitted back and forth from her side, stretching out to gain a twenty yard lead before working its way back to her once more. Scouting, maybe, it was hard for Owen to tell. He had never owned a dog and the behavior was unfamiliar.

Looming ahead, at the foot of the Strip and its mockery of progress, lay the dangerous grounds of the Dodge City Slums. Separated from the ruined outskirts by a makeshift wall of stacked cars and sheet metal, it could be entered through gates on each side of the city. The point of these gates had been lost throughout the years and they were unattended and swung open. A few hawkers, selling rat-meat and dirty water, lined the corridor leading inward. Usually forward, they left the pair be, unnerved by his presence and the crimson glow of his eyes.

Drunks and addicts were everywhere. Hope had long fled, abandoned this place, as though overwhelmed by the abject poverty and utter filth that had overwhelmed the populace. Most had debts they would never pay. Some, simply, had given up. The New World had no charity. The New World did not lift up those that could not lift themselves.

Still, he cut them onward. A few men lingered on the corner of a street before a ruined building, roofless and with large sections of its stone wall caved in. The paint of the Old World was gone, scorched off by the cleansing fires that had filled the sky. Most structures here were roofless, windowless, blackened husks. A few had been salvaged enough to be used as brothels, flop-houses, and the occasional pawn and trade. Gangs were everywhere, small bands of desperate hopped up punks wielding makeshift knives and shivs. They had rat-like, angry faces. Hate-filled eyes.

But they did not approach the pair.

His mask was a ticket here, one earned through hardships and trials. Some did not believe he was a man. The mask had become who he was here and that was for the best. Fear, he'd found, kept curious eyes and ears away. It kept people dumb and complacent. It made this manageable.

They walked through block after block of slums before they turned the corner of a rubble-flanked street. No buildings had been spared here. They were crushed, ten-foot high piles of cracked and broken concrete. The steel that had once filled the walls was long gone, spirited away by salvagers.

Owen spoke aside to her. The words flat and blunt as the gates of the Strip loomed. "I'm going to tell you to wait outside for me once we get to the Casino." He said, "Do not argue with me."

More gates lead inwards to the Strip, massive iron-barred gates layered with huge sections of salvaged steel. A smaller done lay beside them and was open, a tempting portal, save for the three dozen men armed with automatic weapons that looked over it. A tower had been constructed with two riflemen inside and a spotlight. Barbwire kept the gate's front contained and orderly. One gambler after another passed through the door inside.

Most showed small medallions. A token of passage.

At the gate a large man stopped them. He had a large machinegun across his waist, strapped around his back, with belts of ammunition wrapped around it like a crude, brutal blanket.

"Warden," He said. Unsmiling. Unpleasant. "They are expecting you."

The man's name was Caleb and he was a giant of a man, over six and a half-feet tall and nearly two-hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle. He wore a black t-shirt and green and brown-flecked camouflage pants with heavy boots. The machinegun was joined by a large, wicked hunting knife at his hip. He spoke in a rough, graveled base.

"Who is the boy?" He asked, jerking his chin roughly to Jessica.

"With me."

"What's your name?" Caleb asked Jessica, gruff and unpleassant.

"Can't speak. Raiders carved out his tongue." The lie came quickly, but not too quickly, and he was content with it.

Caleb nodded, without sympathy, and wagged the machinegun towards the door that lead beyond.

"You know the way." He said.

Owen knew the way, and nodded, before beginning to cut his way towards it and through. The other side was a different world entire. Men and women, most drunk, wandering between the large, lit casinos and brothels that lined the Strip. Armed men patrolled near each, belonging to the gangs that ruled here. There may have been a couple thousand people, all spending cigarettes for thrills. All protected.

He was a blade cutting through the crowd. Focused. On his way to the massive Casino still a block away.

She studied their surroundings and more than once, she wondered what had happened to wrought a disaster of such magnitude that it had literally wiped out the towns and cities. What had gone on in the world before she was born? Had it truly been as some in the Vaults proclaimed? That mankind had brought this upon himself? Arrogance, stubbornness, narrow-mindedness, had been a few of the reasons she had heard as the elders sat around in the underground world under dim lighting, talking. What had been so damn important that mankind all but obliterated their own kind and for what? Had it truly been so easily done as she had been led to believe? Could one button pushed truly wipe out buildings and life, in what? Mere seconds? Why would mankind even create the ability to do such a thing?

Her eyes moved slowly, from side to side as she studied the destruction around her. She studied the human beings who had survived as they scavenged through and over the rubble like rats, searching for anything of value, either for personal use or to sell. She noted the shredded dress of a woman as she fought with a child over something apparently of value. Jess was of the mind to stop and break up the fight when the child gave a sudden jerk and took off with the prize, the woman’s cursing ringing above the low hum of murmuring, lost voices she heard.

