The Wanderer comes at dusk. By daybreak, there's one fewer to feed. Perhaps a blessing, perhaps a curse. Most likely, both.

*

WHEN THE WANDERER came to the Deadlands, the people there laid down palm fronds to adorn her path. They always knew which hut she would visit, as the people there were familiar with death.

She came for the witch on a particularly hot day. The sun hung low in the sky like an overblown red eye. The sands were more restless, grains sliding over each other as though eager to glimpse the desert's latest visitor. There were no clouds, leaving the sun to burn, unfiltered. It rained misery upon the people, as flesh blistered, and pools of sweat gathered at feet.

Eris had covered her head in a scarf. She wore a cape, black and tattered, a dusty tunic and trousers, and worn boots. She looked like anyone else trying to survive among the Deadlands. Only she had a horse. Windwalker strode beside her, her reins clamped in Eris's hand. She guided the horse across the shifting sands, despite the horse's trepidation. Windwalker hated when the ground beneath her hooves moved and had Eris not been used to it, she would have hated it too. But the horse trusted its rider, and allowed itself to be guided, down one dune, up another. The pattern repeated until they caught sight of the village.

Huts made of stone and muck stood against the sand like worn gravestones from ages past. Most were beige, with rounded windows, and tattered fabric shielding their entrances, save one. One at the village's edge, was red.

Blood-red in a sea of bone-white.

A witch's hut. Sourness spilled out of the hut's curtained entrance. Eris recognized it immediately.

Death knows death, after all.

She left Windwalker at the edge of the village, the black horse pawing the ground in agitation. Her mane rose on the breeze, a plead in her whinny that matched the look in her dark eyes.

Eris patted the beast. "Wait for me." 

She knew nightfall hit the horse the hardest. The eerie stillness, the lack of moonlight. Carrions came out to scavenge then, the monstrous black birds swooping from the sky to pick apart what the Deadlands hadn't already claimed. But the Ruin had touched all. And most animals had fallen sick. Food was scarce, and the carrions had grown desperate. They no longer feasted on what was already dead, but took their chances with the living. A horse like Windwalker could feed them for days. A week, maybe. To be without hunger for a week, the gods couldn't bestow a greater blessing.

"If you sense anything," Eris continued, gathering her pack off the horse's back. "Head to the stables, there." She pointed at two ancient sand walls, separated by a smaller wall of weathered stone. An awning of rotted wood provided shelter from the sun.

The horse whinnied.

Eris nodded, loaded the pack onto her back, then began her trek, keeping to the path the villagers had laid out. Palm fronds crunched beneath her boots. 

*

Gatta was waiting for her. Gatta had nothing better to do than wait for her. It had been many moons since she could hold her hands steady, stripping Orimsi roots of their flesh and boiling them over the fire to thicken their sap for her potions. Her voice had long since gone hoarse; no longer could she speak with the power of her goddess and command the sky to split open and rain its succor upon the soil. Her flesh had wrinkled, covering up the beauty of her youth. And her eyes had dulled. She could no longer make the trek to the Shallows, or steep her teas or make her fires. There were no songs to keep her company. She had but a small hut, on the edge of the Deadlands, and the loneliness of it all.

When the flap of fabric protecting her home from the wind pulled back, and Eris walked through Gatta was not surprised, but relieved.

She sat up in her bed, though her bones ached, and her chest grew heavy, and a flame seemingly ignited in her stomach. She managed a smile. "You've come."

Eris was slow to move about the hut. She undid her headscarf, leaving it on the table that had once been Gatta's pride. It was where she had filled up waterskins with Astra's gifts, one for each of the villagers. The goddess had extended Gatta's life, as well as blessed her with a useful magic and for three hundred years, Gatta kept her village sated. They never knew the thirst, so long as she was alive. But now that she was dying, the villagers prepared to leave. In a thousand years the village would disappear, and her body would be part of the sands.

The thought of her becoming another corpse to be crunched beneath Eris's boots saddened her.

"Of course I would."

Eris spoke so matter-of-factly, Gatta couldn't help but chuckle. But the once lively, bubbly sound had grown weary, raspy. Rusted. 

"The great Living Death come to see me off to the Greenworld." She leaned back in her bed, the rough wooden posts cutting into her shoulders. "They'll say you killed me."

Eris glanced her way, her dark hair, now unbound, flowing down her back. Gatta had never seen a waterfall, but she'd heard the stories and she imagined Eris's hair as lovely as one. "They think me death already."

A sigh rattled through Gatta's lips. "Do you think he'll come?"

"No," Eris said, settling herself on a stool beside the bed. 

She sat with a straight back, her hands fisted and resting on her thighs. She had on her person no weapon, just the contents of a single satchel and it was too slight even for the smallest dagger. It made Gatta wonder what she would do, if Akul did show. How was she to kill a god, without the necessary tools? Gatta could make rain fall, but it would all be in vain, if not for the tools of her work -  the buckets and baskets for collection, the cart for transporting them back to the village. The waterskins to preserve every precious drop. 

