Callisto

Old World Blues

A roar belched from the puffy larynx of a tremendous thundering cloud snapped Rain-Born into consciousness.

She jerked herself awake, her eyes readjusting to the world of grey, drab, soulless metal that encased her on all sides. There were the pugs nestled at the door, and there was Jespar, sleeping by her feet, his tongue lolling comically out the right side of his mouth and his belly positioned right by her toes. She giggled gently as his hair itched the soles of her dry feet.

Outside, rain continued pouring on the panting plains of the parched earth, slowly withering away the already rotted suburb more with each passing hour.

She realized it must almost be dawn, for she could make out the Deadland's sun burning dimly behind the largest cloud that eclipsed the sky. Her thoughts wandered to the stories her tribesmen had often told her about these clouds: the great ashen giants that wept upon the earth for the sins of those who had gone before them. Those who had made the world what it now was. Those beings – the users of the wheel, and the long-beaked death-spitters, who had even made metal wings to fly above the lands. Their foul magics had corrupted the natural world and given birth to the Deadlands – where their metal giants and instruments of doom could never exist again. On days like this, even the sun hid its face in shame for what they had done to the world.

And yet, as Rain-Born looked around her at the room with its dust-caked trinkets, a strange curiosity overcame her.

She was finally here – in their dominion. Those of the Old World. She stood on the precipice of one of their forests of iron that had dominated their kingdoms when they still reigned supreme. None of the tribe had ever made it this far. None of them knew the dangers lurking in this place, where evil was supposed to be hiding at every corner.

She looked at the pugs, slumbering together, and was greatly puzzled. How could something so peaceful exist here, of all places? Maybe the tribe had been afraid. None of them had ever seen the evils that the Elders spoke of. For this place was not a realm of destruction. This was simply a home - four walls that held nothing more than a mother creature caring for her young in a place forgotten by time.

She stood and walked around the room, examining some of the oddities surrounding her. If she could bring news of what awaited the tribe here when she returned, she would be more than simply a fabled hunter that had obtained Callisto – she would be a font of knowledge. The name Rain-Born would pass into the land of legends. She would become one whom the Great Spirit personally roamed beside in the eternal hunting grounds of the afterlife.

And, harboring such notions of vanity, she sheepishly touched some of these strange things that lined the room. There was a shelf that bore home to some rotted papers bound together into one single rectangular object. She had known that the people of the Old World had passed information through the written word – hatred for their fellow beings preventing them from simply conversing as the Tribe did. She thumbed through these tomes and found most of their pages merely crumbled to dust beneath her fingers. Some contained images unrecognizable to her as time and the elements had ruined them utterly. They were a testament to the decadence of the time they had come from – where nothing truly lasted.

She put down the book and turned her attention to the large piece of glass that hung above the broken cabinet in the room's left corner. Her image looked back at her – haggard and caked in dirt. She could barely recognize her face. Only when a flash of lightning illuminated the entire room in a wave of ethereal sapphire did she see her amber eyes and tribal tattoos shining - the only light in a dark world. She understood the purpose of such mirrors. As a child, she had caught her reflection in the puddles that the rain left on the red desert sands. She had been fascinated by herself, and whenever she braided her hair during summer festivals, she would seek to find one such pool of reflection where she could admire her handiwork. She was satisfied that the people who made these devices had at least one idea she could understand and even appreciate if she acknowledged such desires.