Safe behind the reflective aviators, she felt detached from the mass of survivors scurrying around to gather as much as they could find before they were chased off by bullies seeking to protect what they considered their turf. And yet, she hadn’t been any better than they were. She, too, had weaseled her way through rubble gathering things that had or could have value. Behind those glasses her eyes were filled with pity of circumstance. She had been lucky. She had had a father to look after her and to teach her until she was grown. None of these people had been so lucky.

As they drew closer to the city, she saw the tall concrete buildings, once, more than likely, beautiful buildings teeming with people. Now, they were visible reminders of man’s need to destroy. Torn concrete with bent steel ribs poking through. The streets were lined with derelicts and addicts. Diseased, dregs of remnant souls. Dotted in the streets were hollow husks of vehicles. Some of them sporting melted metal folded back on itself as if blown upon by a giant bellows.

She looked down at Dog and snapped her fingers. The wolf looked up at her. She quickly signed with her hands. Dog, from that second forward, stayed glued to her side. She had lost count of how many corners they had turned or streets they had walked down. She didn’t dare speak for fear someone might overhear and know she was a female.

"I'm going to tell you to wait outside for me once we get to the Casino." He said, "Do not argue with me."

She glanced his way, giving him a short curt nod of acknowledgement. They approached another set of gates, but these were different. What lie beyond these gates smelt of danger. Deadly danger. She could feel the tension layering between her shoulder blades. They were stopped by a hulking tower of flesh packing a machine gun and bands of ammunition.

"Warden," He said. Unsmiling. Unpleasant. "They are expecting you."

Warden? Who was the human ammunition rack referring to? It took a moment for it to dawn on her that the giant beefcake meant Owen. Warden. Interesting. Then the brute was asking about her. She kept her mouth shut, her eyes on the packing human mass as Owen answered. Then they were moving again, cutting through the crowds of people. She stayed on his heels and Dog stayed against her leg, pressing lightly against her whenever he could. Too many people. She was starting to feel sick. She could feel beads of sweat form on her forehead. Jess concentrated on her breathing. In. Out. Repeat.

The war had left nothing without scars and The Strip was no exception. Buildings flanked them, tall, lit with neon that served as a beacon throughout the hard pan. Come here, it said. We have electricity. We have hope. Dreams did not last on the hard pan and the luster of The Strip was no exception. Beyond the neon the buildings were still faded and cracked, stripped of paint and dreary. Where windows should have lived there were sheets of tin and plywood, mounted in their stead. It was a practical solution.

Clean glass was a rarity in the New World.

Around them people stumbled and shifted, voices rang out. The air was thick with the smells of booze and cigarettes. Callers, mostly attractive women, stood before doors and hailed their respective establishments qualities. Luring customers. Promising emptily. It was busy but there existed an order to it. Men, armed, lingered never too close or too far. They were the muscle organized by the gangs to keep order here. He did not point them out immediately to Jessica, who stayed close to him. Instead, he walked on with her at his side, heading towards a particular Casino set-up in a squat, sprawling office complex. The front of it had been repaired some, painted gaudy red, orange, and yellows.

"Sunset Casino and Entertainment" It said in Neon over the massive doorway. People filtered in and out. The sounds of clinging slot machines audible even here.

His mask had garnished them some attention. Most of it was in passing. Truthfully, they were relatively safe here. Violence on the Strip, even by the Gangs, was rare. It was the threat of what her presence would do to his meeting that kept him from bringing her. The red of his lenses were expansive, never revealing where his focus really lay. It was the way he squared himself to her and the intensity of his words that made the importance of this moment clear.

"Speak to none. Linger close. Don't be frightened." His brevity remained. A standard to which he was known even amongst his own, few times that he had seen them as of late.

Actions were the most potent of means by which he existed. His hand offered her lean shoulder a brief, warming squeeze. She felt tense beneath his fingers. Strong. Owen would answer her questions. Some of them immediately. But for now, he turned and left her there. The heavy folds of his coat swaying at his knees as he crossed the street and vanished into the Casino's foyer.

The neon would have given her headache if she hadn’t been wearing the aviators. The atmosphere of this place felt dirty and made her skin crawl. She wondered if she’d ever feel clean again. What was it about this place that made her feel that way? As they walked, her eyes roamed from side to side. Human fragility greatly showed in this place. Not only was it displayed, it was catered to. Every man, every woman, had a weakness and it would show, at some time, some point. Displays of perceived power were everywhere. Did anyone in this place have a soul?

He stopped across the street and in front of one place. She glanced up. Sunset Casino and Entertainment. The billboard exalted its name and what it held inside. Temptation. Just what kind of entertainment she wondered briefly. She had heard stories. Traveling merchants, traders, all of them were more than willing to tell her about Dodge City. They hadn’t been exaggerating.

