Guns and Dust

** Hello Guns and Dust fans!

I am so glad to be back after my hiatus! Sorry for being a little late getting this out for you, but January was busier than I had expected. I hope you enjoy chapter eight and thank you for the kind comments I’ve received during my hiatus.

Now back to Adina and Asher! **

Guns and Dust

– chapter eight –

Adina kicked hard, holding her breath trying to reach the bottom as she swam down into the quarry’s clear water. Her loose pants and sleeveless shirt flowed around her as she passed through the boundary between the sun warmed upper layer of water into the colder water below. The sharp, squeezing pain in her ears that had stopped her from going deeper on her three previous attempts disappeared when she pinched her nose and blew out the way Asher had shown her. The relief was amazing. She would reach the bottom this time… She kicked harder; feeling the pressure build as the previously unattainable sandy bottom loomed closer. She pinched her nose and blew another two times before she was finally able to reach down and grab a handful of sand in a victorious fist. Hovering there, she smiled. Her dark hair flowed around her and she felt the sand push through her fingers as Asher’s words rang in her ears. “You can do it, Adina. I know you can.”

She equalized her ears again and squinted, looking for her target, opening her fist and releasing the sand into a little sinking cloud. The heavy, squarish, brick-sized stone with a piece of cloth tied around it sat on its side a few yards away, the long cloth streamer waving lazily in the quarry’s subtle current. The cloth had been bright red on the surface, but here on the bottom, the changed light turned it black. She swam to it and blew out enough air to let herself sink, touching down and feeling the sand crunch between her toes. Her head ached a little from the pressure, but she couldn’t help the giant smile that split her face. She looked up and watched the bubbles make their long zigzag journey toward the surface. It looked so far away, but it wasn’t frightening. She couldn’t help the thrill that rushed through her as she stood there and took in the strangely beautiful, blue-hued world around her. She’d never been in deep water like this before. To her right, off the cut stone ramp where she stood, the quarry plunged deeper, to well over two hundred feet. The water was so clear! She grabbed the rock and pushed off from the bottom. The pressure on her ears and sinuses lessened as she rose. She passed through the thermocline again into the warmer water above and relaxed letting her buoyancy pull her toward the surface like she was being born upward by her exhilaration.

It was so quiet – peaceful.

All she could hear was her own heartbeat and the sounds her body made as the pressure changed, things she would have never heard on the surface. Dully, further away she could make out sounds from the surface and metallic clunks through the water, but if she didn’t think about them, they faded away, leaving just her and her heartbeat.

She could see legs and bodies at the surface, the faces of the half dozen children who were she and Asher’s near constant companions now peered down at her as she glided up in the silence. Devon’s twelve-year-old son Nat was there, treading water with his face down. He waved at her. Adina broke the surface to the children squealing and cheering in delight. She held up the stone, kick-turning toward the edge where Asher sat, the sun once again gleaming against his scarred, tattooed chest.

The gray-white quarry stone edge was a nearly a perfect match to his hair and beard, the stone’s gray veins and striations catching the same tones and highlights in the bright sunlight. He was nearly dry from his own dive, wearing pants he’d traded for and then cut off into shorts. They were ugly; a dreadful mishmash patchwork of brightly colored pieces stitched together. At least as shorts there was less of them to see. He applauded, then repeated what had been going on since before Adina had done her first dive. He put his hand carefully under a little girl’s rear end and launched her upward, off the stone and into the water. She squealed in ecstatic joy as she hit the water.

“How did it feel this time?” he hollered over the splashing and hollering children around them.

Nat climbed out of the water a little way from Asher and helped a little boy up onto rocky edge

“Better!” she panted, side stroking to the edge, then put the rock up on the side. Asher hauled her out and she turned and dropped her soaking backside onto the hot stone, water splashing off her onto the sunbaked white stone. The boy ran up next to him for his turn to be thrown out into the water. Asher pointed away from them. “Later, alright?”

The child looked crestfallen and Nat stepped close, water streaming off him, his expression entreating. “He was really wanting to have another chance.”

Asher smiled at the little boy and then called loudly to all the children. “Last one, alright! We have work to do!” he put his hand under the little boy’s butt. “Ready?”

