Callisto

The Harvester

They walked in silence.

No winds blew in this part of the city. The asphalt road they tread on was corroded but clear. No vehicles lined its sides; no ruined buildings rose to greet them. Everything seemed perfectly preserved – the one vestige of the Iron Forest that had not been lost to time and the destruction of wars neither had personally seen.

Now and then, there came the skittering squeak of something in the shadow-cloaked alleys that poked between shop fronts and cafes. Umbrella-impaled tables outside restaurants looked like they could have been set up earlier by owners expecting business on this day.

In the distance rose the spire – the one Jespar had dubbed the 'TV tower.' As they wound around road after road and saw more evidence of a world that looked virtually untouched, it kept its constant gaze on them like a titan peering down at them from the heavens. Rain-Born met its gaze and felt herself quiver, realizing that this was the site of her prize. Callisto was up there if the visions of Father-Mother were to be believed.

She suddenly stopped herself. 'If'? She wondered. When had her Elder's body of knowledge dissolved in her mind to reveal bones slathered in doubt? When had reality become so complex – so prone to alteration? She longed for the tribe again, for Father-Mother's immutable teachings and the Great Spirit's warmth that she felt comforted her at night in her tent, surrounded by trophies of her kills.

She looked at Jespar walking ahead of her, tail down, tucked between his legs. When she had tried to catch up to him, he had turned his face and quickened his step, saying nothing. He simply would not let her touch him. Whether through shame or anger, she did not know.

She could not find the words to address him. So she simply did all she could, all that she had been doing since she set out from her home into this place where her destiny awaited her. She just kept moving forward.

...

She stopped next to him when they saw the first one.

It seemed like nothing at first – just a trick of the wind, maybe a long shadow cast from something within the depths of those tucked-away alleys. But as she looked closer, she saw it was no mere illusion. Its bulbous, ethereal eyes darted between her and Jespar, but it said nothing. And then she saw the others.

She and Jespar had started moving towards the open square that stretched out from the tower's base, following the same winding road that had twisted through more apartment blocks. Night had now truly fallen, and at the corner of one such apartment, they stopped to study a fenced-off area filled with twisted metal objects Rain-Born could not interpret. To her, they seemed odd pieces of jumbled art – perhaps constructed as idols of reverence for the metal giants that loomed over the peoples of the Old World. Jespar offered nothing by explanation, but she had seen that something had caught his attention there amidst the rusted steel garden. She followed his eyes, and there it was: a tiny shadow figure staring back at them, sliding down one metal chute to meet their friends and clasping the hands of another being whose form seemed like an extension of the night itself. The shadows watched these two interlopers stalking through their realm as though curious, not angry. Their white eyes simmered in their blackened sockets. No pupils – only two translucent bulbs of dim light. Then the echoes of laughter seized Rain-Born's ears. Children's laughter. This was not a place of art, she knew then – but a place of play. She saw the shadows climbing the metal pieces, tossing nothing at each other, and running in the strange, slow, methodical way they did in what looked like a game of tag in the garden. Their laughter came again – the distant sound of memories lost to a world their physical forms had once inhabited.

All this Rain-Born was merely guessing at. She glanced at Jespar and could tell through his blinking eyes that his mind was evaluating the threat these tiny beings may pose. Equally, he looked at her, and in his eyes, she could tell he could not answer the question burning in her mind of why these little ones played here still, in mock imitation of the living.