It was his voice speaking that drew her eyes back to him. She took in the way he stood in front of her. Then he did something that startled her. Up until now, they had barely touched. Fingers at most, passing a bowl or a pan in her kitchen. Sharply and vividly she thought of the home she had left behind. Had she done the right thing? Following a stranger? What did she know of him actually, beyond a feeling in her gut? Was she on a fools’ errand? His hand on her shoulder, squeezing it briefly, brought her back to the current reality. His touch, brief as it was, was reassuring. She’d be okay until he rejoined her. She swallowed, nodded sharply and simply stood resolute and tense.

She watched him as he crossed the street and went inside the casino. She didn’t move until he disappeared from view. Hitching her bow more firmly up on her shoulder, she looked up the street then down it. People milled about but on one was paying attention to her. Jess crossed the street. Linger close, he had said. She glanced at the open doorway of the casino then moved to a spot against the wall next to it. Dislodging her pack, she let it fall to the ground and lean against the wall. Dog sat on his haunches on her other side, his eyes quietly watching the people passing by. She squatted against that wall, for all the world, looking at ease. She was anything but. To entertain herself, she studied people. It didn’t matter if they were armed or not and she wondered about Owen’s errand. Did this place have anything to do with it?

Around him, soaked in alcohol, the gamblers of the wastes saw fit to test the fates and try their hand beneath the neon. The meeting had not lasted twenty minutes. His expectations had been few, and dark, and he had not been disappointed. The gangsters of The Strip were ambitious beyond reason and misdirected. For their talents, and influence, they desired only more for themselves. It was a sickness that had spread from the darkness of the Old World's end and he was familiar with it.

Crossing the street, Owen found her after only a few moments of looking. They had shared only a few moments and he'd learned her shape, her manner. It stood distinct amidst the wayward lost and staggering drunks and he was glad for it. He needed it now.

"It's time to go. I owe you answers and water." Came his greeting. "And we're not going to be safe here much longer."

He felt it now. The eyes, drifting on him, focusing upon the shape of his back and her own. Consequences; there were many of them. The eyes were just the beginning. A ripple on the surface. The Order would not accept what he would have to tell them. They saw the allegiances of the past, like their code, as set in stone. Wisdom, unyielding, despite the changing sands of the wastes.

Startled out of her reverie like state, she hastily got to her feet, staring at him. There was no social greeting, just brisk words. His. She opened her mouth behind the cloth covering it and remembered, here, she couldn’t speak. It wasn’t safe for either of them. Besides, the tone of his voice and the brusque manner in which he spoke, spoke of moving, not talking.

Safe. Safe would be good. Her back itched and the need to spin around and see who was staring holes into it was a great temptation. Jess didn’t heed it. Instead, she gave him a curt nod of her head, waiting for him to choose the direction they moved in. Her hand reached for and tightened around the strap the bag she had sat aside earlier. The bag was an appendage, one she could discard at a moment’s notice in order to draw her bow and notch an arrow to it.

Her eyes scarcely moved behind the glasses, but they took in all the armed personnel. She seriously hoped drawing her weapons were not going to be necessary. Her eyes settled on Owen. She had no idea how good he was with that rifle of his or that sword. It was a hunch, probably a good one, that he could hold his own. But even the two of them couldn’t hold all these men off for long.

Dog had gotten to his feet and stood at her side. Reaching down, she scratched between his ears and could feel the tension in his body. Something was definitely up. Leaning further down she patted his front shoulder reassuringly before she stood up again, looking at Owen expectantly.

Answers and water could wait. Safety was a whole different topic.

Hours Later

The sun was fading over the craggy, sun-blasted hardpan that forged itself into the Western Horizon. Dodge City was there, a full day's walk on the distance, flickering its neon beacon out into the hopeless world. Owen pulled the mask from his face, breathed deeply of the dry air, and realized that the green light wreathing the gambling town was a similar color to the barrels of radioactive waste he had seen upon the hardpan. It was a color that represented death, as much as anything, and for a moment the desire to burn the casinos down raged in him.

Until he saw her looking at him, watching his face, drinking in the details he had not yet shared.

"Come on. Inside." He said as he turned.

The rocky slope of the hillside had many hollows here, dens that functioned like shallow caves. His home resided in one, deeper than most, dry and full of dust the wind had swept up from the hard pan. In the very back, so easy to miss unless you were looking for it, was the dial for a vault door. He spun it now, clockwise and then counter and then clockwise again, to some long-remembered combination before the heavy clatter of the tumblers falling into place sounded through the hollow and the door swung inwards.

