Callisto

Jespar Alone (pt. 1)

The morning sun lifted itself above the Iron Forest, serenaded by the welcoming chirping of something that was probably once a cockerel. In the city's rusted corners and steel-enclosed environs, all manner of unknown creatures purred or roared or yawned themselves awake and went about the daily operation of finding ways to either kill each other, obscure themselves from predators, or simply bask in the desert sun and sip from the pools of blood that had been left behind by the beasts of the night. These ghoulish beings stalked the desert city without concern for anyone but themselves. As those of the Old World often said, "Numero Uno" had to be "looked out for" above all else. Truly, such beings were the triumph of evolutionary theory.

Yet, tapping his tiny paws on the soggy ground floor of what was once Apartment Block Y, there was one creature that would cause Darwin himself to turn in his grave. His name was Jespar, and presently he was busying himself with the task of helping another. Having run out of supplies above for his recovering companion, he was forced to take up the role of the wasteland scavenger. He did so; it must be said, with some degree of pride. He'd show Rain-Born that he was more helpful than some base piece of comic relief.

He sniffed the air and took in the musky scent of dead electronics and mold-laden door handles that seemed to permeate the foundations of the building. He had raided just about every other apartment upstairs for ice but had found only ash and dust in the vacant refrigerators of the Old Ones. He chuckled at himself. Even he was calling them that now. It took him a solid minute to address the fact that he was one of them, making him feel like even more of a relic than before.

As he searched, he was blissfully unaware of another creature that watched him from afar, indeed, had been watching him and his companion for some time – since they had first made camp in the forgotten office building that this creature had been proud to call its home.

In seeing the dog and the girl, this citizen of the Iron Forest had become intrigued – you might even say enraptured, particularly with the wise-cracking canine.

The creature brought a small, chipped picture frame out of the backpack strapped to its waist to confirm its suspicions. It looked it over its contents in the faint glow that shimmered in the bowels of the apartments and nodded to itself as though satisfied.

Then its focus returned to Jespar, and it followed him with quizzical eyes – its form little more than a reptilian shape flitting through shadowed corners and moldy stairwells, watching him with fascination.

However, Jespar's mind was not preoccupied with such trivial matters as who (or what) was tailing him. Instead, he was burdened with his own problems:

My kingdom for some ice, he was thinking as he sniffed around another deserted home. A cold pack. One of those squeezable ones I scavenged up earlier – anything. Or some water. Doesn't have to be fresh. The Chief"s saved my life more times than I can count. It's a long shot, but even something basic to quench her thirst would help. Something to take the edge off...

Jespar pushed through a heavy door, letting the rusted padlock and chains that once bound it fall to the ground, and he found himself in what must have been the foyer of this apartment block. The great emblazoned "Y" in the center of the floor told him that, as well as the crumbling check-in desk and dilapidated elevators with their eerie dark throats that led into the infinite nothingness deep in the city's bowels. He sensed movement outside the humified windows and heat emanating from something just beyond the main door. So, he kept himself low, scanning the interior for anything that might be useful to The Chief.

Jespar was not a believer in divine intervention. But at that very moment, his eyes set upon a cobweb-strewn vending machine, its blinking light betraying some sign of activity, lodged in the corner of the waterlogged ground floor foyer.