The boy all but jumped in place with excitement, nodding. Nat grinned and hurled himself into the water, then popped up watching. Asher launched the boy high and the boy flailed in the air and shrieking with joy before hitting the water. Nat was there a moment later pulling the boy to the surface, smiling widely.

Behind them, Adina could hear the gaggle of women, some of whose children were part of their new retinue. But there were others as well, both men and women whose only reason was obvious in the way they watched she and Asher. Devon wasn’t there, she had work of some kind.

Adina wrung her long black hair and pushed it back, the water making a wide puddle. “It didn’t hurt this time.” She inhaled deeply to catch her breath, her shirt clinging to her breasts. Her nipples were hard and erect from the cold, clearly visible even through the two shirts she was wearing. Wearing only one was about the same as wearing no shirt at all once it was wet. She normally wouldn’t have been too worried about it, but they were both getting a lot more sexual interest than she was used to. “Pinching my nose really helped.”

Asher nodded and smiled, his lapis blue eyes on hers. “That’s over forty feet down, Adina. You may not know it, but what you did is really hard. Most people can’t do that. Not without a lot of training.” He bent and gave her a kiss.

She kissed him back, aware of the eyes on them, grinning. “And it’s fun!” She shivered once hard. “But wow, it’s cold once you get down there!” She appreciated the sun beating down on them in that moment in a way she rarely did.

He nodded again. “That’s the thermocline I was talking about. Colder water is heavier. If there isn’t sufficient current or another force to stir it up, it just sits down there like a block.”

“You can really feel it when you pass through it. I never thought it would be so clear.”

“We definitely need to stay on the lookout for a basic physics book for you.” He smiled again, squinting against the bright sun on the water. “But you’re really starting to get a feel for why understanding physics is important.”

She nodded as he used a wet finger and started to draw on a section of dry stone. It was a square sort of design. “The ramps run down the sides of the quarry”. He drew two long rectangles inside the square along its bottom and right sides and pointed. “They used to use them to move heavy equipment around and get the stone out. The ramps give us an opportunity to do controlled dives.” He looked at her. “It’s not likely we’ll ever have to do dives like this, but diving puts different stresses on the body. That’s good. And swimming is great for you.”

She knew how to swim but was flatly shocked by how easily Asher moved through the water. Then again, she’d only ever swum in relatively small bodies of water, never vast ones like this. She’d been amazed when Priav showed them the quarry and instantly understood why they wanted to build a permanent settlement here.

The quarry was full of fish and there were even fresh-water clams. Shallow areas around the perimeter were thick with reeds and grasses that were home to lots of birds, even ducks. The water was clean and clear, being fed into the deep pit from underwater springs and she could see right to the bottom in some places. The rusting remains of pumps and other equipment still lurked in the depths; vague dark shapes visible from the surface. The metallic clunks she’d heard under the water were the sounds of work being done to clear the machinery. A dismounted vehicle engine, drive train and axle were being used as a winch with a makeshift crane arm to haul up the sunken wreckage. According to Priav, one of the villagers was able to hold their breath long enough that they could reach the bottom on a weight. Then they hooked the crane to things or filled baskets with debris before returning to the surface. And others were training to do the same. Adina couldn’t image how frightening and exhilarating working in the cold dimness down there had to be.

Rafi said there were entrances down at the bottom of the quarry that lead into mines beneath. No one had any idea of how deep they might go, or what might be hidden down there. Priav told them they planned to completely clear the old machinery from the quarry and build something called fish warrens that would increase fish productivity. Large garden beds were being prepared with silt and mud dredged from the quarry and surrounding ponds. With all the fish and birds, it should make good fertilizer. And there were plans to chisel out channels to divert water from the quarry for irrigation. For now, they were using a pully and weight system to pump water into the beds.

Adina had never been to a community that sat next to a lake like this. It was amazing. Especially considering the camp had only been established four months ago. Rafi said it would be the following year before they would know if the gardens would work.

