Chester was badly playing some drums he found around the house, when he felt a hard pull on his hair.

"Oh, shit!"

He wears a grimace of fury, which softens as he discovers the infant. The girl wears a colourful, feathered dress, her arms and legs painted in swirling cloud patterns, a style that is matched by the simplicity of the brown fur coat that engulfs her head.

"Why all the secrecy?" The swordsman's curiosity piqued, he reaches out a hand to take the sack from her. The girl stands, stiff as a board, watching the approaching fingers very quietly.

"Maybe she's deformed" Ash says in a warning tone. Chester looks at the mechanic, who is currently sitting in a corner in a lotus pose, examining, cleaning, and calibrating the instruments in a toolbox, a task at which she seems obsessive. "With no ozone layer, and the earth's magnetic field atrophied, cancer and solar mutants are everyday tragedies, especially in these poor, godforsaken areas"

Erika, looking at no one in particular, and chewing on a strip of dried meat from the looting in dome, lets out a barb.

"The other races learned little from the beating in Neuschwabenland, with the failure of Operation Highjump. It took them too long to realise that dropping nuclear warheads through the atmosphere is a crap idea"

Chester lowers his hand and places it on his hip, already aware of the rudeness of his gesture. He gives the girl a smile and decides to speak frankly.

"The body is easy to cut. It gets damaged and old, my little friend, it's what's inside that counts!" He points his finger at her, causing her to look at her chest, hoping to find a red dot. "Build an honest, generous, and courageous spirit.... A soul that above all else you can love... Be like a sword and nothing will be able to resist your edge!"

Suri raises her head. If Chester's words touched a piece inside her, no reaction showed it. Since the hair thing didn't work, she now tries pulling him by the hand.

"Does she want me to follow her?" Chester suspects aloud.

"Obvious" says Erika.

"It's probably the guide your friend told you about" Ash points out.

Eager to have a good time in the hot springs, the three set off with Suri in the orange afternoon sun. The tribals are engrossed by the passing of the strangers, and although the adults kept a respectful distance, the children, more intrepid, venture a closer look. Erika bares her white fangs, leaps and snarls like a fury, sending them running in terror.

They head down the left bank of a river that, from the cracked and dry sediment, is rightly assumed to be in a long dry spell. That natural channel runs alongside the mountain and continues to the horizon. There is a cave carved into the side of the mountain, guarded by sentries armed with bone spears and solemn expressions. The threshold is adorned with scribbles and chimeras with an antediluvian air. Nadjela has arranged everything, the guards give the go-ahead for the strangers. Chester, Erika, and Ash, pass into the sacred place.

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

The corridor is steep, and its descent is lit by rag torches dipped in whale blubber. Chimneys dug into the ceiling serve as an exhaust for the steam rising from the bottom. Sweaty from head to toe, they reach a stage where thermal waters flow and fill a large circular pool, which according to the legends of La Cuna is as infinite as the sky.

If the distant lands are forbidden as profane, the hot springs are forbidden as holy ground. Four stone benches occupy the sides of the pool, and reclining on the one closest to the exit, lies a prostrate woman with the sensuality of Cleopatra... Or so it would be if she were a woman.

The opal-eyed teenager with brassy locks in her brown hair interrupts the kiss with one of the four older boys accompanying her. Gaita doesn't even bother to adjust her hair, let alone the dressing gown that slides down her shoulders. There is an avid, sinful feeling on her face that grows as she asks.

"Do you wish to join us?" She speaks without his voice stiffening, even with those athletic boys impishly caressing his thighs.

Chester looks sideways, but the question turns out to be with them. The fact that he recognises Nadjela's features in that succubus leaves his throat sour.

"Thanks, but no. We'll go to the back"

"Oh, really...? Pity. I've never been with foreign devils before"

As far as the Lancaster is concerned, the little tramp can continue to sit and wait for her curiosity to be satisfied. He turns to Suri to tell her to leave the unsuitable environment, but the masked girl left them unnoticed.

The group skirts the pond to the bench at the far end. There was no dressing room, but no embarrassment either. Chester and Erika are soldiers, and Ash already knew what it meant to live through hard times where modesty flies out the window. All three undress, though it is Erika who draws the eye to the mural of images that is her body.

The tight-fitting suit conceals a second skin made of ink, which starts at the ankles and rises in rows of wires around her legs, protecting the angry faces of Sturmmann soldiers firing machine guns. As they climb, the brave faces give way to a storm of panzers, planes with wings marked by the cross, and bright red roses on their thighs, adorning grinning skulls, and guarding the swastika perched on the mount of Venus, pierced from above by the ceremonial SS dagger. The tattoos leave Erika's stomach and breasts clean, to ascend steadily up her spine and arms, tracing the oath of allegiance to Hitler in the middle of her back:

I swear to you Adolf Hitler

Führer, Chancellor of the Reich

Loyalty and courage

I pledge to follow you to the death

To you, and to the superiors appointed by you

So help me God.

Crowned on the shoulder blades by a giant eagle reminiscent of Rome's most glorious times.

Chester, except for the lion tattoo on his arm, wears his disposition differently, with scars from the times of cholera and lead. The burns, the marks, the cuts, less numerous than they should be, because his family forced him to undergo surgical masks and skin transplants to cover the scars, which were considered ignoble and in bad taste. Hence his appreciation of Ash's botched stitches, which he wears on his forehead like a medal of merit.

Ash also has dents, but from bumps and bruises, or from not having enough money to buy skin care creams. Regardless, as the three of them slowly dive into the warm water (Chester clinging to the edge of the pond), they gasp in unison with pleasure. After all, they are all equally human, equally imperfect.