Pain.

Blurred visions of terror that swam in the dark realm of unconscious thought. She felt herself being held down. Somewhere in the dream world, a voice she did not know commanded that she bite down on something. For no reason that she could properly intuit, she trusted the voice.

Then the agony of something being removed from her shoulder shot through her system, and the world hid itself from her once more.

...

When Rain-Born finally woke up, she was greeted by a red-hot searing in her shoulder and agonizing throbbing in her hand and head. The grey sky above wept not for her misery, and birds chirped merrily around her. They were all blissfully unaware of the useless creature that sat before them.

She turned her head to see that her shoulder had been bandaged, her hand too. And as she prospected her new surroundings: another burnt-out house in the suburb, one half rotted away with acid and age, she saw Jespar sleeping beside her.

His ear had been bandaged too. They must have both looked like wounded invalids. In this sorry state, anyone could have come upon them and slaughtered them both.

That's what she deserved, she thought. But not him.

She looked down at his peaceful face and rhythmic snores and realized that he must have bandaged them both, applying the magic of the Old World that woman had said she possessed, as he had done for her back in the Canyon of Evil Spirits. It did not matter what he said he was or was not: he was a healer. He had saved her from the brink of death.

She painfully reached to stroke his face but turned away before she felt his soft snout. She didn't even deserve to touch a creature as blessed as he. She was filth. She was nothing. She had almost killed them both.

She remembered everything.

She did not cry. Tears served no purpose. She let her arm go limp and let her eyes close to the world again. But the sight of Jespar's wet, bandaged ear lingered in her mind.

"Jespar," she whispered, hoping that somewhere he would hear. "I'm sorry."

...

The next time she woke, the pain had dulled somewhat, and she could perceive her surroundings more clearly.

Sun streaked through the roof's broken remnants above, illuminating another ruined corpse of a civilization long gone. Jespar was sleeping on a leather seat, reclining but kicking and turning every few seconds as he did when nightmares plagued him. Another blown-out "TV" box lay in the corner of the room next to splinters of broken glass and light bulbs. She lay next to a crumbling wall wrapped in something soft and warm. Once again, the calming effect this wrapping had on her showed that not everything the Old Worlders created was a thing of pure evil.

But that woman's eyes flashed through her mind again, and she shuddered at the thought. She had never been so close to the precipice of death. She could almost feel the touch of the Great Spirit upon her shoulder, still stung with pain.

She risked a look at the bloody bandage that clung to the affected area. She winced as she slowly peeled back the white layers to reveal what was impossible: any evidence of the Deathspitter's impact on her shoulder was replaced by a cross-stitch that ended just beneath her neck.

"Do not touch."

The voice startled her, but she still could barely reach her feet. She reached for her dagger and found nothing by her side. She truly was alone, and with no alternative, she turned to face this new threat.

Her panic subsided, replaced by a strange sense of wonder, as she looked up to see her Tribal brother watching her from atop a rotten wooden table. He seemed preoccupied cutting something on the table face, and only as her eyes met his did he bow low and hop off the table toward her.

"It is good you have awoken," he said. "It shamed me to use a warrior's weapon. Take this thing from my unworthy hands."

He held her bone knife to her with both hands, head bowed and supplicant. She blushed, despite herself.

"Thank you, brother," she replied, taking the knife with a shaking hand.

"No thank," he said, placing both his palms on his knees and gripping them as though he stood before a God. "You have returned my life to me."

"But I delivered it with this thing of death," she said.

"That is the way of things," he replied. He looked at her this time; his eyes were two ashen clouds set deep within a blank canvas. She knew there was a sadness within them beyond any she had ever comprehended.

"A life for a life," he continued. "That is the way of things, sister. You free me, and you avenge the spirit of my bonded. No more shall she weep for me, or I for her. I thank you, but I cannot rejoice. I must offer my final prayers for her and let her soul fly to the Great Spirit."

Rain-Born only nodded solemnly. It was strange – she had not been gone from her home for long but already felt that the farmer"s slow rate of speech, coupled with his supplication and dark tone, felt so alien and unreal. She was so used to Jespar's quick wit and snappy conversation. She found herself fumbling, unsure of how to even speak with this one who had surely gone through as much pain as any being on this dry earth could sustain.