His bunker was a series of ten room. The entry hall was separated from the rest by another coded lock. It was here he shrugged off his boots, his jacket. They had places, cubbies and hangers, with others beside those that were long emptied. A means to keep the grit of the world from encroaching. A secondary defense incase the exterior door was breached. The next door had a fifteen digit code, not for the faint of heart, and was nearly three-feet of solid steel. They shed their outer garments and passed through. He lead the way.

The next hallway was longer. The walls were cold, clean steel that had been painted soft, cool blues rather than left their naked, shining self. From this hallway the other rooms could be reached. The forward rooms were a kitchen, a bathroom. The marvel of both lay in that they were functioning. His toilet flushed. His shower worked. There were outlets for use that were live, fed with the same steady supply of power that lit his home. Beyond that, on either side, were workshops. Their walls were filled with tools, of various make.

Quarters were smaller and further back. Clean, with dressers, but otherwise abandoned. His own had once been the main dormitory, filled with six bunks originally, and now cleared out to serve as a master's chambers. It was sparsely furnished save the bed, which was very large, and the series of lockers that held the few material objects he considered his own.

In the very back the rooms quickly became storage. One, locked, held firearms and munitions. Most held various goods for trade, or otherwise. One served as a survivor's pantry, filled with canned foods and large jugs of water. Emergency supplies for a day that so far had not come.

"Find a place for yourself. Put your things down. Shower." He said. Aware, but not gloating, of the luxury his last words would seem. "Find me in the Kitchen. First we eat. Then you ask your questions."

They had left, once again, walking in silence, out of the gates from Dodge City and back into the hardpan. Once Dodge City was in the distance, she slapped a hand to her outer thigh. Dog obediently looked at her. With a free hand, she signed. Dog trotted at her side for a little while then took off, never far, always within sight and sound of her. The sun was fading fast she noticed. The sky was brushed with soft muted colors of red and yellows, blending into oranges in places with touches of purples. It was breathtaking and something of beauty left behind from before. She considered it a legacy of sorts. There was still beauty to found in this New World of theirs.

Three words. Just three. Brief. To the point. Something she’s come to expect from him. It was enough to draw her eyes away from the sunset and made her whistle for Dog. All three of them entered together. When Owen stopped to remove his boots and jacket, she set her bag down, removing the glasses, the cloth from around her head, her own outer bulky shirt, leaving her in the ribbed red tank top tucked into her pants. She hung her shirt, tucked her boots into a cubbie and hoisted her bag over her shoulder.

Jess was quiet this whole time, merely observing his actions and what, so far, she had seen of his home. She assumed it was his home they were entering. Jess waited behind him as he opened the next door. Color. She hadn’t expected it. Its presence took her by surprise. Her eyes held expression as she looked around. She felt, safe. Compared to her home, here, she needn’t worry about raiders. She doubted they were going to get through those thick steel doors of his. If they managed by some strange luck to penetrate the first door, she doubted they’d get through the second. Her eyes came back to him as he spoke and then watched him walk off, her guess was toward the kitchen.

She poked her head into room after room until she found one, a couple of doors down from his. His, she figured, because of the huge bed. It was the only room that had one of that size. She stepped inside the one she chose for her use, setting her bag down just inside the door. Jess made short work of emptying it, putting her clothes into the drawers. Her weapons, the bow and quiver reclined against the side of the dresser. Her handgun, after removing the clip, went up on the top of it along with her hairbrush. The picture of her father she brought with her, went by the bed on the small table there. She had just stashed the bag in a metal locker and closed the door, noticing that Dog had curled up on the floor in front of her bed. She smiled.

Shower, Owen had said. God, it sounded good. It made her realize how sweaty, sticky and covered in a fine film of grit, she was. Retrieving clean clothes, Jess found the bathroom and thought she was in heaven as she closed the door behind her. How had he managed all this? She turned the taps on and found the water wonderful on her fingertips. Wasting no time, she undressed, leaving her clothes where they peeled off and landed, getting under the water stream with a soft sigh of pleasure. Water was not something she wanted to waste so Jess hurried along, getting clean and washed her hair with the soap she found. By that time she felt clean and turned off the taps, her spirits were certainly elevated. Toweling herself and her hair dry, she donned clean clothes, picked up the dirty ones and left them in her room in a little pile in the corner. She hung up her towel.

Dressed in a fine linen blue shirt that had been her father's and left unbuttoned casually just above the swell of her breasts, it hung off her shoulders, trailing down to her knees. Jess had coupled it with soft gray slacks that had seen better days. Treading barefooted, she made her way back toward where she had left Owen earlier, following the sounds. She braided her still damp hair as she walked. Dog trailed behind her.

“Is there something I can help with?”