The other thing about the quarry was that it was beautiful. The white stone; limestone, Rafi called it, shone brightly, stained dark orangy-red in patches. Asher said that was from iron deposits. And the water was blue-blue-blue, ranging from light, clear turquoise, almost the color of the sky, to cerulean, then plunging to deepest blue, almost black, depending on how the light caught it. There were secondary, smaller pits around the perimeter of the bluff, where the water was the color of jade. Something about sediments, Rafi said. Adina had never seen anything come close to it.

The main pit was an enormous, roughly trapezoid shape. Its longest side was opposite the camp, where the stone bluff was. That side was almost a quarter of a mile long. The white bluff itself was well over a hundred feet high in places, splashed red brown from iron. From the bluff to the camp was more than three hundred feet. And the side of the quarry where the camp lay was four hundred feet long.

Asher seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself, just relaxing.

“What is the city of haze?” Adina asked, squinting at him against the bright sun. “And what was it Priav was saying about lights in the sky?”

Asher raked his short hair back with burly fingers. Adina couldn’t help but admire the way the sun gleamed off the raised markings of his scars and the smooth curve of his strong shoulders. “There have been stories about a city far in the west. Some say it’s a ruin, others say it’s large and advanced. It’s all rumors right now. No one has ever found it.” He nodded toward the rest of the camp. “Except maybe Priav. It’s one of the things we’ve been trying to find for years. If it is a ruin, but it’s still largely intact, it could be a treasure trove of information about how to help recover the world. If it’s a living city and it’s advanced.” He just looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Who knows what it could mean.”

“And the lights in the sky?”

He shrugged. “Since no one’s ever seemed to actually see it; it’s always second hand ‘my brothers third wife’s cousin said…’ that sort of thing. It’s hard to say. But the stories are consistent, ‘lights in the sky,’ or ‘a glow on the horizon.’ That could be good, or bad. If it’s a living city, then obviously that’s good. But if it’s a ruin, that glow could be from something like ionizing radiation. That would be bad.

“Io… what radiation?” Adina knew what radiation was, everyone did, at least in the general concept of ‘Radiation kills you. It’s bad.’

“Ionizing radiation. Radioactive materials emit particles of energy. When those particles interact with the molecules in the atmosphere, they can make them glow or shine. If you ever see something laying around that glows, don’t pick it up and get away from it. It’s a great warning sign that says, ‘stay far, far away.’ But it’s also beautiful. I’ve seen irradiated objects that glow with the most amazing internal radiance, and in large scale, the air itself is supposed to glow and sparkle.”

She knew better than to pick up things that glowed. Most people did. She’d seen radiation burns a few times. They’d always been on people’s hands or other body parts after from someone had picked something up and carried it around with them. The burns were horrible and people with the them always died.

She tried to make sense of the concept. “So, if it’s io-niz-ing,” she struggled with the unfamiliar multisyllable word,” radiation, everyone’s dead?”

Asher nodded and let his head fall back, seeming to just be reveling in the sun beating down on him. He was all but dry now. “They should be by now. Radiation doesn’t necessarily kill people immediately. It can take years for the effects to destroy the body. But it only ends one way.” He turned his head and squinted at her. “But you’re going to be better protected from it than most people. The inoculant helps protect us. We don’t hold onto radiation the way most people do, it has to do with how the nanos deal with the iodine in our bodies, or something like that.” He grinned at her and leaned close. “It’s nothing you have to worry about. If we can see it, we’re staying away from it.”

She bent and gave him a kiss. This time the children squealed and made rude noises at their display.

“Nobody asked your opinion!” Asher called after finishing the kiss, playfully kicking water at the closest children.

Adina turned to the crunch of feet approaching and shaded her eyes again. The captain of the guard, Omar, walked to them, surveying the scene. He grinned lopsidedly. He was a big man, over six feet tall and broad shouldered, with the kind of belly that spoke of heavy muscles underneath. Omar was the sort who would strong back an engine block into place with his large, knotted hands rather than wait for a hoist. A large scar cleft the right side of his face and it had clearly not healed well, causing some of the muscles on that side of his face to droop. But he was a pleasant enough, tough-demeanored fighter in his forties.

“Priav and Rafi want to see you.” He eyed the children. “I can put them to work if they’re bothering you.” He eyed Nat in particular crossing his burly arms. “Aren’t you supposed to be helping sort scrap metal connectors for the wall?”