"I will re-dress your wound," he went on. "Then you must rest."

She watched him gather his materials and start removing and applying a new bandage. His hands were firm yet gentle—the hands of both a farmer and a soft spirit.

"The luck of the Great Spirit was on your side, sister," he said as he worked. "The Deathspitter's tooth did not cut deep."

So he had brought her back from the brink of what she thought was surely death. She wondered if there was truly such a thing as luck left in this world. Surely, the Great Spirit had not decided her time was over if he had brought this one to her - a farmer and a healer both. That was no common combination among the Hanakh.

"I am called Rain-Born," she said suddenly. "What are you called, brother?"

He considered the question with a short pause. It was almost as if he had forgotten his name entirely, and he brought the tips of his fingers to the eagle tattoo on his temple as though trying to will the moniker back into existence. Then with the finality of a thundercrack, it struck him, and he said it with pride:

"I am called Weeping-Ash."

She nodded gravely. He was no mere farmer, then, for those imbued with the "-Ash" suffix of the Hanakh were trained in ceremonial burial and communion with the dead. It was rare for a farmer – a land man – to be so preoccupied with such affairs of the spirit.

She watched him go to gather more bandages from where Jespar was resting. He reached for them sheepishly, trying not to disturb the sleeping hound. Whether through respect or fear, she did not know.

As she watched him apply the dressing, trying to stop herself from gasping at the sensitivity of her shoulder, a thought suddenly entered her mind.

"How long did I sleep for?" she asked.

"Three suns have set since you freed me, sister Rain-Born."

She slumped back, numb. She barely even felt the pain that welled up as her wound was bound – the mark of her weakness. And her defeat.

"Then I have failed," she said.

The farmer called Weeping-Ash looked up at her.

"Four days have passed, and I do not have what Father-Mother seeks," she explained, through lips dust-caked and worn.

Weeping-Ash tightened the bandage and cut the ends. He looked upon his sister, wracked with despair, and pondered the nature of this strange earth: where a huntress of the tribe who had slain evil from the Old World did not triumph in her hour of victory but sat like a mourner before the one she had saved.

"What do our people say of the warrior sent on a quest, Rain-Born?"

She met his ashen eyes with her own, and she could almost feel the snake tattoo on her arm strike forth to answer the question for her.

"A warrior's duty ends only in death," she replied.

"And you still breathe, sister," he said as he stood and bowed before her. "That is enough. Think instead upon your companion – the hound. I have marked him for his strange speech but also his form. He walks in the sun, but his heart is full of shadow."

She nodded and took a cursory glance at Jespar's still slumbering form.

"Thank you, Weeping-Ash."

He smiled, but no emotion could be detected behind the gesture. She watched him go as she began to feel the specter of sleep touch her brow again and close the lids of her heavy eyes. Before she drifted off under its spell, she marked the strange grace of his cumbersome movements. He did not walk on the earth – he trod. Every footstep seemed to belong to one who carried the sun"s weight on his back. She watched him leave the house and step outside into the realm of dust and echoes, his every movement one of solemn and pained finality.

...

When she next opened her eyes, something large and soggy dominated her vision. It sniffed her deeply and then recoiled.

"Ah!"

Jespar's face slowly resolved before her eyes as she blinked in confusion and brushed the wet ooze of sleep from her eyes. They stared at each other, almost in disbelief.

As usual, he was the first to speak.

"Don't get the wrong idea," he huffed. "I can't have my escort down on the job. The big guy told me you were up and about. I had to see it for myself, is all."

For some reason, he would not look at her directly, instead making a swift movement to scratch his right ear. Then, yipping lightly with pain, he remembered himself and switched positions to scratch the left one.

She watched him as the sun came over the horizon, her heart weary and numb.

"Jespar, I-"

"You don't have to say anything," he said.

"It is my fault," she stated plainly, her lips quivering. She felt like she was in a daze. Seeing him here, still among the living, without the blood-soaked snout and torn, bleeding ear – that final vision of her companion that had swam before her eyes in the world of darkness and dreams – was more than she could have hoped to see. She felt her mouth catch in her throat as she tried to find the right words to express her happiness and shame. But all that came to light were those exact words, and she repeated them:

"It is my fault."