It was strange to hear movement in his home that was not his own. The water came on, hissing through the walls, and for a moment Owen allowed himself the pleasure of her pleasure. Had she ever taken a shower before? Had she ever stood beneath water clean enough to drink and used it to wash? For a moment, unable to help himself, Owen allowed himself the pleasure of providing. It soothed him in a way he was not entirely familiar with. It etched itself into the dark nest of his concerns and briefly, skillfully, pushed them back for another time.

But the vision of Jess beneath the water had another consequence. He hardened, swiftly, and the images turned to her soft skin run slick with wet. In his mind he saw her hair, copper-colored, darkened and masked to her cheeks and smoothed wetly to the back of her graceful throat. He saw her fingers passing over her lean arms, like his would, and down the arch of her softly-rounded hips. The lean stretch of her body, arched against the spray, and the swell of her breasts with high, tightened nipples.

It was a potent distraction that he struggled to fight through and, unlike the comfort of before, it tightened his belly and threatened to make him immobile. He stood amidst the kitchen, surrounded by the pots, appliances, and utensils necessary, and struggled to remember his course. What he was here for. Why he was doing this. Each question was answered with a passing glimpse of what he envisioned her to look like beneath the water. The way she'd react to his eyes slicing over her.

From man to boy in a minute and less.

Owen shook his head violently. Cleared it. And cursed himself.

The room snapped back into focus as he went still and, for the moment, he had himself again.

He was finishing as she approached and, with great effort, did not look up. Instead, even as Dog came slightly closer to the table before her, Owen worked to serve the three plates onto the small table where he took his meals. Cornbread, only a day old, with stew and hash. It was a modest first meal. Suitable, really, given the fatigue that hung on him now from the day's hike across the hardpan.

Claiming a seat, he thumbed his fork amidst the hash. Left it there. Poised. Waiting. Around them the Kitchen was clean, precisely organized, but lived in. There were small hints of him in unlikely places. A glass jar upon one counter was half-filled with old bottlecaps. Useless bits of tin. Collected for reasons unknown. Impulse, maybe. There were magnets on the refridgerator that he had found amidst the rubble of broken buildings. He'd dressed up the stainless steel refridgerator because it was the crown of his kitchen. He had found it in the shattered remnants of an apartment complex and spent the better part of a year scrounging, and eventually machining, the parts required to get it to function. The work had been incredibly trying.

But it worked. And he was glad for it.

"Eat. And ask me what you will." He said then. Unable to help the curt nature of his words. He was unused to company. He was more unused to beautiful women. "This is the last day I ask you to follow me like an accessory."

She watched him silently. Her question going unanswered. He was hellbent on serving up three plates of food on his own. So be it. As she sat down to partake of her own food, she set Dog’s on the floor not far from her. Her lips twitched in humor as she watched him begin wolfing down the food Owen provided. Speaking of which, she shot Owen a quick glance. She was grateful to him. Gratitude was not what she wanted between them. For now, it must suffice. But there would come a time when that changed, when they would meet on a plane that she wanted to say was equal, but knew it was not the right word. There was nothing equal between men and women. It was just that basic. Her eyes found his hands and studied them, fascinated, wondering. She swallowed and tore her eyes away from him, forcing them to look elsewhere as she dished up some food on her fork and chewed.

It was the little things that caught her eyes. The jar filled with old bottle caps. Magnets on the refrigerator. Seemingly insignificant things, but weren’t. Every thing, no matter how small, in his home, spoke of him to one degree or another.

She had so many questions. Which ones to ask first? They all palled in light of one vital question. She set aside her fork, gave Dog a quick glance. He had licked his plate clean and found some place to curl up, closing his eyes. His ears, however, remained perked and they twitched every so often. She shifted her gaze back to Owen, watching him eat for a moment before she reached for her cornbread, breaking a small piece off.

“What plans do you have for me?”

The question was direct and as open-ended as he wanted it to be. She expected an honest answer, whatever form that took. He struck her as that type of person. Direct. If she didn’t like the answer, that was on her. He had no way of knowing that she never asked a question she didn’t want to hear the answer to, regardless of what answer might be forthcoming.

The hardpan offered no comfort for men. It had often been a subject of his thoughts, grim and dark, what those first Vault Dwellers had thought when the seal of their subterranean home first broke and they were left to look onto the world that had become. There was little chance that they had anticipated the hard pan. It defied words and thoughts, even now, when he was just shy of thirty years and had never known anything else. To the men and women who had been born and raised beneath the ground it was said they felt free, enthused, and hopeful.

He doubted it.

It was far more likely that they had been terrified and uncertain. A world they had known, safe and secure, suddenly open to the many frightening aliens of a world they could not have anticipated. Strange as it was, even having been born on the hard pan, he was always more comfortable within the bunker that he called home. So he ate and watched her and the way her lips formed her words. Sensual without intentions, feminine without helplessness. There was a strength, grit, and undeniable beauty that extended beyond the benefit of gentle curves, lean muscle, and sculpted features. It was her manner. The nature and direct expression of her question.