"Akul hasn't shown his face in three thousand years. I'm sure he'll wait another three thousand just to spite me."

Gatta's head raised. She locked eyes with Eris, the other woman's face as smooth and unsettled as the silt in the Shallows. "You never talk about him much."

"There's not much to talk about."

Gatta leaned forward, the blanket slipping off her shoulders. It gathered in her lap, folds of soft, dirty cotton. She ran her fingers over them, remembering a time when her hands had been that soft, when, as a child, she and her mother would go to the end of the Deadlands, and walk the Shallows, collecting slugs from the silt to roast for that night's dinner. Gatta had loved slugs; they tasted of the sea. Her mother had told her they tasted that way, because their bodies wouldn't let them forget. They hadn't just lived in the sea, the sea had lived in them. They carried it with them. When Gatta's mother fell ill, Gatta took comfort knowing she would carry her mother with her.

She realized now, such a comforting thought might be tortuous to someone like Eris. Someone who had lived three thousand years. Someone who knew the world before the Ruin.

"Eris?" she asked, her voice suddenly low. Gatta always tried to keep the awe she had for Eris deep in her heart because she knew Eris would not want to be admired, or worshipped. She thought Akul's gift a curse and would have no one see it any differently. 

Eris tilted her head. She didn't speak, but her eyes bade Gatta ask her question. "Why are you here?"

Eris glanced at her satchel. She undid the tie that had it hanging from her hip, and opened it. Out slid a tiny vial into her palm. She held it up, sunlight catching in the glass. A murky substance crested against the sides. "I promised."

That had not been what Gatta had meant, but she was thankful anyway. She hadn't feared her death, but she had been afraid of the pain. Eris promised to see to it she would feel none. At least, it was a promise fulfilled.

Gatta shook her head as Eris placed the vial at the edge of her bed. "No. I thank you," she nodded at the vial, "but no. That's not what I meant. Why are you here?"

"To see you as you enter the Greenworld."

"But why? I can die on my own."

"I know." Eris suddenly moved forward, stretching an arm out. She reached for Gatta, taking the old woman's hand in her own. "But it is better to go like this. With someone taking your hand." A shadow fell across Eris's face. "I have been with you since you were born. I ought to be with you now."

Gatta's next words got caught in her throat. She felt strangled, and strangely enough, free. "You are my oldest friend."

"And you, mine." Eris gave her hand a squeeze.

"Then let me ask, from one old friend to another, why come here? Why wait for him to show when you know he won't? Why hunt him down? Why rebuke his gift? He gave you what you wanted–"

"Akul bestowed upon me a curse," Eris said, her grip tightening. "One that speaks to the depth of his cruelty."

Confusion crossed Gatta's expression. "How so? Because so many would kill to be immortalized like you, Eris."

Eris' eyes flickered to her face. "Akul believed himself betrayed, and me his betrayer. His punishment was death. He plunged a dagger into my stomach, and so much pain flowed into me I thought that was it, surely, the price of my betrayal paid in full. I saw the Greenworld. Lush and fat and thriving. Akul showed me the valley near where I grew up. I saw our daughter among the wildflowers, dancing. I wanted to run to her, to pull her into my chest and never let go. I wanted to drown her in kisses, one for each year I've had to live without her. And then, I felt fire tear into me, my lungs ignited by breath. Greenworld was gone and I was alone and alive. The wound had closed, but that agony of seeing my daughter, of leaving her behind, never left. So I will kill Akul, I will break his curse. And I will see her again."

Eris's words had plunged the hut into silence. Even outside, the world had seemed to calm, Eris's pain reaching far beyond Gatta's little hut.

"Eris?" Gatta asked when the silence had grown too loud. 

The other woman glanced up.

"After you return to your daughter, come find me. I'll roast us all some slugs, and we can watch the sun set over the ocean."

Smiling, Eris gave a nod.

Gatta turned her attention to the vial, picked it up, undid the stopper. "I think it's time."

Eris stood. 

Gatta's fingers trembled as the vial grazed her lips. A nervous chuckle spilled from her mouth. "I wonder if Mama will be waiting for me." 

"Is that what you wish for?" 

She glanced up into her friend's face surprised to find warmth had softened Eris's expression. "Yes."

"Then it will be so. Akul will grant you that much." Eris smiled.

Gatta looked at her hut. At the dirty rafters, and patchy thatched roof. Her table, where she worked all her best miracles. The fire pit where she'd shared many meals with her mama and Eris. Outside her window, the sun had sunk below the dunes, leaving an orange stain in Dust's sky. 

"In peace we are delivered," she murmured. 

"In peace we find the Greenworld." 

Gatta brought the vial to her lips and drank.

The Wanderer comes at dusk. By daybreak, there's one fewer to feed. Perhaps a blessing. Perhaps a curse. Most likely, both.

That morning a witch had been fed to the sands, much to the carrion's delight. 

Author's note: It's hard to write a stoic main character. That's it. Oh, and 2,000 word milestone met. :)