The Wastes

Bolopo’s mind had been consumed by a lukewarm sea of diluted nostalgia, landing him back in a place where, while life wasn’t exactly enjoyable, there were at least media-covered stories of people who had worse lots than he to comfort him, and coffee―unsullied by creams, sugars, or additives of any kind―to warm him. He relished the thought of that homely black liquid, mysterious yet so intimate in its familiarity, as he pulled his cloak over him in a poor attempt to stave off the errant breeze.

Only his cloak was no longer covering his shivering form.

Bolopo groaned his displeasure at such a cruel turn of events, popping open a bloodshot eye and groggily searching the small prison cell for his disappeared comforter. It didn’t take too long to find it, as, with a particularly loud snore, he discovered it was attached to a certain changeling. Who he discovered was attached to one of his legs. The adorability of the situation was ignored. Bolopo wanted his damn cloak back.

Pushing aside his disgruntled thoughts of simply tossing Plastadus wayward and telling him off for his intrusion of his personal space, and worse, his interruption of his coffee-centered fantasies, Bolopo grabbed the cloak and yanked it towards him. Despite his show of force, the clingy changeling had still not lost his hold on the thing, snoring all the while.

After two more attempts to remove Plastadus from his impromptu blanket, Bolopo frustratedly decided the endeavor wasn’t worth the hassle or stress. And then a thought crossed his mind.

The breeze had felt… off for the past few weeks. It was still cold enough to freeze one’s feathers off, and the noise carried with it was still calamitous, but there was something missing that Brinski couldn’t quite place his talon on. Inhaling deeply and allowing the sharp air to awaken his lungs, he narrowed his eyes, a fleeting thought thankful that the cold had reduced the swelling in his bad one to nil.

“There’s no scent of blood on the wind,” he thought, surprised at the deduction. Sure there was still the stench of shame to fill the absence, but that was something everyone in the Wall grew numb to after being incessantly assaulted by its odor day in and day out. But Brinski wasn’t worried about the fact that there was no blood shed as of yet so much as he was of the implications behind it. Pashi had been, for better or worse, inactive for the most part since their little deal. “But why?” he asked no one in particular, his voice echoing off the interior of one of the upper-level cells. He had come up there to think. His relationship with Bolopo, the plan, home, he just wanted some time to himself to allow his mind to drift… Which was why he was startled out of his reverie when a deep voice growled from behind him.

“Because, featherhead, Pashi busy,” the all too familiar voice of Pashi’s second-in-command answered, seemingly reading his mind.

Brinski’s heart dropped. Spinning around, he sure enough found he was faced with Piper. The dog leaned against a wall, arms crossed at the chest as she glared daggers that sent more pronounced chills down his spine than even the coldest of tempests could.

“W-what are you doing here?” he said, cursing the uncertainty in his voice.

“No worry, Piper not gonna tear away chicken’s wings. She here for self; want word with bird.”

“So you’re not here on behalf of Pashi?”

Piper shook her head. “No, Piper here of own accord. Got questions… and warnings.” Her voice dipped back into its usual menacing tone.

Brinski, feeling as though he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter, decided to humor her. So long as she wasn’t trying to beat him into a fine, beaked paste, he was more than willing to speak. “Well, I suppose I could spare a moment of my time.”

Piper adjusted her jacket, pulling the collar up. “Birdie want to help, but not powerful. How can weak little birdie help strong Pashi?”

Brinski wouldn’t have been lying if he said he felt just a bit insulted by that. “Well, there’s more to strength than brawn. Sometimes, you have to know where to apply that muscle in order to maximize its effectiveness.” Piper tilted her head the ear that wasn’t torn in half raising slightly. Brinski tapped a claw against his beak. “When you’re not strong, you have to use your brain and get those who are strong to want to help you out with what you can’t do alone. I’m offering to help you and Pashi in return for your aid.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Brinski parroted. “Why what?”

“Why you want Piper and Pashi?”

I really didn't. “Well, you two are definitely some of the strongest individuals here. I most certainly got a lesson in that when you struck me in the eye.” Piper smiled, chuckling loudly at that. “You both carry a lot of influence here, and I’m sure you can keep the other prisoners from poking their noses into business not of their own while I get the plan in working order.”

“Why?” Piper pressed, a sense of urgency in her tone.

“Well, I assume you and Pashi would like to see the other side of the Wall, yes?”

Piper shook her head, glaring again at Brinski. “Death. And white. Forever white. No life, just empty. I hate death; I hate white; I hate empty. Piper prefers cage with freedom over freedom with cage. Why she give that up?”