“I helped this morning.” Nat tread water, squinting at Omar. “They said to come back tonight.”

Omar grunted, seeming unconvinced by Nat’s anwer. Adina could see his deep affection for them in the good-natured smirk that lifted the good side of his mouth.

Asher squinted at the children. They became still and quiet, treading water and staring at Omar as he cast his baleful gaze over them. Asher shook his head, smirking at their wide-eyed awe of the scarred, good natured warrior. “No, they’re just being children.” He rolled his head back around to Omar again. “We’ll get changed and head over.”

Omar nodded. “I’ll let them know.” He turned and left, eyeing Nat as he went.

Asher pushed to his feet and held out a hand to help her up. “Well, maybe now we can get some answers.” He hadn’t been as insistent as Adina thought he’d be to get the information from Priav. They passed the gaggle of people that were apparently only be there to stare at Asher. He nodded to them as they passed.

“You like it here,” he said as he pulled her against him.

She nodded and tucked up against him, recognizing the clear signal he was sending to anyone watching. “It’s nice to be around people again. It feels more… normal.”

He nodded. “I’m glad. We’re going to be on our own for a long time, so take advantage of it while we’re here.” He gave her a kiss on the hair.

“When are we leaving?”

“Maybe tomorrow?” he answered noncommittally. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and depending on what Priav says, a long way to travel. If she’s seen this landmark only once as old as she is, it’s either a long way away, or in a place people just don’t go.”

Adina nodded. “That soon?” She looked up at him. “I can tell you like it here too.” She ran a hand over his chest. “You’ve been so relaxed since the hunt. It’s like you’re a completely different person.” She kissed his shoulder. “I like this different you.”

“We’ll see what Priav says. But we need to get moving.” He gave her an understanding look. “I still have a job to do.”

She squeezed him. “I know that. But a few days here aren’t going to wreck things, especially if you’ve been looking for this place for so long. A few days certainly won’t make that much of a difference.”

He looked down at her. “We’ll see.”

“What are you even doing out here?” Asher asked from his place across the table from Priav and Rafi. They’d been through the hellos and pleasantries and Asher’s relaxed demeanor had quickly faded. There was no furrow between his eyebrows, but his energy had changed. His tone wasn’t interrogation, it was more good-natured curiosity. But it was so… pointed compared to how he’d been since they’d gotten into camp. Adina already missed the relaxed Asher; smiling and launching children into the water at the edge of the quarry. “There isn’t supposed to be anyone out in these areas,” he continued.

Priav half-snorted, half-huffed at him, one of her eyebrows coming up. “In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s lots of empty space out here.” She gestured widely with an arm. “Even you myrmidons scurrying around in your fancy trucks can’t cover it all.”

Priav’s clay red skin shone clean and bright now. She’d bathed and wasn’t caked with road dust anymore. Without that coating of dust, Adina could see her hair was almost uniformly grey, silver in places, a cascade of braids and dreadlocks around her narrow, burnt red-brown shoulders. She wore a different, lighter homespun sleeveless tunic. Like the faded one she had been wearing when they first met, it was red orange, as if designed to be a shade off her own skin color. It was held against her narrow frame by the same wide, charm-festooned belt which had been divested of the travel pouches that had weighed it down before. Clean, dark blue, narrow-legged trousers covered her to her moccasin-like shoes.

Asher nodded. “Fair enough. But you have to understand, you are the first people, or even evidence of living people, we’ve ever found out here. Up to now we haven’t found so much as the remains of camps. Now I suddenly find not just you, but an established raider presence. To say it was a surprise is an understatement.”

Rafi watched where Asher’s voice came from, his whitened eyes searching from the dark complexion of his face as if they still had sight. “Nine months ago, we crossed the line into the western wastes. We wanted to find someplace new, far from the established trade routes, raiders and static camps and villages that seemed to come and go at the whims of the winds. We wanted someplace we could build, start something new.”

Priav picked up for him. “The last thing we expected was to meet the Ghost Eyes. Raiders are scavengers, they need others to prey on. We thought that being so far out, there would be no raiders.” She flicked her eyes between them. “We were wrong.”

