“And in her eyes, you see nothing
No sign of love behind the tears
Cried for no one
A love that should have lasted years”
The corpse Nettle wept over was a Nobody. Even before opening her eyes, she knew this to be true, but his pale skin and inky black hair were dead giveaways. She examined his head and arms, searching for any scarring or sunburns that might disprove her theory.
Really, though, Nettle was just wasting time. The most damning piece of evidence, of course, was:
I have no clue who this is.
He was older than her—maybe twenty years or so, given his scraggly beard and well-worn crow’s feet.
My dad? An uncle, perhaps?
Standing on uncertain legs, Nettle took a moment to regain her composure. She felt spent. She swayed with the hot wind, letting it cool her sickly sweat. Her breath escaped in shudders as the remnants of quickly forgotten despair fought through her. She wiped her face and studied the resulting droplets. The tear clung to the tip of her finger, dirty gray muck swirling about before the weight pulled the last tears ever cried for this man to the clay below.
With unclouded eyes, her mind picked up on all the little details that felt familial. His long, straight nose and heavy-lidded eyes gave his face a sleepy expression. Even still, she couldn’t be certain.
Most likely, Nettle was no more related to this man than the men who shot him.
Men who shot him?
Her mind skipped about rather than running. She could remember trekking through this wasteland, but that wasn’t anything new.
What else?
She was being followed. Hunted? Nettle could remember running. She also remembered walking, a lot of walking.
Her edges felt frayed, and the wind made her sides buzz.
Nettle scanned her surroundings. No figures on the horizon. She held her stomach, hoping to calm the butterflies. The flat expanse of gray clay would make it hard for anyone to get the jump on her, but it would also make it impossible to hide from dedicated trackers.
Nettle pinched at her stuffy nose, the smell of iron startling her. She held out her palm, blood glistening in the sun. She looked down, grimacing at the dark stain that she now adorned, mirroring the splotchy mess of the man’s abdomen.
Nettle knelt down and wiped her hand on his pant leg, taking the time to rifle through his pockets since she was in the area. He had a couple of rusty green coins. Feeling around his collar, Nettle found a brass necklace embossed with a stag beetle. She took both. It was merely practical.
Next, Nettle followed the winding trail of blood he’d splattered across the otherwise gray-scale scene where he had dropped his belongings about ten paces off. His bag and shovel lay haphazard on the clay near where her own shovel sat stuck upright.
Nettle dumped his backpack out. A thick book with a deep blue cover of ornate design thunked to the ground. It looked important, so Nettle tucked it away near her bedroll and shook any holdouts from the man's bag. Anything that looked valuable or edible found a new home with her. She had to reorganize to accommodate everything.
Nettle unbuckled a leather parcel strapped to the lefthand side of his bag, mirroring the very same on her own. Looking inside, it was full of letters addressed to Leylen’s, the town to which Nettle’s own parcel was to be delivered. The sliver of lingering doubt within her dissipated. This man was her companion, at the very least.
She strapped the parcel along her other side.
Orientating herself using the line of blood he dripped, Nettle grabbed her shovel and started to walk.
Nettle showed considerable restraint, only turning back once the man was a lump on the horizon. She gave a farewell salute and trudged onward, using her shovel as a walking stick.
The Nettle who had cried, arms crossed over the man’s chest, wasted time enough for the both of them. She needed to put space between herself and any potential pursuers.
As was unfortunately always the case, the flat monotony of the wasteland prodded Nettle’s mind into motion, hopping from worry to worry like a frog on a hot road.
She’d never seen a man die, even out here. And although she didn’t remember any details, Nettle felt rightfully apprehensive.
Out in the wastes, murdering a Nobody was technically as illegal as it would be in any city. Then again, even in the towns, Nettle would bet good money the city watch was in cahoots with that ‘technically.’ Even if someone did care, who would know out here?
As was natural, following a murder, next she pondered death.
Poets and the like often say, “Every man has two deaths — when he is buried in the ground, and the last time someone says his name.” That being the case, Nettle would die once, just as that man had. Forgotten and lifeless in the same moment.
And as was natural after she thought about death, Nettle felt an aching cold hold her heart.
She thought about how she left his body. Was she supposed to feel grief or pity? She mostly felt guilty that she parted with his stuff.
Her stomach turned at the notion his body would become food for the creatures that called this place their home.
Not creatures, She rectified, things.
That still wasn’t right.
No, not things. They’re more like . . . Not Things.
