Wander and Ponder, another tale of Dead Man and Lillian

Her hand fell on his arm gently. His own hands stuttered, halted, as he looked up. Her lopsided smile greeted him with just as much gentleness as her hand upon his forearm. The crinkles around her left eye and the squint of her right told him she was amused, as she always seemed to be. His head tilted sideways in question, holding his hands still.

"Please, slow down," her voice, the slightly smoky, cheery contralto, held a laugh as she spoke. "You speak so fast sometimes I can't begin to keep up."

He looked down at his hands, holding them palm up as if considering how they could have betrayed him so. Covered as they were by gloves, they held no immediate answers for him except their stillness. He had been signing too quickly once again, something he didn't seem to be controlling as well as he would have wished. Clenching his hands into fists briefly, he let them fall open into a more relaxed state, focusing on slowing himself down as he started over.

"We will be approaching the Market from the backside, something I'm sure you remember us discussing previously," his fingers moved with a dexterous grace he knew his former self had never had. "You must stay with me, beside me, at all times. I cannot protect you should you stray."

They were walking along a disused portion of the city sidewalks. Warehouses around them, some small offices and many empty eye sockets of broken windows and gaping, missing door mouths. The dead monsters of the forgotten city, their appetites for humanity and its dreams long since forgotten. He wore his usual dark robes, gloves and hood pulled up and over to hide his features while she wore a long, tan colored dress, a soft, light silken scarf of pale yellow swirled loosely about her shoulders and neck while a tan colored shawl draped about her head and shoulders as well, all but concealing her burn damaged skin. He soft slippers wrapping her feet made the slightest of shushing sounds as she walked, making hers the only sounds besides her voice to fill the empty street.

"I will," she said, that same lilting laugh in her voice, "I want to learn, not die. I'll stand right beside you."

She crooked her arm in his, limiting his ability to speak, but only by a slight bit. Sign language, he thought, had been a stroke of genius. He had picked it up easily, while she seemed to understand it almost instinctually but couldn't seem to speak a word of it herself. That didn't matter, though, since now he had a way to communicate with her that wasn't so taxing on effort, patience, and time. Now if he could just slow down without having to consciously remind himself. As it was he would just have to focus on slowing his reflexes when conversing with her and others not so highly attuned.

Under the hood his ghoulish grimace widened a little more. A smile only she would understand, but one she seemed to enjoy seeing. Her own one-sided smile broadened into a half grin, the scar tissue on the right side of her face creasing in the attempt in ways he knew were anywhere from mildly painful to sharply agonizing for her. Why she continued to express herself so easily when he knew she was in such pain he had yet to understand, though it kept him close to her, protecting and guiding her along this new and strange life she had chosen for herself, and for him.

With his free hand he motioned ahead of them with a motion that was somewhat regal and mostly a farce as they continued to the intersection of the roadway that ended in a great, brick wall ahead. Down both side streets the sides of empty warehouses loomed like the bulks of dying whales on asphalt beaches and ending in more broken mouthed and empty eyed building fronts at the ends. Debris and broken, abandoned cars decorated the barren vista in tones of rust and decay. Oddly enough, there were no dogs or cats or even rats on these empty streets, likely because there was no food to be had for them here. Though, if they'd had the sight, unlike what many believed of cats and dogs, that might have been a different story.