His plans. That was her words. The fork in his hand wagged once as he subconsciously ticked it with his fingers before setting it down. His cooking was better than the prepared rations and he was beginning to regret his laziness.

"You wanted to learn. You'll learn." He answered.

If it was only so simple, really, there would have been no discussion. The hooks and snags of their agreement ran mostly beyond the reach of his understanding and, still he had reservations. She was, watching him in the room's dim light. The glint of his eyes in her own startling him; they alerted him to the intensity of her stare.

The piece of cornbread she had torn off, stopped before her lips as she heard his words. Her eyes had never wavered from his face from the moment she had asked him the question. His answer had been as ambiguous as her question. Her lips parted, accepting the piece of golden bread between them. It disappeared as she closed her lips around the morsel and chewed. Her line of sight moved from his face to his hands. Capable. The solider within saw one thing, the woman, saw something more. She couldn’t be both. Not now. She had left everything she had known, everything that had made sense, everything that had made her feel stable, because the Way of the Sword drew her. It sang a siren’s song to her. The man had not made one move in her direction and yet, she could feel him. It was a different song, but no less alluring. As a teacher he would forge her one way. As a lover, he had the capability to forge her another. Both aspects were as appealing as they were frightening. This was no boy that sat at the table with her and it was a boy’s way she had only known.

Choose, Jessica and choose wisely.

She could hear her father’s voice in her head. Her eyes lifted to Owen's face again. She pushed away her plate.

“When do we start?”

She reached for her glass, drinking the cool, clean water. It soothed her parched throat. How could she go back to drinking what she had been drinking after this?

Whatever the future held for her, she would face it with determination and focus. Owen, was a part of that future for the time being. Her lips twitched against the rim of the glass. Strange how life changed on a moment's whim. She prayed neither of them would regret it.

Her question hung like a lamp, bold and bright, with a scorching illumination that swept free the darkness of the bunker's kitchen and any false sense of coziness. She had come with him. That was all. They were still as strangers to one another, shadows in the dark, brushing past on another in the always temporary station of the New World's human condition. This was no tête-à-tête between friends; it was an introduction. Around them the New World was springing up, forging rules, and it was by those rules they had even been favored to sit here and make their plans. The rest would be fate, perhaps, or the cruel honesty of time and circumstance. It did not matter. Her question stripped away everything. It ripped back the curtain. It let him know just how far apart they sat.

And so his answer was a shake of his head. The first negative. Even to Owen, a man whose severity had garnished him few friends even amongst his own, it seemed grim. The meal that he had polished was gone. It had left skeletal remains. An empty plate. Crumbs. Dirtied utensils. She was not so weathered. She was not attended. The beauty across from him, sharp and feminine, was pristine by her own favor and fortune alone. Hers was a mind open to change. A chalice. The temple of her body was only a tragic distraction from the purpose of this. Even now, in simple attire, the slight swell of her breasts through coarse cloth was enough to inspire the illicit imaginings of a hermetical man. The air seemed to warm as she breathed. Each movement of her lips, faint as they might be, sent a bolt arching through him.

Owen was hard. Like steel or worse. The impressive length of his prick outlined solidly, and thankfully discreetly, down the stretch of his corded thigh. With every word of their conversation, sparse or otherwise, it pulsed more sharply. Wanton. It was as though his body could sense her, feel her, even as his mind pushed her raw and unintentional sensuality from its forefront. Fuck, he was aware of her. Keenly so. There would be no fighting it. The agony was his to carry.

"It's begun." He answered.

And the arch in his black brow that accompanied it was small. Dark. Training under his hand would demand she make adjustments. For a time, purposefully, she'd be as though a rat in the maze. This dinner, this first night, sat as a place for them to go forward and the day would bring with it the reality of her decision. Still - she had made the proper decision. This darkness would end.

"Tell me what you want from me. Exactly."

It wasn’t a question. His words. She got up from the table, picking up her dishes, taking them to the sink. Jess came back, moving to his side of the table with the intent to take up his dishes as well.

“I want everything from you, Owen.”

Her reply was soft and firm.

“I want everything you can teach me and then some. I want you to reach into the deepest part of yourself and give me what is there. Why? Because I’m going to do the same for you. I will learn. No matter how hard you push me, I will come back day after day. I will bleed for you. I will cry and swear because of you. There will be days I will even think I hate you. But you will get every bit of me. I expect no less from you.”

The silence in the room was deafening. That one could hear a pin drop, was an understatement. She reached for his dishes. Had she said too much? She didn’t think so. It was how she felt, right then and there. How could words, spoken from the heart, be wrong? Were her expectations too high? Not if he was the one to teach her what she wished to learn. And that, was something she didn’t doubt for one beat of the heart. He was a man of little words. Yet, it was all there in how he carried himself. It was written in his actions. It was written in what he didn’t do.