Nettle wished there could have been time for a proper burial. Whatever those things weren’t, he didn’t deserve that.
Out here, there was nothing for days. No bird, tree, bug, shrub, man, or even grass call this their home. Just the Not Things. Kikizha.
Kikizha were living pits and canyons that snaked through the badlands—snaking not just in the meander of their bodies but in how they crept forward aimlessly before striking with purpose. The living crevices had a world of their own.
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Sometimes, you could go all day without seeing one, and other times; they would be so thick and tangled you’d have to walk along pathways barely wider than your foot just to get by.
This made the journey so much worse. There was always an edge of anxiety to the boredom. If you stop paying attention to the expanse of gray nothing, you just may find yourself buried in the same grave that ate you.
It was several hours before Nettle even spotted any.
She watched at a distance as small cracks desperately dashed about, fleeing as a massive ravine fed on their brethren.
To the average somebody, this scene may have been cause for concern. The Kikizha were predators of the highest caliber, eating anything, everything, and, evidently, nothings. Nettle, however, wasn’t worried. They couldn’t see her.
Nettle could walk right up to the edge of one of the creeping canyons, and it wouldn’t so much as move. Even if she fell in, it wasn’t a death sentence like it would be for other people. The Kikizha wouldn’t react to her intrusion, and as long as she didn’t injure herself in the fall, she could almost certainly climb out.
She only had to worry about them moving with no provocation as, during the day, it was easy enough to differentiate their forms from the ground they parted, and at night, the Kikizha became lethargic, like snakes in winter.
That being said, the dangers of the living pits were not null. Nettle always made sure never to walk along the concaves of their bodies on the off chance one lunged for food, and being inside a moving Kikizha was a good way to get crushed or buried.
Still, it was one of the few blessings of being a Nobody, even if her dealings with man evened the odds.
Nettle loped along, her body complaining more than it had any right. The gentle clay was soft beneath her feet but not enough to make her gait awkward, and the wind blessedly shifted, a damp breeze now following her eastward towards Leylen’s.
Nettle had to detour along a particularly large Kikizha, its deep shadow like an open wound across the land.
The land was dizzyingly flat as far as the eye could see. Nettle pulled a compass and map from one of the many pockets on her knee-length, black overcoat. Thankfully, the large swath of blood that decorated her front missed the map by a few pockets. She was still heading southeast, but with no discernible landmarks other than the kind that moved, Nettle often worried about drifting off course.
As the sun turned the evening sky into a painter's lifeblood, Nettle searched for a place to sleep. With nowhere in the immediate area completely free of the Not Things, she decided she was tired enough to bed down despite the two medium-sized Kikizha not too far from her camp.
Nettle rolled out her bedroll, then got to work digging a shallow perimeter around her sleeping area. She wasn’t sure if such a thing actually kept the Kikizha at bay or if it was an old wives' tale, but Nettle likely would never find out.
Nettle sat down and let the fatigue hit her. She diligently chewed her dried travel rations.
At some point during her labor, the pair of Kikizha snuck near enough for Nettle to observe as they competed in a strange ritual. One, a decently sized pit, swerved and battered the other, more serpentine, Kikizha. She watched as their forms slammed into each other silently in what she could only assume was some sort of play fighting. The dark crack in the ground writhed as the hole rammed into its side again and again. The ground split around them, stretching more than falling into their depths.
By the time Nettle climbed into her blankets, the creatures had settled down. The air quickly turned a shade of chilly while the clay still undecidedly retained some of its earlier warmth.
Nettle didn’t fret over being found in her sleep. While Kikizha were lethargic at night, they still responded with the same alacrity when disturbed. Furthermore, they were near impossible to see without abundant light, meaning only the crazy or desperate risked trekking at night without lanterns. She’d see them long before they saw her.
Nettle lay there and let her mind relive the day.
Of course, her thoughts returned to the man. The more she thought about him, the more she realized one thing: Nettle wanted to leave someone feeling like she had. She wanted somebody to feel nauseous over her corpse and not know why. In a strange way, Nettle wanted to matter.
Her mind continued on to strange places until finally succumbing to the same exhaustion she felt in her limbs.
Her body reacted before Nettle could reasonably be called awake. Men’s voices and thumping feet disorientated her half-sleeping mind. Rolling onto her hands and knees, Nettle grasped wildly for her shovel with blurry sight. She lurched upright, waiting as her senses caught up to her instincts.
