Samantha and David chatted as they rode side-by-side down the centerline of the highway at a trot, fast enough to reach the town in less than two hours but slow enough to not tax the horses.
As they rounded a corner, they spotted a group of three people walking in their direction on the side of the road, two adults and a teenager. The three carried survival gear and looked like they expected a long trek in the mountains. Their gear had likely been packed weeks ago in preparation for the apocalypse, as it looked like they had left their home in a rush without getting properly dressed for the trip. They also looked beaten and haggard; one of the adults walked with a limp, and all three had blood on their clothes. When the group saw Samantha and David headed toward them, the adults grabbed the teenager and they all dove off the road.
Samantha shot David a questioning look, but he just shrugged with a frown. Careful of their surroundings, they rode over to where the group had disappeared and saw that the three had hastily tramped through the forest, headed directly perpendicular to the road.
"They made themselves stupidly easy to track," David observed, examining the broken branches and blood-stained leaves.
"They probably were just scared and ran. They didn't look dangerous. Or even capable, for that matter. I can't imagine they're in any shape to face whatever they're heading into."
"It sounds like that means they're running away from something even worse."
Samantha shrugged. "Maybe? I wouldn't have guessed that the city could become a dystopian hellscape in just two days, but who knows? I'd like to imagine they've pulled together to create a bastion of hope and civility or whatever, but I doubt it. People are the worst."
The runaway trio obviously didn't want their help right now, so they got back on the horses and continued their brisk ride. The strange scene had seemed like a fluke, but not twenty minutes later they caught a glimpse of another group. These seemed to handle themselves a lot better, staying off the road and moving more carefully and quietly. Samantha wouldn't have seen them at all if David hadn't pointed them out. She waved to get their attention but they disappeared behind the terrain the moment they realized they'd been spotted.
"Skittish buggers, aren't they." she observed.
"We've got the advantage on horseback, so they're acting pretty sensibly," David pointed out. "I'd probably do the same if I was in their position, heading into the wild after an apocalypse. Like you said, people are the worst, so they'd have to assume we're dangerous. In fact, I'd be a lot more cautious out here on the road right now if guns still worked and we had to worry about being sniped from the bushes."
"Yeah, humans suck. Stupid apex predators," she commiserated.
For a while, Samantha expected to see yet another group of travelers on the road or in the woods, but the trip grew oddly uninterrupted. For half an hour they maintained their watchful silence, scanning the forest for further encounters, but none came. What's more, the industrial modernity of the empty interstate was uncomfortably juxtaposed with the silent, feral indifference of forest around them in a way that finally drove home to Samantha that civilization had fallen for real. This highway was never empty, and yet they now rode right down the centerline with impunity and not a car in sight. It was... eerie.
For months everyone had talked about the coming End Of The World so casually, like it was this inside joke we were all laughing at. Like, people had posted memes of increasingly absurd rocket blueprints for escaping our doomed planet. And there was this wildly popular app called "Use It Or Lose It" for people to make sure they used up all their vacation time before the end of the world. In fact, there was even a disturbingly successful push to change the abbreviation of November from "Nov" to "Nver" since November was never going to come this time. Samantha thought this was all as funny as the next gal, but that's because it was... well, it was only ever just an idea. Just a joke.
Except then the goddamn world had actually ended for real, and Samantha was still here. That was the problem. This hadn't been one of the options. Either civilization was supposed to endure the disaster and we all make sarcastic jokes on the Internet about how inconvenient it was, or we all die and it doesn't matter. Those were the only two ways it was supposed to go. Riding down an abandoned interstate while the scattered and bloodied remnants of humanity skulk through the forest and hide from sight wasn't on the list of possible outcomes.
It was all wrong. The empty road, the motionless trees, the constant blood, the absence of bird song; Samantha felt suddenly, irrationally certain she was traversing the silent remains of her own dead world, and it was not somewhere she was supposed to be. Like the world was now just a bad imitation of itself.
