Lost and Found

Pyke dragged deep on his cigarette as the Mojave winds blistered across the scorched boulders, lashing the final dregs of smoke into a haze around him. The howling sands scraped at his peeling skin, churning the earth into a sea of red and white as the sandstorm consumed what was left of the horizon. At his back, he could still see the faint red and gold banners of the Legion waving a farewell. One he was pleased to be done with.

A faint whimper at his side pulled him from his thoughts, and he snuffed the last of his smoke before lighting another. Taking a long drag, the howling winds calmed as his stallion moved to shield him from the worst of the storm. He thanked him with a pat to his rump and let smoke fill his lungs as he stared down at the shifting sack of bones to his left.

A single denarius was all it had cost for him to wind up with trouble. A small mare, branded with the Legion’s bull, quiet and subdued to the point he hadn’t bothered with a lead. And on her back, a frail excuse for a child.

The boy was painfully thin. His tanned skin dotted with vitiligo stuck to his bones, the colour drained from neglect. His tattered robes hung off him to the point that the belt, cinched to its maximum, could barely keep them from blowing off his tiny frame. His feet, small enough to disappear in Pyke’s palm, were blistered and burned by the Mojave’s heat. Though he’d done what he could, a Med-X was just a temporary balm for the boy’s pain.

Hollowpoint shifted against his back as the mare sought comfort in his neck, and his massive stallion softened to let her close.  The child on her back shivered in his sleep. The collar on his neck blinked red every few seconds. A warning for him not to stray, even if it was impossible in his state.

Pyke didn’t have a plan. Didn’t even think to walk away with a kid and a mare as he left the Legion. He’d only stopped in the camp to finish a job, yet when he’d gone to leave, he couldn’t pull his eyes from the boy slumped over in a pen, half dead as he was.

“Not fit to feed the hounds,” the legionnaire had told him.

Pyke knew what happened to slaves who didn’t pull their weight, even if they were a child barely pushing five.

He didn’t have to haggle. A single denarius was all the boy and mare were worth in the Legion’s eyes. But as he turned his stallion to leave the camp, the boy trembling in fear on his saddle, he caught the legionnaire before he left.

“The collar.”

Rather than remove it, the man had warned him the boy was trouble, a flight risk. Pyke had told him he wanted the boy for another buyer to not raise questions when he bought him, but the collar was in the way.

“Boy has a faulty one,” the man said with a dismissive wave. “You could try to remove it, might blow his head off though.”

He didn’t push, didn’t pry. The less attention he drew, the less trouble it would be down the line.

The mare followed at Hollow’s flank without a tether as they left the camp, and Pyke steadied the boy in front of him while he continued to tremble in fear. Most would be afraid of being purchased by anyone and taken into the desert, but that fear would be tenfold if bought by a ghoul missing half his face.

He didn’t try to comfort the boy, didn’t speak to him or tell him of his nonexistent plan. He only rode into the desert until the camp was a distant memory at their back. Once out of their sight, Pyke slowed Hollow to a stop and dismounted with a sigh. The boy held himself for comfort as Pyke dug through his saddlebags, but noticed his stallion reach back to steady the boy on his back when he waivered. Though he was a brute to most, Hollow had always been soft to mares and kids.

Pyke had little in terms of sustenance for a human, let alone a child. Rifling past the bottles of buffout, liquor and other chems, he found what remained of his food and water that he kept for times when he remembered what it was like to be human: A single can of Cram and a bottle of dirty water.

It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

Food and water in hand, Pyke reached up to the boy with the offering, but nearly scared him half to death as he did. In the haze of the sandstorm, Pyke could see the boy’s eyes for the first time. His right pupil was white as glass, his other blown wide from pain and fear. Moving slower so he was in his line of sight, Pyke offered the food and water again.

“It’s better than nothing,” he mumbled.

The boy had nearly took off his hand to get at the food. And by the time he’d finished, he was already drifting off to sleep from a full belly.

Pyke took a final drag on his smoke before snuffing it out on the sand at his feet while staring at the boy, now deeply asleep on the mare’s back. Bitsy leapt onto his stallion’s back to investigate the tiny creature, her forked tongue flicking at him in interest while her tail rattled lowly, as if she was also questioning what they were supposed to do with the boy.

As they shared a questioning look, the boy whimpered against the mare’s withers and began to tremble in his sleep. The mare let out a soft grunt of worry before turning back to nuzzle the boy’s dark hair while Hollow bent to sniff at him over her head. As the boy shifted, Pyke could see the scars on his back beneath the tattered robes.

With a final drag on his smoke, Pyke sighed before placing a heavy hand on the boy’s head to steady him as he would a wounded animal. As he did, the boy stilled his trembling and breathed a deep sigh, settling deeper into the mare’s warmth with the weight of Pyke’s hand to comfort him as he dreamed. Bitsy jumped from Hollowpoint’s back and onto Pyke’s shoulders as she hissed at the wind, her tail rattling in annoyance while she nuzzled his cheek.

His nightstalker had always been one to share his thoughts, much like his stallion. And as his smoke burnt to its end and singed his withered fingers, they both thought the same thing as he tossed the cigarette to the ground.

“What do we do with it now?”