Two men, one riding a horse and the other a few steps ahead, approached a mere forty paces from where she’d been sleeping. Nettle could only make out their bodies by the black of their silhouette against the midnight blue of the sky. Until she jumped to her feet, neither seemed to notice her.
Their conversion ended the same time Nettle’s heart thought about doing the same thing.
These men had the kind of reckless abandon that would have gotten Nettle killed by now. Not only had they hunted her throughout the night with no light source, but they also rode a horse this far into the wastes—a goddamn horse.
I’m dead.
Nettle turned and ran. She choked up on the haft of her trench shovel as she ran. Her bare feet pounded into the now cool clay as one of the men called out –as if shouting could get her to stop. Her heart bathumped to the staccato swing of the horse’s hooves.
Nettle closed the distance to the two Kikizha as the man on horseback did the same to her. The long crevice was curled around the pit, leaving the impression of a flower drawn by a child.
His outstretched fingers brushed her inky hair, and Nettle lept.
She slammed chest-first into the ledge and scrambled to pull herself over, using the shovel head like a climber’s pick. Nettle kicked her legs wildly, her bare feet finding purchase in the soft material. Clearing the edge, Nettle saw the horse had lost traction while skidding to a stop. The horse was prone, legs splayed towards Nettle, while the animal’s rider had been thrown unceremoniously towards the cliff-like drop of the Kikizha. He scrambled away from the edge in a crabwalk, face up and using the palm of his hands.
The uncreature started to untangle itself as the man popped to his feet. The man delicately circled the mass of nothing, strafing sideways as to always face it. Nettle parroted, keeping on the opposite side of the man.
The horse struggled to its feet, rocking back and forth to get its legs underneath its body. Once stable, The animal galloped towards her camp in fear, passing the second man in its terror.
The Kikizha unfurled at last, its python body blasting after the horse. The poor animal got twenty paces until the ravine was upon it. Its front legs suddenly were treading air, flinging its body forward into the newly formed cliff face, causing the animal to crumple upon itself. Its limbs snapped with the force, and the stallion's back half flipped into the air. The horse's screech was disturbingly human.
Nettle and the men stood dumbstruck as the Kikizha reorientated itself, dropping the horse into its pitch abyss. The ravine undulated and squirmed, opening and closing like a vile mouth. The third time the pit opened, all was silent, yet the horse's echoing cry remained a reverberation shaking Nettle's thoughts.
After the three of them could move, the far man slunk the best he could from the crevice. He made a wide arch, attempting to round his position to Nettle. Simultaneously, Nettle and the man continued their cat-and-mouse around the hole. It was about ten paces across.
With the loss of their horse and saddlebags, the man’s body language was uncertain now, losing its air of dogged pursuit for a warier posture. He produced a large hunting knife from his belt, and Nettle wielded her shovel like a spear.
“If I die out here,” Nettle goaded, feeling a newfound bout of resolve, “I’ll be forgotten. But that’s natural for me. Wha–”
The man with the knife suddenly switched directions, causing Nettle to stumble as she tried to do the same. She regained her footing and continued to circle the hole. The man got tinglingly close to her back, and Nettle whipped around, lashing out with her shovel. She smacked his hand with the spade’s flat, causing him to drop his weapon. Nettle swung again, missing as he backed away.
During the scuffle, the second man had successfully flanked behind her. The hole was behind the first man, with Nettle situated between the two. Twirling in place, Nettle angeled herself to allow for the tracking of either man’s movement out her peripherals.
“I’ll be forgotten. What’s your excuse?” Nettle spat, “Mama didn’t love you enough? People hated you for who you were, not what you were?”
The man furthest from the hole crouched as if preparing to rush her and growled.
“You bitch.”
As if his words had woken the pit, the Kikizha blitzed the man, albeit at a much more sedated pace than the serpent strike of the first. The man whose back was to the pit fell as it skimmed past him, leaving his body submerged in the gray clay from the shoulders down. Nettle barely reacted by raising her shovel, using her free hand to cover her mouth. Nettle’s stomach rose as she went into freefall. Her momentum jolted to a stop as her body suddenly was enveloped up to her armpits in clay.
The second man reacted in time to begin a desperate dash away. Nettle craned her head to watch as the man outran the hole for a time. She watched as his silhouette comically fell from sight. The screams that reached her seconds later quickly dispelled any notion of levity.
Nettle looked to the man buried five steps away. A strange laugh filled the air before she realized it was coming from her lips. The man had a hollow expression as Nettle angled the shovel awkwardly away from her chest.
Nettle began to dig.