Light, Glorious Light

The Waste

May's hand on her shoulder came as a welcomed weight.

"You're thinking of your mother."  May made it a statement.

"Yeah..." Akiva met May's eyes.  "I stole her from her mother."

"No, her mother lost her on a wager.  As I'd said before, these people are savages."

"They aren't savage, they're just different.  They do what they must to survive."

"That's the reaver in you talking.  This is everything The Mothers warn us about.  We have to be apart from their barbaric ways or we begin to sympathize."

"Maybe they need sympathy."

Akiva shrugged off Maira's hand and stared off towards the plateau on which Pride Home sat.  Distant serpents of smoke slithered up towards a sky darkened by conflict.  If not for a trick of birth any child of Phalanx could have been born to a reaver clan.  Akiva lamented.

She began a song to The Great Mother, not for herself or the valkyrie beside her, but for those who lived without knowing the touch of her love.  Afterwards she lapsed into silence.  She didn't look at Maira or Foxy.  Those that knew her mother said she was a dreamer who believed there were things The Mothers had wrong in regards to the waste.  Akiva wondered how much of her mother's spirit lived inside her.  Time passed, she pondered, and their busted tumbler crawled through the sands.

"May."

"Yeah, Kiva?"

"Why can't you navigate without your armpad?"

"Why can't you dismantle a rifle, clean, and reassemble it?"

"Fair enough."

"Why can't you throw a proper roundhouse?"

"I got it, May."

"You forget, I've seen you shoot so-"

"Hey, you don't know how to find clean water in the waste.  So we're even."

"There is no clean water in the waste!"

"Water means clean, no?"  Foxy asks as she struggled to keep the vehicle moving.

Maira and Akiva shared a hearty laugh.  First they laughed at the girl's innocent question.  Then they laughed at each other.  They laughed until they cried.  The tears of mirth became tears of grief, and soon they were crying together.  They were both tired and homesick.  Two days ago they'd buried sisters of Phalanx who had died so they could live.  Two days ago they'd reunited after years of emotional separation.  They yearned for home and the chance to heal.

The tumbler died a mile south of Sector 1, a densely wooded area ruled by massive beast and prowled by small bands of infected.  The valkyrie once used the area as a training ground, and had even drawn up plans to create a settlement within.  Unfortunately, after numerous encounters with violent reaver clans looking for the glory of claiming a valkyrie's head, The Mothers ordered the region left to the animals.  Going around Sector 1 would take more than a day, and quite a bit of climbing.  Going through it would get them to Tubman Road just after nightfall.  It was the only direct route into Phalanx.  A valkyrie patrol was bound to see them.

Akiva rummaged through the broken wreck, doing what she did best.  They had the crossbow and five bolts, a bundle of Gongdo Shrooms, a can of crude, a flask full of a dubious liquid which no one dared to drink, and a pair of goggles.  Akiva gave the rags in the back to Foxy, as she was the only one small enough to wear them, and handed the crossbow to May.  She bent off a piece of the tumbler's twisted frame to use as a walking stick and slid the new goggles over her eyes.