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“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?”

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Yeah, put it down, Maira. You just don’t mistake a man like the Crowmouth for a thieving scrapmuncher, and by the time you’ll have thought of a better excuse for unloading the Mouse’s clip in his noggin’, he’ll be done bleeding your head from the inside with a bulletstorm of questions.

Let’s have a chat then, right? You, him and a cheap bowl of even cheaper noodles in-between to take the eyes away from the gun sitting on the table like a second course. It’s not like flapping your gums to chew on that still-slithering slop will satiate you any more than if you did so for the sake of answering Derek. Chances are good that the latter’ll be tastier anyway.

“Sometimes.”

He’s gonna want more than that, and that makes two of you. The difference being, unlike the Crowmouth, you prefer getting your answers from broken concrete, battered metal and frayed wires. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve ever given you any, mind you - but they fetch a good price most times, and that tends to satisfy you.

You could tell him that. Or you could tell him about the sleepless nights you spent sitting in your garden, soaking in enough radiations to kill most men in the Remnants thrice over, and wondering what the implications might be. You could tell Derek about the days you spent rummaging through Dad’s stuff after he bit it, in search of a map, a diary, of anything to tell you where exactly he brought you back from. About the instinctive sensation that drags your stomach down in a sizzling pit, whenever your travels lead you to pass by the ruins of some Ancient facility. The nagging thought that a few steps through the scattered pieces of a lost civilization, you might one day stumble upon your own corpse, or something resembling it too closely to be a mere coincidence.

You could delight the Crowmouth with the tallest tale he’s ever fed on: the massive tapestry of speculation that Dad left covering your past, like dust over a crumbled, purposeless building. It would take all of three words instead of the silent pause that followed your brief answer. Just those three words.

- Into the mirror. -

So why do you keep quiet, Maira? Ah, I see, I see. That’d be no answer, just a question without its proper mark tying it at the end. Disgustingly cheap, just like your noodles. Take a good sip…

“But I already have my hands busy with the present.”