Fallout New Vegas: A Rose Among The Ashes

Chapter 4

A Rose Among The Ashes

4:

[April 2015: Revised and new chapters coming soon.]

I awoke to the first slivers of sunlight just emerging over the top of a distant range of barren hills. I had always been an early bird, and given that it was September, I guessed this early morning sunrise was around 7am. It helps to be up bright and early these days, as that's when the sane, respectable folk such as traders and NCR soldiers are the only souls roaming the streets. The raiders, drunkards and gamblers would all still be completely partied out after the previous evening's predictable all-out revelling. The only purpose they have in their lives, night after night is to drink, smoke, get high, and fuck as many whores as their alcohol-withered livers will allow them to before falling unconscious until the next afternoon.

In all honesty, I can't say I blame them. There isn't exactly much purpose left in this world, so it makes sense that people would want to lose themselves, forgetting reality in the 'wonders' of alcoholism and substance abuse.

Just more of everyone else's mess for the Followers to clean up at the end of the day.

I turned to Rosie, half expecting her to have been a trickster all along and have made off with all my belongings in the middle of the night. But no, she remained huddled close to me, still blissfully and comfortably asleep. Probably the best night's sleep she'd had in years, at that.

Carefully so as not to wake her, I inched slowly away from her, gently prying my arm out of the helpless, safety-seeking grip she had unconsciously kept for hours. It took me a minute, but she remained soundly asleep.

Stretching a little, I stood in the early morning sunlight and took in the quiet serenity of the wastes. It was an early September morning, so I could see my breath in the cold air. The frequent lack of cloud cover in the deserts means that days are scorchingly hot and nights are bitterly cold. The sky was a clear, bright blue, with the sun casting long shadows over the plains, while a rare, solitary Sparrow tweeted by its lonesome perched atop the gas station's price board. I say rare because normally the only avian wildlife anyone ever sees is Vultures tucking into a rotting Brahmin corpse.

I watched the little Sparrow for a minute, slightly envious as to how he didn't need to care about most of the dangers and worries that I had to. Eventually he spread his wings and flew off, leaving me with Rosie. I looked back at her and saw that she hadn't moved from where I'd left her, in such a deep and restful sleep. Not even that faint smile had left her face, and her long hair was draped across the bedroll's stuffed pillow-end.

There was no doubt left in my mind now that Rosie was telling the absolute truth about her predicament, and wasn't a sly con-artist looking for a hapless, lovestruck victim.

Wait, lovestruck?

A slightly doubtful look crossed my face. The word surely only came to mind because that was exactly what other deceitful women exploit their attractiveness for. It wasn't my opinion, I was just stating fact.

I shrugged the thought off and headed over to my backpack, next to last night's fire, which had burned out during the night and was now smouldering in the background. My half-finished can of Pork N' Beans remained where I had left it when I had got up to comfort Rosie. I inspected it, but found only that it had turned horrible and congealed, so threw it away, and just as luck would have it, my backpack was now devoid of food thanks to not having stopped off at a trading post for a while. Cursing under my breath, I got up and walked around the back of the gas station to get a look at the area behind it. I'd made do with living off the land in situations like this before, and would do it again.