“It was chance that brought us here.” Rafi tapped the table with a finger. “One of our scouts followed a flock of birds, hoping to find their water source. They led us here. But once we found it, we knew this was what was meant to be.”

“Until the Ghost Eyes find you,” Asher countered.

Priav and Rafi were quiet. Adina could feel the tension in that silence, thick and caustic, eating away at them.

Priav took a deep breath seeming to breathe in acceptance with the air. “We have avoided them up to now and have been able to keep them from following us back here.”

Adina remembered the winding, confusing, circuitous route they’d used to mask their path back. But a talented scout might be able to follow that trail.

Asher completed the thought for her. “But every time you venture out there’s a risk they will find you.” He nodded over his shoulder as if to the camp at large. “And then all of this will be theirs.”

Rafi’s normally peaceful expression closed up, his jaw cabling as Adina watched. “We will fight to keep our home. This is the best chance we’ve ever had for something… better.”

Adina saw Asher’s attention shift to Rafi. Asher gauged Rafi’s expression, then turned back to Priav. Her expression was as firm and certain as ever, but there was also something else there. To Adina, it looked like acceptance. They would fight, but according to Priav’s expression, she didn’t believe they would win.

“We will not give up what we’ve found,” she finally replied. We have our solar generators up now, so we can power all of our vehicles, we’re getting the wall built.” She shrugged. “We can’t know what’s going to happen in the future. We can only go from where we are now.”

Asher sat back and crossed his arms. There was a long, lingering silence.

“I can’t help you fight the Ghost Eyes,” he finally stated. “That isn’t why we’re out here.”

Rafi nodded. His quiet, sagely manner had returned.

“We understand that,” Priav replied. “We are not asking you to. We have an agreement for what you have already done for us.”

Adina could feel the pull to and fro inside Asher. It was clear from the way his fingers clenched and unclenched his crossed arm, out of view of Priav and Rafi. Part of him clearly wanted to help them. But she could hear the argument without having to ask. They aren’t our mission, a part of him was saying.

“I promised to tell you about the city of haze, the black pillars and the glow in the sky. I was just a girl when we found it, but I remember it as clearly as if it was yesterday.”

Asher sat back in his chair as Priav recounted the story of how her caravan had found the black pillars and seen the glow of the city in the distance.

It was fascinating. Adina had never heard anything like it; a caravan venturing widely, exploring deep into dangerous and unexplored lands, throwing all safety to the winds. The caravans Priav grew up in apparently used mobility for security. They never stopped for more than a few days in any one place, not giving people a chance to find them. But without things like a stable water source, the ability to grow crops and all the rest, the concept seemed mad to Adina.

“And you never created settlements? Anything like this?” Adina gestured around them.

“It was just the way we lived,” Priav answered with a shrug. She turned her old, brown eyes to her. “Did you ever question why you lived in walled towns?”

Priav turned back to Asher. “And that’s when we saw the landmark. A giant crater, but with no buildings near it. It didn’t look like a bomb crater. It was just about perfectly round, half a mile across, and deep.” She narrowed her eyes at Asher and pointed a finger at him. “That’s why I said it was a landmark you can’t miss!” She waved her hand as if denoting the passage of time. “That thing’ll be there in a thousand years, or ten thousand. And in the distance… one time, only once, we saw the black pillars. But they were there, solid, real.”

Asher turned to Rafi. “You saw it too?”

Rafi turned his head, placing the chipped, ancient teacup in his fingers neatly in the center of the matching saucer with the certainty of long practice. “No. Priav saw it before we met.”

“And where is this crater?” Asher asked, folding his hands in his lap. “We’ve been all over the western wastes and have never seen any crater like you describe.”

“I’ve seen you use your sun instrument to navigate. Can you navigate by the stars?” Priav asked.

Asher nodded. “Of course.”