The silence. That was the big part. She needed to not be alone. Or rather, she needed to not feel alone.
"Hey David?"
"Hm?"
"You said you had some stuff to tell me, right?"
"When?"
"After the last bear thing. Like an hour ago? You told me not to say 'what if' and then you promised that you'd talk to me."
"I promised?"
Samantha narrowed her eyes, daring him to fight her about this, but David just chuckled.
"Okay, sure. Before we talk about things that we could do better, let's figure out what we think went well."
They began to discuss the events more frankly, both the good and the bad. David had a lot of good feedback about communication and coordination which, rather than leaving her feeling chastised made Samantha feel accepted, like she was an important part of a team and worth investing time into. She liked it. It felt good to be valued and relevant.
While it was nice, she noticed that David was avoiding something. She could see it in the look of indecision on his face at each lull in the conversation and by his subtle frown of disappointment when the moment passed. It was fleeting, almost invisible, and David likely thought she hadn't noticed. However, this was Samantha he was dealing with; she could read him like a book... no, she could read him like a billboard. It wasn't even hard.
She was certain that this was about her "issues" with magic, but presumably he didn't know how to bring it up without being offensive. She didn't really want to talk about it either, but it became increasingly annoying that he kept conspicuously avoiding it. He nearly got up the courage to say something, but then looked away and pretended he was just coughing. Whatever it was, the guy just couldn't let it go.
"David," she said with exasperated sweetness, "it's going to keep bugging you till you grow a pair and just ask me about it already."
"I... what?"
She threw him a silent look but didn't elaborate.
"Are you sure?" he asked after a moment.
Samantha found herself growing more and more confident by the second. Perhaps David's uncertainty sparked something in her competitive spirit, or perhaps seeing that she'd been right about him made her feel more in control of the situation. While she would still prefer to not have to talk about this stuff, she became increasingly certain that she could handle it. She was in charge. She owned this.
"As fun as it has been for the past ten minutes," she said with a smirk, "watching you struggle like this is seriously making my eye twitch. Do us both a favor: stop agonizing about whatever it is and just spit it out already."
He sighed, defeated. She grinned to herself. She had totally called it. "I'll tell you what," she magnanimously proposed, "I promise you I won't get mad or offended, no matter what you have to say. Just this once, you get a free shot and I promise to be a good sport about it."
"Okay," David said, "Let me figure out how to phrase this. So, let's see... Okay, I know you said you didn't want... Wait, no, you said you weren't comfortable... um...." Then he stalled out. This guy was hopeless.
"I'm not comfortable with doing magic? Yep, that's me. And then I did it anyway? I totally did. Was it exactly the thing I said I wouldn't do? Yes sir, it was. And to top it all off, I was super embarrassed about not having the self control to follow my own goddamn rules. Yes, indeed. That is Samantha in a nutshell. If the story of my life had a title it would be: 'I Definitely Knew Better Yet I Did It Anyway: A Memoir.' But I don't think that was actually your question, was it?"
"I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to make you feel bad or bring up a difficult--"
"I know. That's why I threw it all out there. I'm one hundred percent aware of my own failures and I can talk about it without being offended. Don't hold back on my account. Just talk to me directly, like I'm me from right now, not that frightened little girl I was an hour ago. Okay?"
She could feel herself riding the bravado and self-assurance, the heady confidence burning away her doubts and leaving only clarity. Empty, dry, burned-out clarity. She knew exactly what David wanted to talk about, and she would show him-- no, show herself that she wasn't afraid to deal with it. Even if she had to plow through this conversation like a freight train, she would deal with the weight that hung in the air and made it impossible to talk about anything else.