Gathering his dishes, she turned to head back into the kitchen, stopping only to scoop up the plate Dog had used, setting them all in the sink with her own. She filled the sink with only enough water needed to clean everything. Her movements were efficient. Her mind was going over his statement and her answer.

For a moment her words hung in the air, weighted in their sincerity and potent in their intentions. She reminded him, briefly, of what the Order called Clerics. The Orators who had studied what remained of the Old World's wisdom spoke in the Council Hall together, making their cases for direction and purpose to the entire of the Order. It was a position that was considered one of service, not power, and carried with it little prestige. Owen had always admired the Clerics. The successful men of that position spoke with power, conviction, and without guile. It was a difficult task to manage the first two without the latter. There was a discipline that communicated to him in their efforts.

Owen had never had the gift. He had always been a quiet boy and he'd grown into a quiet man. Words had too often proven themselves slippery and elusive. His intelligence was not the kind that leant itself to them.

"Alright." He agreed.

She moved for the dishes, worked them steadily as he rose to reclaim his height in the room's confines. It was not a spacious place and he filled it, moving steadily, until for a moment he lingered behind her. In a way the distance between them had closed somehow. He'd felt it as she'd spoke to him. It was as though each word had been the rung on a ladder for him to climb. An invitation. He stretched a hand through what remained to acknowledge it and did not stop.

The ache for her sharpened some as his senses made their first intimate introduction to Jess' shape. For a moment his fingers were on the empty fabric of her shirt, suspended from her form by the air between cloth and skin, before it crumpled under the strength of his fingers and his calloused digits spread their weighted warmth across the small of her back. His prick jumped, hard and thick and abruptly angry with his intention to abandon her so soon. The sensation lit across every synapse, fired every nerve, spreading heat through his belly as corded muscles bristled.

She felt good. No, better than good. She felt soft and lean, sleek, nubile. A thousand words he had heard and learned flickered through his mind like sparks above a campfire before winking out in the blanketing darkness of desire. His hand covered the delicate small of her back with warmth and his strength, she'd feel it - he knew, and still it was his knees that abruptly seemed to lock up as the power of the otherwise chaste touch ripped through him with a primal and carnal ferocity.

Still, for all of it, the expression that had provoked it all was appreciation and it won out. Owen did not linger long. He abandoned her there, amidst the dishes, and crossed the room to the open hatch door that lead out to the main corridor.

"When you're finished step out here. I want to show you where the water comes from." He said. He had not forgotten her original question.

She could see the answer now.

He moved. Stood up and sucked the air flow from the small space they were in. She didn’t need to turn around to confirm it. She could feel him. Idly, as she cleaned the dishes, going from one sink to the other, she wondered if it would always be like that for them.

Everything inside her stilled as she felt his fingers. At first, merely on the fabric of her shirt. Then his heat touched her. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart seemed to suspend itself. Her hands stilled as her eyes closed.

Dear god. She was right. Man. Simple. Purely male. Every muscle in her body tensed in reaction. A thoroughly female reaction to his touch. In that concise moment, desire ripped through her lower belly and spread like wild fire throughout her body. She wasn’t ready for such a potent feeling. It didn’t startle her. It devastated her.

Breathe, Jessica. Breathe.

He moved away. She breathed.

“I’ll be there shortly,” she called after him.

She stared down at the sinks with dishes, turning on the taps to rinse them clean before she found a towel to dry them with. She didn’t waste time, locating where everything went and secured them. After drying her hands, she went to join Owen.

Revelations. How many more were on the horizon for her? For them both, for that matter.

He did not wait for her when she arrived but moved ahead, giving her the broad stretch of his back and space to tread after him. The ache of his erection did not relent. It grew with every stride as his boots echoed off the stainless steel floor. Ahead of them the corridor narrowed dramatically and plunged downwards in a series of grated metal steps. The sleek metal of the bunker abandoned for natural stone braced by steel girders, cave-like and cramped.

"Water cannot become irradiated." He explained.

A lecture was not his strong point. There was no flourish of dialogue. Owen gave facts as flatly as they summoned themselves, speaking as they descended what was rapidly becoming a steep and dramatic drop. They still had three stories to go, he knew, and found his hands on the steel tube railings beside him. On his very first trip down the stairs he'd looked too intently down them and grown dizzy, slipped, and fallen. He found himself mildly afraid that she'd do the same.

But she didn't.

