Guns and Dust Ch. 08

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.