She knew he was worried about their safety, and rightly so. He was sensible. He was reasonable. He was the type to plan ahead. He'd be concerned about what Samantha could actually do. It was true she could have taken that bear down much sooner. With a wave of her hand she could have sliced off its head the first moment they saw it. And yet she instead made them run for their lives. She nearly got them all killed a dozen times over because she selfishly refused to act, and David wouldn't be okay with that. That whole mess was her fault, and she wasn't going to dispute that fact. What's more, now that David saw how destructive her magic was, he would be afraid of her and would want to make sure she didn't accidentally cut off his head, too. If she was honest with herself, she was worried about it as well. Perhaps they could come up with some way to restrain or restrict her, or maybe they could cripple her abilities somehow. She was totally on board with that. She was mature enough to recognize that she was a danger to everyone around her, and as long as her bravado held up, she'd be willing to accept whatever had to be done to her to keep the others safe. She just hoped it wouldn't hurt too much.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
"That magic you did back there..." David began, talking softly as if trying to not scare her away. He wore a far away expression, lost in some memory.
"Yeah. It was some pretty serious shit," Samantha provided, stoically.
"Definitely... It was really something. A bit scary perhaps, but powerful... Can you teach me?"
"I know, and I think-- Wait, what?"
"You don't have to commit to anything! I just-- I was hoping you'd be willing to at least try."
"You want me to teach you?"
"I'm just asking you to try, that's all. I know there's no guarantee I could even learn it. But maybe you'd be willing to give it a shot and see how it goes."
"Hold on, you want me to teach you what now?" Samantha could feel her certainty and confidence draining away like water through sand as she tried to catch up. The conversation had barely begun and she already lost the plot.
"Your magic? I definitely saw you do something."
Samantha still struggled to shift conversational gears and catch up with what David was asking. None of this was going how she expected, but she focused on just the request, thinking back to the details of that last bear encounter. "You're talking about the wind blade, right?"
"Maybe. I couldn't tell what it was, it looked really powerful though."
"Hold on, do you mean the thing that smashed through the barrier? That one was Apollo, not me."
"Apollo? You mean even the horse can do magic?" David looked stunned with a touch of... was it embarrassment?
"I know, right? I didn't know he could until right then, but I suppose it's not that crazy. I didn't recognize the formation, but he definitely does the same type of magic as me." Samantha's face fell as a vague concern that had been nagging at her finally crystalized in her mind. "Except, now," she said, "I'm not so sure what to think about it."
"What do you mean? Why not?"
She spoke slowly, partly to herself, narrating her thoughts on the subject out loud as they formed: "Apparently he and I are both wind magic specialists. Yay, right? I feel like I should be proud of him. And I definitely am proud of him. But I don't know; I'm also worried for him. Does this mean he's going through the same stuff that I am? Apollo's always been my perfect, beautiful boy and I don't want to imagine this magic turning him into... one of those things. But is that just how it has to work? Do we trade our souls away for power, like some sort of Faustian bargain? A few of us may gain powerful abilities to fight these new monsters, but if we turn into monsters ourselves, then is the power truly a weapon or is it just a curse?"
David sat back in his saddle and watched Samantha in contemplative silence, occasionally glancing back and forth between her and Apollo. The moment of silence between them stretched on and on while the clip-clop clip-clop of trotting hoofbeats on pavement echoed between the trees. Eventually David nodded with a frown and spoke.
"That sounds like a 'no' then. Right?"
"A 'no' to what?" Samantha furrowed her brow. She felt like she had just shared something fairly heavy, and while she didn't know what kind of response she expected, it wasn't this. "Are you still talking about teaching you magic?"
David sent back an embarrassed look of hopefulness.
"David, you already know how to do magic. You seem pretty good at it. Why in the seven hells would you want to learn my cursed variant?"
"You see? That's the thing!" He looked even more embarrassed now. "I don't know how to do any of this!"
She gave him a sidelong glance complete with a suspicious eyebrow. Boyo had some explaining to do with a declaration like that.
