The carapace has been in the wasteland a long time.
The shell under her dull wrappings is a very light gray, almost white, and when she looks at it too long she remembers more words than dust and hunger. For this reason, she looks at it less and less as the distance she travels grows. She has long since lost track of the days and keeps track instead of the long ribbon of her travel across this empty place.
There is nothing alive in the wasteland. Whenever she finds something solid amid the sand, she searches it for pockets of food or water. There was a reason she first thought to do this, but it's not something she likes to think of now, and for this reason she is bothered to come across an intact building and remember she is searching ruins for dead things' food.
She has just decided to walk around the uncomfortable place when she sees movement.
The only thing that moves in the wasteland is sand. Anything else was blown down and buried long before she arrived. She stands and watches until she sees it again, something white near the base of the structure.
There is no sign of it when she finally reaches the worn building. She stands by it, berating herself for giving in to delusion, when she sees a shadow inside.
She finds she is not sure she wants to go inside, for although the wasteland is vast and terrible and lonely, this must be another
(Prospit?)
and she finds she is not sure her
(Exile?)
is enough. Perhaps she should wait. Perhaps it is better if she does not meet anyone until more is forgotten, until she does not know other words for them, until she no longer even remembers there is anyone else to meet, and anywhere but this wasteland.
Besides, isn't the gray sight of her own digits enough trouble to deal with?
But while she dithers the door opens with a terrible creak.
It is something brown with white fiber piled on its head, with baglike cloth over its body instead of the true wrappings of an exile. Its face makes her think of crumbled paper yellow with age, like the pages she tears and eats in the books she finds.
"Oh," the thing says. It is the first words she has heard in the wasteland. "Oh. You're really real."
It invites her in.
There are many rooms inside, although two are blocked off. It ignores those while showing off the things in the rest - pictures of others it says are its kind, though they look little alike; worn toys; odd devices; and food. It picks up a can with shriveled digits and gives it to her. Inside are thin green things in sweet water. "Bec finds them for me," it tells her as she slowly eats each wet cylinder, feeling them burst between her teeth. "Now he's the one who brings me dinner." It laughs quietly, sounding worn and mad. The walk around its dwelling seems to have tired it, and it sits as it talks. "I used to have a garden, but all the glass broke. And I can't find any more." It does not seem to care she doesn't answer it while it tells her all this, but finally, after she has drunk the dregs of water from the can, it asks about Prospit.
She moves to go.
It grabs her arm and begs her to stay. "I won't say anything else about it," it promises her, its fingers on her shell soft as the rotting cloth she finds. "Please. You're the only person in so long."
It talks to her about other things, friends it had. A white, four-legged thing appears in a terrifying green and yellow crackle with a pile of sloshing bottles, and it introduces that as the Bec it spoke of. Neither seem to mind her taking one, so she drinks the water sip by sip, reveling in the feeling of moisture on her tongue. She has been thirsty so long that it's like pouring water onto the sand, and when she finishes the bottle her mouth is as dry as ever.
For several days, the map of her travels knots tightly inside the building. It tells her Bec saved it from the disaster that should have killed it, but it says also things weren't supposed to go this way. The words are tired and there is no conviction in its voice. Once it starts to talk about visions, clouds and the future, but it remembers who it's speaking to and goes quiet for a while. It tells her that everyone else died a long time ago. "I'm always the one left alone," it says, and cries for a while. Then it asks her to tell it something.
She considers. She touches her hands to the ground to mark a length and tells it the distance she has walked, then the distance between where she started out and where she is now. It's funny because the two numbers are very different, since she hasn't been walking in a straight line. The alien stares at her, then laughs and laughs and laughs, so hard that it's crying again.
She wakes later to howling. She finds the terrifying white thing at the top of the building, in the alien's room at the side of its bed. The white thing is distraught, and the alien very still, in a way she finds unsettlingly familiar.
She leaves the white thing to his vigil and makes her way down to explore the rest of the structure.
Behind one blocked door is a place where the sand glitters with tiny shards of glass and she guesses this is the garden the alien spoke of.
The contents of the other blocked room is much harder to understand. Something has been torn apart and the shreds of stuffing and leather cover the floor. A bit of color catches her eye and she picks up from a corner a scrap of Prospit yellow.
The map in her head has no way to mark time. She walks into the room and she turns and walks back. The time she spent kneeling, staring at the yellow silk of the princess' royal garment, is already hazy.
The white thing has left, leaving only the lukewarm corpse. She sits on the bed beside it and lifts its hand, then bends and crunches through the first finger. The bone breaks like stale bread. She chews carefully, not wanting to waste anything.
When she finishes, she gathers up the cans that are left and continues on her way.