Brinski opened and closed his beak a few times, genuinely floored by the question. “Because you can’t live in a cage. You have to at least try to fight to be released from your shackles.”

“Freedom is death, birdie. Not life. Cage is life for us. Not best life, but still life.”

“There is an entire world out there, Piper. One that holds more than snow or suffering. One that gives us an opportunity to be more than prisoners waiting to freeze to death. We can reunite with our families, find our place in the world. Don’t you want that?”

Piper froze up when he mentioned ‘family’. “Piper home here. Piper family here. Piper Pashi here.” She breathed deeply to calm herself down, the dog shaking with her fists clenched and her eyes snapped shut. Suddenly, though, her eyes shot open, narrowing, and she briskly closed the distance between them, leaving them beak-to-maw. “Pashi means world to Piper. He reason she want answers.” She pressed a single finger on Brinski’s chest, lowering her head to eye-level with the gryphon. “Pashi leave, I leave. Pashi get hurt, you leave.” The thinly-veiled threat was not lost on Brinski as he nodded his head earnestly. Satisfied, Piper again stood to her full, intimidating height and with nary a glance or word stalked off, her paw pads masking her footfalls.

Only when he was absolutely certain the Diamond Dog was gone did Brinski allow himself to release the breath he had been holding since she had appeared. Feeling on guard whenever he was around that psychopath did nothing to calm his nerves, and the fact that she had a point about the other side of the Wall left him uneasier still. He had come up here to clear his mind, only to be left even more anxious. The breeze once again chilled him to the core, but he waited until he was absolutely certain that Piper was truly gone and not lying in wait to snap his neck up ahead. As he descended the stairs from the upper floors, Brinski still couldn’t shake the thought of there being something wrong with the wind.

Captain Medula Ilfreja felt right at home. She had never really enjoyed the sun as a cub; she was far too sensitive to enjoy it. So her reassignment to the Wastes, while usually taken as a mark of disgrace for a Captain such as herself, didn’t much bother her. Still, I gotta wonder what’s so damn special about this place, she thought to herself, the smallest signs of a frown to pull at her aging beak. There were no resources this far north aside from the supply drops, few and far between as those were; the prisoners were more worried about food rations and staving off the cold than they are of entertaining thoughts of escape―fat lot of good that would do them if they did by some miracle manage it―to do anything other than complain and beat each other senseless… Why must we guards freeze our tail feathers off as well?

Being something of a stickler for southern Gryphonian tradition, down to the point where she carved an opening into the side of her beak for a makeshift whistle with a file to quickly get the attention of her troops whenever she absolutely required it and always kept her father’s feather on her person at all times as something of a now moot heirloom and charm, Captain Ilfreja did not much agree with the relocation of perfectly capable soldiers and medical personnel to wastelands in the middle of nowhere where nothing ever happened aside from the rare sighting of some winter-coated beast in the wasteland. Sure, most of the guard detail had been exiled from their service for some reason or other, and were here because they were honorbound, homeless, or forcibly reassigned, but their work was needed elsewhere. Especially considering the bleak situation back in what was once civilized society.

But those were just the surface of the thoughts plaguing the Captain’s mind. Chief among her “worries”, for lack of a better term, were the whispers of two rowdy insurgents, one a gryphon and the other some kind of hairless yeti. They had caused quite the commotion in the middle of the courtyard about a week ago and were apparently plotting their escape. And where there was one rat―or two in this case―there was a family hidden nearby.

All she had to do was wait for them to make their first move, if they were going to actually act, and snuff it out as soon as possible. But on the other hand, if she were to pull a few strings and manipulate events in her favor she could have her own personal little “helpers” with whom she could maneuver without any documentation or prying whatsoever…

As the cogs spun in Ilfreja’s head, she permitted herself a grin. “Relieve Weidrew from his post and have him sent to my office,” she ordered, both of her guards standing at attention. “We have a matter of importance to discuss.”

Bloodshed.

So much bloodshed.

He stared into the eyes, long void of life, of the young cub he carried in his arms. Only after he was sure the pulse he felt was the result of his own rapidly beating heart did he pull the knife from her neck.

Screams echoed in the distance as the flames rose, drowned out by the laughter of vagabonds and the gunfire of mercenaries. But all of this was immaterial to him. He couldn’t look away from her eyes. Those eyes that pierced his very soul.