"I originally thought that it was maybe a girl thing," he continued hastily, "You and Evie and Dana don't seem to have any trouble at all with magic. It just always works for you. But me and James? Neither of us can do anything. It just doesn't work. But that can't be the whole story, right?"
"What about Gary, then?" she countered.
David just waved a hand dismissively. "Gary was a wizard even before there was magic. Gary is gonna Gary, and the rest of the universe will have to find a way to deal with that fact."
Samantha laughed. "Yeah, that's fair. But you've definitely been doing magic this whole time. Fairly often, too."
"Once with the mountain lion," he held up a finger, "and once with the bear just now," another finger. That's only twice. Plus, both times I was about to die and the magic thing just flowed out at the very last moment. I've tried dozens of times to do it when there wasn't an emergency, but it doesn't work. Magic just never works for me."
"What are you talking about? You're constantly doing magic stuff, often several times per hour." It seemed pretty damn obvious to her.
"Yeah, well, Evelyn insists that I've been doing something to you all along, but I've certainly never seen it."
"Oh man," she said, shaking her head with a chuckle, "I definitely can feel it. It sends a hot shiver down my back and makes me forget to breathe for a second. I don't know what it's like for you, but you must have at least seen my reactions, right?"
"I..." David stammered with a growing sense of horror in his eyes.
"Oh, don't give me that look! It doesn't hurt or anything. I actually like it! It feels kinda nice."
David's eyes widened as he went from simply horrified to a convincing rendition of a deer caught in oncoming traffic.
Samantha laughed internally as she realized where this was going. The mana technique he used when he helped her wasn't even remotely scandalous, but David didn't need to know that. She knew it was a horrible idea to play around with this, and she'd never be able to forgive herself if he stopped helping her. But talking about the real problem would be far more embarrassing than just pretending there was some erotic undertone to it all. Also, this was way more fun.
"Oh my god," she laughed with a predatory smirk, "you're still thinking about Evelyn's 'sticky mana' comments from last night aren't you? Sure, I said it feels good, but it's not that good. I'll have you know I'm not so easily satisfied, David."
"Sticky mana?"
"Didn't Evie say sticky? Or slippery?"
"No. She--"
"Stringy? Hot ropes of--"
"No, come on! She said--"
"Tastes better after you eat pineapple?"
"What she SAID was-- Hold on, really?"
Samantha shrugged. "So I've heard. I've never personally gotten it to work, though, no matter how much pineapple I eat."
"I..." David blinked as he replayed that statement though his head. "Are you sure you're doing it right?"
"Who's to say? Mana has only existed for a few days, so I doubt anyone's managed to conduct a proper taste test of it yet. Oh! If yellow mana is supposed to be pineapple, then would red mana taste like strawberries? Or would it be watermelon?"
"Wait... weren't we talking about... uh..."
David scowled in confusion and Samantha grinned internally at how easy it was to mess with him. She grinned externally, too, because of course she did.
"Actually," she continued, "we could pick up some pineapple in town and conduct our own experiments at home, me and you. You know, for science. What do you think? Wanna try it?"
And... we lost him. David.exe has stopped working. His face kept flickering between variations of embarrassment and confusion as he tried to figure out what exactly she was proposing.
"Aw, come on, it'll be fun!" she teased. "If we have to do it anyway, we should at least enjoy ourselves a bit while we're at it. Right?" She arched an eyebrow and wiggled her hips playfully in the saddle. The eyebrow thing probably didn't land; she was trying to imitate a sultry expression she once saw in a cosmetics ad, but with Samantha's luck it probably came across more like a confused owl rather than anything suggestive.
What was she actually suggesting? She had no idea. Nothing in particular; the details weren't the point. She was just shooting for an ambiguously provocative feel with the plausible deniability that seemed to work so well at unsettling David.
And unsettle him, it did. He cocked his head to the side and his confused scowl deepened. He went to speak, but words seemed to fail him, leaving him opening and closing his mouth like a displaced tuna.
