perpetual-calendar:

“Darling.”

The word leaves an odd taste on your tongue. You give it a few tentative nibbles, silently mimicking the labial movements necessary to enunciate it… you’re not impressed. You’ve chewed on copper wires that had a far more trustworthy consistency than that. Less sugary, too. It’s a wonder you aren’t spitting it back right into the Crow’s famelic grin - or maybe you’re a tad too sure that he’d appreciate that, more than anything else. He’s deplorably predictable like that. You have to appreciate that in a person: helps hell of a lot with your drawing arm’s reactive time.

So no, you leave your spittle right where it’s meant to be, especially since you need copious amounts of it, if you’re going to have a solid chance at turning that bluish beetroot in you’re holding into a clump of swallowable, hazardous nutrients. You bite into it with the same kind of eagerness the Crow would kill to be on the receiving end of, staining your lips with the slightly glowing humor that seethes from the several layers of mutated innards… and smile. Oh, of course it’s nothing like the Crow’s - you’d think a poon squid’s spiky tentacles went to town on his cheeks, with how widely the white of his teeth spreads across them. Which is probably the only sort of circumstance you’ll ever end with the corners of your mouth reaching that far on your face! Ain’t it so, Maira? Yeah, you’re more of the demure type, right? It’s the kind of smile people have to intentionally look out for. Make grabby hands out of their eyes, sifting through the sand and the dust in search of that rare piece of OldTech… it’s the hint of a smile, barely distinguishable from a forcefully straightened curve. It’s your smile, and definitely not for the Crow. Although the thoughts that the latest in his endless series of inquiries have occasioned might lead one to wonder - like the mutated vegetable/piece of artillery you’re casually feasting upon, the mental image concocted by the insides of your head possess a special kind of pleasant attribute that you’re probably among the few able to find any sort of appreciation for.

“Rooms… there are these rooms, sometimes. They’re far and few between - you won’t find a single one in the entirety of some Remnant Sites - but if you’re lucky, you’ll end up stumbling on them evey now and then. Places that were once homes, or part of one. Sometimes, it’s little less than a cubicle in the corner of a larger structure, or a section in the ruins of some kind of establishment. Garages are the easiest ones to find, since they used to build them sturdy. But other than those, it’s those others… Small, almost suffocatingly so… and so full of things. The clutter - it’s nothing like what you find in the Bunkers, or the Abandoned Bases. Rooms no bigger than a tent, littered with objects that serve no purpose by now other than to be there. Useless trinkets. Pointless bits of trash. All preserved to nigh-perfection, left untouched by your average scavenger.”

The loud crunch of your beetroot’s last moments serves as an interval, a brief interlude before you resume retracing the solemnity of your personal reminiscences.

“I like to camp in those places, and muse about what purpose each item served. Flickering switches, turning handles, opening and closing drawers or lids. When I fill the silence with the echo of a life that has been lived hundreds of years before mine, I feel at ease. The purposelessness of those functional actions and those objects… the other scavengers don’t understand its beauty. They don’t value that which doesn’t directly serve their survival. It doesn’t help them live… but me, I live for that.”

The last radioactive chunk disappears, the last sign of its existence a bump traveling down your throat. Dragging along with it what little trace of that smile you were wearing a moment ago.

“Not that you’re any different from them. Isn’t that right, Crow?”