“It was a long time ago, but I remember some things because people talked about marking where it was.” Priav got up and moved into the center of the space where the earth was bare. Asher followed her. She used her stick and drew a slightly canted trapezoid in the dirt. The top of the trapezoid was shorter than the bottom or the sides, then she drew a line down from the bottom right point of the trapezoid and tapped the end of it with the stick. “That is the center star you are looking for. It is not as bright as the rest of the stars in the crow.” Asher turned his head to see from her angle, standing behind her. Adina joined them, staring at the scratched marks in the dirt. She’d seen people navigate by the stars and knew some of the constellations, but most of it was inscrutable to her.

Asher pointed right of the figure. “South is that way?” He pointed left of it. “And that’s north?”

Priav nodded. “Yes.” She drew a larger circle to the left. “That is the North Star.” Then she drew a shape to the right of the trapezoid. “Higher above the crow to the south are the stars we called the chalice. She pointed to one of the stars of the chalice. “That’s the brightest star in the chalice.” Then she held up her stick. “But the most important stars to help you find the crow… and to guide you to the crater, are the stars we called the virgin – to the north.” Priav drew what looked like a headless stick figure lying at an angle, above and to the left of the stars of the crow. She pointed to the star that made up one of the ‘feet’ of the figure. “That’s the Virgin’s Ear. It’s one of the brightest stars in that part of the sky.” She canted her head looking at the figure. “I’m not sure why they called it the ear. It always seemed more like a foot to me.” She shrugged, then after a moment of considering the image, pointed to the crow again. “The crow is below and between the virgin’s ear in the north and the brightest star in the chalice in the south.” She turned to Asher.” Do you know these stars?”

He nodded, appearing to burn the image into his mind. Adina could sense him calculating. “Yes, I think I do.”

He indicated the stick in Priav’s hand. “Do you mind?”

She handed him the stick.

Asher added lines to what Priav had drawn as the Virgin.

“That’s the constellation Virgo.” He pointed to the actual ‘legs’ of the constellation. “Her legs are made up of these stars.” He pointed to the star Priav called the ear. “According to star charts, that’s Spica. It’s called the ear because she’s represented as holding an ear of wheat.” He pointed to the chalice. “This is actually called the Crater.” He eyed Priav. “Aptly named.” He pointed to the star she indicated. “I think that’s Delta Crateris.” Then he pointed to the crow. “That’s the Corvus constellation. Corvus is another name for crow or raven.” He pointed to the star she indicated. “I don’t know the name of that star. But you’re right. It’s very low on the horizon.”

Priav made a noncommittal sound of acceptance, cocking her head to look at the patterns anew. “You will need to find the place where the stars you call Spica, Delta Canteris and that star make an equal a triangle in the sky. She held her hands up over her head, touching the tips of her index fingers and her thumbs creating a triangle. She angled it to the left as if aligning it with the stars in the night sky. “That will lead you in the right direction. On that line, when the north star is roughly twenty degrees,” Priav put out her left arm like a beam indicating the direction, then put out her other arm. “And the sun is directly west at its setting, you are close.” Priav made her way back to her seat. “But that is only part of the puzzle. When you have the stars aligned, you will look to the dunes, the great grandfather dunes, the ones that never shift. Where they meet a mountain peak to the west. If you are in the right place, they will look like a face.” She scratched in the dirt again, drawing a rough outline. Adina could almost feel Asher soaking up the information like a sponge. He looked at the scratched outline and went to his bag. He took out a small notebook and pencil, copying what Priav had drawn. Priav looked at the paper and pencil enviously.

“Then what?” Asher asked, adjusting his drawing and adding notes about the celestial positions.

“Then you wait.”

Asher gave her a sidelong look as he finished up his notes. “And what are we waiting for?”

“The crater emits the red radiation or there is another source nearby that obscures it. When the light is right, you will be able to see the crater. For us that when the sun was just rising.”

Asher set his notebook and pencil on the table. “How long were you near it?”

“Several days, I think. I wasn’t very big, but I remember there was a lot of talk about what to do. Everyone was excited about it. We could see the glow to the west. I remember us camping while the adults scouted to see if we could go that direction. At the right time, the light changes and makes the crater visible. Otherwise it is nothing but another desert shimmer.” Priav shook her head. “And it doesn’t reveal itself every day. The light has to be just right for the shimmer to disappear.”