Shaking his head, a tired sigh escaped Brinski’s beak. He had been walking about the grounds of the institution, what had at first been him scoping the place for ideal locations to bust out devolving into him aimlessly strolling as his mind grew foggy. The gryphon decided that it would be a good idea to head back to his cell for a nap to clear his mind. And possibly get a swig or two of the liquor he had managed to, through numerous favors and handoffs, snatch from a fresh shipment unseen. Not even Bolopo knew he had the thing, Brinski was so paranoid. He didn’t drink unless it was a special occasion, but at the moment he felt like making an exception.

As he neared the door to his cell, Brinski softened his gait and listened. Hearing no noise from the other side aside from some snoring, the bird took the handle and twisted it slowly, so as to not wake up his excitable cellmate. He didn’t feel like sharing, after all. Slipping inside and lifting one of the tiles, Brinski reached inside of the hollowed out interior and pulled out a finely aged St. Gravelbeak’s Bourbon, supposedly shipped directly from Holsburgh, the old gryphon’s hometown. This thing was worth a small fortune, he wagered, replacing the tile and turning to jump to his bunk.

But what, or rather who, he saw already there broke his reality.

Lying on the bottom bunk were Bolopo and Plastadus, the former big spooning the latter. Through his surprise, Brinski noticed that Bolopo had one of Plastadus’ ears in his mouth, nibbling on the thing softly as the changeling squirmed and moaned, nuzzling the underside of the human’s chin from within his possessive grasp. On the floor Bolopo’s cloak lied forgotten.

Brinski inspected the liquor in his claws with a nod of approval. “Well worth a small fortune, indeed,” he thought. Upon returning his gaze to the two inmates he saw Plastadus’ were now open, and the bug was staring back at him. Their eyes remained locked for an uncomfortable length of time before, with a cheeky smile, Plastadus put a hoof to his mouth in a silencing gesture. The bug then made himself comfortable, sighing as he pressed his back into Bolopo’s chest, wings buzzing just slightly. Bolopo continued sleepily dragging his teeth along Plastadus’ ear.

Brinski’s eye twitched.

A smash tore Bolopo from the comfort of his dreams, causing him to nearly fly off the bed in fright.

“Curse this damned liquor!”

Bolopo didn’t notice until then that 1. His friend had just wasted what looked to be a perfectly good bottle of bourbon, and 2. He was spooning a bugpony, its ear covered in his saliva. Being a man of priorities, Bolopo was about to say something along the lines of “You’d better rebottle that shit in the next 5 seconds or so help me God…!” when the insect in his grasp beat him to the punch, a frown in its voice.

“Splendid, Brinski. You ruined our little moment. And I didn’t tell you to stop, ape,” Plastadus commanded, flicking his ear in Bolopo’s confused face. Shrugging and deciding to ask questions later, he did as he was ordered, gnawing lightly on the changeling’s ear.

Brinski, looking rather restless but a moment ago, visibly deflated, dragging his claws down over his face as he realized what he had done. “Ugh, cursed conniptions…” Bolopo was beginning to drift back into the coffee-scented seas of unconsciousness when, out of nowhere, a weight landed on top of him. “I am joining the two of you,” said Brinski, wrapping an arm of his own around Brinski and Plastadus. What confused Bolopo most of all was when Brinski rested his head upon his shoulder. Probably some kind of gryphon thing, he reasoned to himself.

Just as sleep was about to finally retake its grasp over his mind, a familiar booming echoed from the halls, stopping just at the cell door. “Uh… am I interrupting somethin’?” Pashi questioned with his deep voice.

Bolopo’s ear-chewing intensified, but didn’t quite reach Mike Tyson levels, fortunately, as Brinski answered, not raising his head. “What do you need, Pashi? Can you not see I am busy?”

“It’s got somethin’ to do with the plan, Brinski. The Wall, it’s… you’re gonna want to see this, trust me.” The bona fide layer of unease in the otherwise stoic and tough minotaur’s tone was more than enough incentive for Brinski to rush out of the bunk and to the cell door.

“What is it!? Has someone broken through? Has there been an escape?” Brinski asked with urgency.

“No, nobody got out. I don’t know how to explain it, but I think something tried gettin’ in… You won’t believe what I have to say till you see it with your own two eyes. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

As the two left, Bolopo was about to settle down for a bit more shuteye, but his cuddlebug shifted, groaning in disappointment. “I suppose I’ll get the broom and clean up this mess.” Plastadus wriggled free of Bolopo’s grip and left as well, leaving the human staring at the wall on the other side of the room.

Upon closing his eyes, the image of the young girl’s lifeless gaze flashed in his head.