She bent her head low to look at the pathetic image of herself, swaddled like some dying horse in these blankets. She did not deserve to wear the snake on her arm. She should scratch it off, cast it away into the abyss of The Deadlands where those vile Chainmen had crawled from. How could she possibly return home now? At best, she would be exiled for her failure, and worse, she would be written into the annals of the Hanakh's greatest disappointments among their warriors. All this because she had risked the life of herself, her brother, and her companion. She had forced them to bleed for nothing more than her pride, and now the entire Tribe would bleed with them.

"At least you saved someone," Jespar mumbled.

Rain-Born returned her attention to him, marking his face for its melancholy. She had not thought about the other prisoner bound with her brother. Jespar could feel her look lingering on him and tried his best, at the moment, not to raise his voice.

"Don't ask," was all he said, low and abrupt. "I've seen some shit, but when I found him down there with that girl..."

She watched his face reflect an expression she had never seen him enact. He narrowed his eyes as though squinting to perceive something unknown to her and then snarled as though a phantom pain struck him.

"He was gone when I got to him," he said.

It was such a simple statement. It told of nothing, and yet, within the words were the same echoes of regret and loss she had felt bombard her mind in the last few hours of her awakening.

Did you dream, too, Jespar? She pondered. Is your mind still haunted by the spirit of the Evil Ones, as I am?

She remembered his bloody, bruised face in that house. Still, now she could see the tell-tale signs of scarring across his cheek if she looked hard enough. She fumbled as she tried to speak, and through great effort at holding back the tide of her emotions, she finally managed to garble something by way of apology to him.

"All your pain is my doing, Jespar, not yours."

"Bullshit," he said, and the ferocity of the word struck her like a well-loosed arrow. "If I had wanted to turn tail and run, I would have."

"Why didn't you?"

She surprised herself with the question, and her own shock met his as he finally looked at her. Both their weary eyes met and looked through the other, each trying to grasp at something behind the other"s words – something that would finally let them look beyond the surface of corporeality and into the heart of the tight-lipped one they traveled with.

A shadow cast itself over both huntress and dog as the light of day receded. The world was bathed in twilight, but neither looked at the crimson-streaked sky. They both fixed on the other until Jespar's long sigh of defeat broke their trance.

"I'm done running," he said. "Running"s exactly what I've been doing since I was born, and it's done nothing but get me in more trouble. You think you're a failure?" he asked, and his tone was accusatory and sharp, so much so it stung. "I was meant to have one job in this whole fucking world. I was meant to make someone happy. Simple, right? But when the shit hit the fan, what did I do? I ran away. Like always."

Visions of whirring helicopter blades razor-sharp flashed through his mind. Then, Nicole got in the vehicle and smiled at him as he sat behind her. Then fire – a swirling vortex of flame, licking at all of them on the sands of the dead world. Her crying out in pain. The sounds of gunfire echoing in the dark...and one man walking through the fire, staring at him with the predatory eyes of a wolf.

"The way I see it," he said, shaking the memory from his mind. "The people trying to make this world an even shittier place aren't running away. So, why should I?"

Her arms shot out of their own accord, and she drew him close, holding his head with one hand and cradling his small body with her other arm. He was startled at first, and she felt that he might resist. But he did nothing but sigh again and close his eyes. She shifted slightly in her blanket and made space for him to rest his head on her chest. She did not have the words to tell him she was proud to have him as her companion. She thought, perhaps, this would suffice.

He let her hold him. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had done so. Deep down, he had almost forgotten that he was still a dog. He was genetically predisposed to the inelegant, primordial apes that were humankind.

But, hey, he had enough sense to know they weren't all bad. Some of them he could even tolerate. He could even call them friends.

He let himself relax into her and felt his limbs numb to the slow onset of sleep.

She's warm, he thought, just like she was. Damn.

Together they let sleep take hold of them, Jespar's fur warming her while her arms clung to him like an anchor, keeping both of them whole at this moment.