Red radiation was a strange effect left over from the last war. Adina had heard of it. It was supposed to be dangerous, but not toxic the way other kinds of radiation were. It could cause burns and sickness, but it mostly caused weird visual effects with the sun. Based on Asher’s description of ionization, it sounded like the red radiation’s effect might have been that. It sometimes manifested as a red haze. That alone was enough to warn anyone with common sense away from it. But it was often indistinguishable from normal heat shimmer according to the stories. It would hide things, even as little as a few feet away. There were stories of entire caravans disappearing into red radiation shimmers. Some said there were craters associated with the red radiation like what Priav was describing. Adina believed what most people did; that the caravans fell into one of these craters and everyone died from the radiation. But there were also stories of ghostly apparitions in the red radiation clouds. She’d never been near red radiation but the stories she’d heard were disturbingly similar. There was supposedly a feeling when they were near the clouds, which was a way you knew it wasn’t just a heat shimmer. They said it was like being watched, or like they were looking into something, not at it.

As Adina listened, the thought of driving deep into the wastes based on only Priav’s word, some vague star alignments and how the sun interacted with a deadly phenomenon felt crazy. It would have seemed suicidal at any other time in her life. But this wasn’t her old life. Nothing was the same.

And with that thought an underlying feeling, like a tickle, moved through her. A new kind of excitement. The thrill of exploration and discovery; something she was a part of – not just a captive or some passenger along for the ride, but a partner in it. She took Asher’s hand and watched his expression as he considered what Priav was saying. He turned to her.

“What is it?”

She couldn’t help the grin the pulled up the side of her mouth. “Nothing. I’m just glad to be here.”

Asher grinned at her and squeezed her hand in return, then turned his attention back to Priav, who was watching her with a twinkle in her old eyes. “How far along that bearing, Priav.”

The old woman sat back and thought. “It would have to be at least a month from here.” She raised a greying eyebrow at him. “A lot of time and distance have passed since I saw that place. It could be forty or sixty days.” She shrugged. “I can’t say.” She leaned forward again, putting her old forearms on her knees and pointing at him with the stick. “But if you find that place, where the stars align and the mountain and grandfather dunes meet, you will find it, Myrmidon. If anyone could,” she poked her stick at him again. “You will.”

“That’s a long way out there,” Asher acknowledged with a nod, then raised an eyebrow to match Priav’s. “For something that as far as we know is just empty desert. No one has found even foundations of ruins beyond this point.” He pointed west. “I don’t think anyone’s been out that far; not more than thirty days west.”

“But there is a lot of empty space out there,” Rafi reminded him, his blind eyes fixed on where Asher’s voice had come from. Then he smiled, seeming to play off Priav’s emotional state. “A lot of unexplored space.”

Asher’s expression shifted between what seemed like excitement at the challenge and resignation. He nodded. “Yeah…”

Priav sat up, peering at Asher with sudden matriarchal authority. “You supply yourself with whatever you need from our stores.” She made a negative gesture, crossing her hand in front of her. “Not free.” She pointed at him. “A good trade required. You have to return to us with the story of what you find.” She narrowed an eye at him and her eyebrow curved into a conspiratorial arch. “And you just have to return to us, Myrmidon.” The affection in Priav’s otherwise matronly tone pulled the side of Adina’s mouth up and her heart ached a little at the sound of it.

Asher stood up and inclined his head to her and Rafi. Adina’s heart heated up even further at the open and honest smile he gave them. “I would like that. But I can’t make any promises.”

“Bah!” Priav lifted the stick again and gave a good-natured, dismissive wave. “Promises-shmomises. I’m too old for promises from pretty men! Now go! And let us know when you are ready to leave.”

“That’s maybe eighty to a hundred and twenty days out in the wastes,” Adina asked as they walked away from the communal structure. Her excitement about the exploration wrestled with anxiety about the far off, unexplored reaches. She’d heard the stories of the wastes since she was a child. Some were fantastical, others straightforward. But the common theme in them all was that the wastes were a barren, hellish landscape of lethal radiation and toxins left after the wars.

Asher nodded, then turned to her, his eyes squinting against bright sunlight streaming between awnings along the path. “It will be a long run, but if we’re careful, we should be fine.” He watched her eyes. “Are you afraid?”