Outwardly, Samantha smirked with mild self-satisfaction, while inwardly she absolutely beamed. She truly loved this. There was something extremely comforting in how calm and predictable David stayed even when completely discombobulated, exactly the way Samantha couldn't. There was a sense of steadiness to him that was almost tangible. The world around her had gone to shit, her mind was slowly degrading, and nothing at all was okay. And yet, right here in this instant she could believe she was safe despite all the evidence to the contrary, even if only for a moment.
"I think," he said slowly, "I should probably be a bit more careful about letting that kind of thing happen in the future."
"What kind of thing?" she asked, trying again with the sultry eyebrow. It didn't help, but she wasn't going to get better without practice.
"The mana thing. The one Evelyn was talking about. It sounds like I've been doing something that I didn't intend and don't understand. I probably should stop this until I figure it out."
Shit.
Samantha felt suddenly lightheaded as the world fell out from under her.
Stupid girl.
The thing she was teasing him about wasn't just some light favor or a playful game. While Samantha had an intuitive understanding of it, Evelyn had made this point extremely clear in a quiet conversation late last night. Samantha was supposed to explain it to David. But she didn't want to talk about it, she didn't want to think about it. If she didn't think about it, then for a moment it didn't have to be real. For a moment things could be okay again. Easier to tease and play her stupid game.
Stupid girl.
Evelyn had explained that the further she let the damage progress before David cleared it up, the faster the damage would set in the next time. Each delay increased the stakes, and pretty quickly she could find herself permanently beyond recovery.
Stupid girl. Why did she do this to herself?
A day, maybe two, and she'd be dead. Worse than dead. Far, far, FAR worse than dead.
Stupid girl. This wasn't something to mess around with. A permanent waking nightmare with magic murder powers? Stupid girl. Why did she do this to herself? Why did she ALWAYS do this to herself? She knew EXACTLY what she was supposed to do to prevent this, and she intentionally avoided talking about it. She even went out of her way to make it worse. Stupid girl.
She did the worst possible thing at the worst possible moment. All so that she could PRETEND she could feel safe. In exchange for that brief moment she had doomed herself to living the very nightmare she was trying to avoid thinking about. Stupid girl. Stupid girl. Stupid g--
"Samantha? Are you okay? You don't look so--"
No time to think.
"Don't!" she shouted. She lunged out of her saddle and grabbed tightly to his arm as if to stop him from running away. This left her dangling between the two horses.
"Uhh..." he said, watching with bemusement, a single eyebrow raised as she hung there without any clear way to get either up or down. Why did HE get to be so good at the eyebrow thing?
"Please don't! I'm so sorry," she squeaked.
"I didn't say I would stop completely, just that I needed to start being more--"
"NOOOO!" she interrupted, "I'm so sorry, David. I shouldn't have made fun of you like that. I'm sorry. That was so mean of me and I'm really, really sorry. Please don't! I'm sorry!"
"Please don't... be careful? Really? Are you even listening to yourself?"
How could she explain this without sounding crazy?
"Yes! Please please don't be careful! I mean, sure, you can be careful about other things but just don't be careful with this!"
"That... uh... that doesn't make a lot of sense, Samantha."
"You're just saying that because I'm dangling off your arm like a crazy person."
"That... might be a factor," he conceded.
She looked up from his elbow with a helpless, forced smile, but the moment was interrupted by a wordless scream up ahead. The voice sounded human, it sounded pained, and it sounded overwhelmed. They might be able to help, but at the very least they should be able to get some information if they got there quickly enough. David's bemusement switched to a questioning look, and Samantha nodded slightly.
She made a mental note to resume this conversation later. She would love to just pretend that the last 10 minutes never happened, and she was tempted to do exactly that. But she knew where that would lead. She needed David, not the other way around. Damn.
But... that could wait. At the moment there was work to do.
In a matter of seconds, she was back on her horse and they were off at a run.