You cover your face in your hands, sigh deeply, and finally shrug before you lower your hands. "Alright, Uncle. I'll go talk to them. They're the..." you snap your fingers a few times. "They gave Herbert the money, right?"
"The very same," Uncle Heavy booms because, again, he does not have another volume setting. "Riding the spiders out of the titty bars. You might be able to get some goodwill with them by sharing locations of more...and do some good besides. Those poor girls have been hard done by."
You gesture silently at the various tents that surround the two of you, full of people who are also, you see, stamped Homeless in their souls.
"You're young," Uncle says dismissively, as if that explains everything. "You'll figure it out eventually. C'mon, let's pack you some things. Herbert and his friends have already agreed to shadow you along the way."
That's a relief. Intellectually you already knew they'd never force you to make that walk alone, but emotionally...well, you really do not want to meet those squadcars, especially now that they've gone feral. The egg situation has gotten fucking dire, so the real breakfast involves a lot of flatbread and peanut butter, with root vegetables from those strange glass gardens. It's an hour, two, while you pack things up in a hiking backpack, say some goodbyes for now. Hattie, the older woman who took you under your wing when you first hit the streets after Dad went to prison, gives you her knife and tells you in no uncertain terms that she expects to see it back. Hattie's family has had this knife since before the invention of electricity, so you swallow your sarcastic response that you kill with kittens, not with blades, and thank her in a tight voice. You're not gonna cry. Not in front of everyone.
But, at last, you whistle for your clowder, and the majority of them interpret this as 'climb on mom immediately'. With a deep sigh and another twenty pounds in kittens alone on your body, you set off on the long march, sinking into the semi-trance state that lets you be one with the cats. With their eyes and ears and noses to guide you, you pick your way through the streets and avoid ones with roving squadcars or strangers with guns, making a note of what they look like to the kittens so you can update Herbert on them when you take rests. Five, six hours into this, nearly on top of the pickets outside the strange dockside community, you take another street to avoid a small group of gently sobbing people with odd burns on their hands and foreheads.
...One's splitting off from the others. A woman. Hrm.
Well then. You approach the outer pickets with your hands up as the afternoon turns into an early summer evening, sun still high in the sky like the piece of shit it is. At this point if they're not gonna let you in they might as well shoot you, you need to clean up so bad and the thing about sharing a consciousness with a swarm of parasitic cats is their aches and groans are also yours; there's only so much switching out the ones on scout duty and do, and now the whole clowder is sleepy and miserable. You keep your hands up and approach slowly and get a 'halt' from a mousy little girl who has to be near your own age, so you pull your hood back and offer your best winning 'pity me' grin. "This where the spider-riders come from?" you call out.
"...Yes," the other girl answers eventually; she hasn't raised her rifle, which is a good sign. "What's your business?"
What is your business? You decide on a version of the truth; it's not like the other half you're concealing, that being Uncle's thoughts on joining this community, is anything dire or sinister. "I'm looking to speak with your oneiromancers. I'm glass-curst, I need treatment."
"Glass...you've been refracted?"
"The fuck is refracted?"
An older woman next to the girl slowly puts her face in her palm. "Jamie," she says slowly, "please escort our guest in to see Orchid and Nattie, will you?"
This...this might just end well. You adjust your backpack, and you follow the other girl. On your way into the...settlement, let's call it, you pass by three high towers that have been inscribed with various sacred symbols that you recognize from graveyards. Carrion birds and gulls flock atop each one, tearing at something you can't see from down below. But you don't have to see it, do you?
Possibly this ends less well.