They travelled down together, further, until at last he floor leveled off into a grated walkway that spun itself deeper into the rock. Soon, ahead, the walls of the cave became slick and wet. Ground water ran in a slow trickle in places and the air was filled with the musty, moist stink of earth. He found himself slowing for her, allowing her closer, until they walked side by side and the cut of his pale eyes made its way across her elegant features to hold her own.

Looking at her, somehow, eased the ache and the want. The intensity with which she listened to him sharpened his focus, allowed him to lead her on as the grated walk wound its way into a widening chamber. The rocky floor dropped away and the metal walk continued across a deep, plunging chasm. A light mounted on the wall revealed twenty feet of bridge before the far side, flanked with large steel pipes that ran up the sheer face and along the ground into the next chamber.

"Fresh spring." He motioned downward. Not stopping.

The water below was invisible in the blackness where the night could not reach.

She followed him. Her eyes were on his back as they moved into a corridor that narrowed, dipping sharply downward. It was enticing her to look over the railing to see what was below. She resisted the temptation. She knew what it could do to her senses. Her hand was firmly griped around the steel railing.

Jessica listened to him speak. His words breaking the silence that surrounded them. For that, she was glad. Down here, with just the sound of trickling water, darkness and the poignant smell of earth filling her nostrils, she was even more aware of him walking beside her than she had been when he had actually touched her. It wasn’t fair. He fed her awareness of him. Masculine, strong, solid. Her hands itched to move on him. To receive his texture. To inhale his man scent.

“How did this,” she gestured blindly below, “escape what befell? It’s amazing. How did you happen to find it?”

She wondered how long he had been topside or had he always been? People had survived when IT happened. The world around her spoke of it. She remembered as a child, asking her father why he and her mother chose to go into the Vault instead of staying topside. It was a chance they weren't willing to take, her told her, not with her growing in her mother's womb.

This place of his spoke of work. Hard, dedicated work. She knew he would demand no less of her. He had tread into her space and turned her life upside down. Now, she needed to strengthen her resolve. It wasn’t easy. Not when he touched her and reminded her that her blood ran hot not cold.

"It didn't. I didn't." He answered.

Within the cavernous space his words echoed, trembling off of stone and steel until they took the warbling distance of the water far below. Around them the machines worked, hummed, and woke amongst them the almost forgotten spirit of human ingenuity and progress. He, like all of his kind, had been schooled on how to maintain and service these machines. They were as old friends were, familiar even in their capacity to surprise, and impossible to deny. To Owen this place as close to the temple as he could ever be.

"The water is irradiated down below, same as up top. The only difference is that here the water is clean otherwise. It's possible to filter out the sediment in the water using this machine, which operates on reverse osmosis, and leaves clean drinking water after the irradiated particles are disposed of. You'll learn the filter machine inside and out while you're with me, until you not only understand how it works but how to fix it when it's broken using nothing other than scavenged parts and desperation."

It was the most he had said to her in one moment since they'd met. The words replayed in his mind and flung from his mouth like a tape, flat and emotionless. They were the indoctrinated mantra of the man who had taught him everything; how to work and survive here alone, and rang as such simple truth that his usually clumsy narrative did not interfere.

She was beautiful here. Framed in pale, shallow white light from the few lamps hung nearby. The dark of the cavern, looming stone walls, and skeletal accents of steel working as the ground to which her vision stood as comparison. Elegant angles, lean and leonine, with sultry soft curves veiled under modest attire. The entire world seemed to have lost its sense of stunning and there she was, reminding everything and everyone it still existed.

"My kind found it, and others, and worked to build safety around it. They learned and scavenged the filters and their technology and passed the information on. I was shown this place. Given it, as it were, and charged with its care."

There was a question his words might provoke. He waited for it. The cut of his pale eyes once more finding hers, locking there, unforgiving as they stood together at the foot of his world's heart.

She felt like they had transitioned from one world into another. His words echoed off the walls even over the soft hum of the machinery. One minute they were just two people and he was showing her something. When had that altered? When had she become aware of him as a single male entity again? It had to have been when they reached the bottom of the stairs. The rhythm of her heart had changed with it. The awareness of him, it had always been there, lurking under the surface. The unspoken question in her mind was, did he do it on purpose?

His voice droned on. But she had this feeling it was because he wasn’t use to talking for any length of time. He was a man of action, not words. Which, in turn, made his words, when he spoke, relevant. Very. It didn’t help her senses any, watching him with quiet eyes. His body cast in shadow and light. Had she made a mistake in her choice? How was she suppose to focus on what lie ahead of her when right here and now, all her mind and senses were attuned to, was the hard, lean lines of his body?

Snap.

Just that swiftly.

“What do you mean, ‘my kind‘ ? Who are you, Owen. What are you?”

Her questions lay between them as swiftly and vividly as any deadly sword edge. For whatever reason, perhaps the ambiance of this place he had brought her to, her voice remained low with a husky overtone.