Adina shrugged, her chest tightening at his concerned gaze. “Of course, I’m afraid.” But she smiled at the confidence in his lapis blue eyes. “But I’m also excited. I’ve never done anything like this before. It’s so far out there without… Anything.”

Asher’s expression turned boyish again, his eyes twinkling with the same fierce joy she’d seen before the hunt. “Exactly.”

And that look made other parts of Adina flip-flop, specifically low in her belly. Everything below her navel suddenly squeezed and she was breathing fast. She pulled herself against his arm, pressing a suddenly hard nipple against it. “I’ll take promises from a pretty man.” She put his hand on her ass and smiled, stepping in front of him and pressing her tummy against him.

“And what can I promise you right now?” he asked with a smirk, watching her eyes, his expression as gentle as it was aroused.

She took his hand and pulled him along the path, smiling back over her shoulder. “I’ll show you.” She marched them through the camp ignoring the people staring on her mission to get him back to the bearcat.

Adina’s back arched as Asher’s mouth completely consumed her mound, his tongue playing inside her and up, running over her clit.

“Uhhh… Don’t stop…” she moaned, her head thrown back, her legs spreading wide, pushing her bare mound against his tongue.

His hands slid up her body, over her breasts, cupping them and rolling her nipples, then up onto her arms, pushing them up over her head as he kissed up her tummy. “Don’t stop what?” he asked playfully, holding her wrists together as his lips found her aching nipples.

Adina wiggled down, lifting her hips to press against the bulge in his ugly shorts. But he held her hands firmly together, one of his large strong hands easily encompassing her wrists. He took one of the packing straps from the shelf and wound it around her wrists.

She looked up at her hands as he pulled the strap tight. “What are you doing?” she asked breathlessly, her heart suddenly hammering in arousal as she tried to move her wrists. But they were firmly bound.

“Tying you up.” Still holding her bound wrists, he kissed her rock-hard nipple again. Adina squirmed, the feeling almost overwhelming knowing she couldn’t protect her sensitive nipples. “Is that alright?”

Adina felt the flow from between her legs, her body answering for her even if all she could get out was a breathless, “mhmm…” as she lifted her head and tried to kiss him.

Asher held her down, smiling mischievously and she turned her head to watch him fix the strap to one of the shelves. Then his mouth was on her neck again and worked its way down her body, lingering on her breasts and nipples, his fingers lightly playing along her armpits, and down her ribs.

Adina immediately squeaked, thrashing against his tickling and suckling on her nipples. “Nooo!! No… tickling!” she begged, thrashing, her eyes shut, biting her lip. Her whole body felt out of control.

Asher’s fingers stopped moving. “Are you sure?” He kissed her ribs on both sides and up onto her armpits, specifically not tickling her.

Adina’s mind felt like it had slipped between gears, not into neutral but certainly not in any gear that worked. “I…” She leaned into his kisses as his fingers moved, just a little, the sensation sending her into whole body convulsions. “… don’t know!”

Asher kept moving his fingers and his kisses, tickling her again. “If you want me to stop, you just have to tell me.” The fingers of one hand were now trailing along the inside of her thigh.

“I don’t know!”

She saw his wide grin and her legs were pushed open. She felt his mouth on her mound again. And he started tickling her in earnest, his fingers on her sides and armpits.

Adina’s mind felt like it had fallen off a shelf and shattered under the sensory overload. She grabbed the strap around her wrist for something to hold onto. She cried out making nonsense noises as both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ tried to come out at the same time. Fire was roaring up inside her and she trembled, sweating from head to toe as Asher held her legs firmly open with his forearms, his fingers on her defenseless sides.

“Please…” She panted. “Just… don’t stop…”

He moved his mouth off her mound again, kissing her spasming tummy, his hands now holding her ribs, no longer tickling. “Don’t stop what?” he asked, a devilish edge to his voice.

“Bastard!” She squirmed trying to get her aching mound back up to his mouth.

“Don’t stop… this?” I plunged his tongue inside her and as he pulled back, sucked her swollen clit, his fingers lightly, mercilessly tickling her armpits and ribs.