The surface was quiet, quieter than usual
They could hear their own breath under the scarf wrapped around their mouth, the dull crunch of grit under boots. The wind here was thin and brittle, carrying the rust of ruins that long collapsed. Somewhere behind him, the black mouth of the tunnel he'd emerged from still gaped in the earth.
Most days, Coco never strayed this far. A wanderer didn't survive long without rules, and their first rule was don't get sentimental. No matter what she found up here — a half-standing building, a scrap of old-world glass — it all went into the pack or stayed behind. Nothing worth risking his life for.
But today, they'd followed something else: a smell, maybe due to their ability as a dog trasgo
It drifted faintly but persistently on the dry wind — floral, sweet, impossible. He had only ever smelled it in shrines underground, pressed between the pages of old prayer books. Lavender.
Cresting a ridge of cracked stone, she saw it.
A meadow appeared below him where wasteland should be, a carpet of green swaying in the wind. Clusters of soft purple blooms caught the light, bending gently like they belonged to another world entirely. Coco's grip on their pack strap tightened until their knuckles hurt. Meadows like this didn't exist. Not anymore.
Their boots sank into real soil as they stepped forward. She almost didn't notice the shape lying at the center of the flowers until the wind shifted, revealing pale hair against the green.
His stomach clenched. Trasgo bodies on the surface weren't rare, but one so… untouched? No sunburn, no leathered skin, no scavenger marks. Just a woman lying still, dressed in a pale white tunic that billowed faintly in the breeze.
Coco's training moved them before they thought about it — crouching low, scanning for threats, checking the corners of her vision. No one else.
He edged closer. The woman's skin was warm under their gloved fingers, pulse faint but steady. Not dead. Not dying. Just… asleep?
Then the woman's eyes opened.
Coco froze. They were pale, almost luminous in the shifting light, and they locked onto him with startled clarity. She sat up too quickly, her white hair tumbling forward, rabbit-like ears — okay, a common trasgo trait— twitching toward them.
They stared at each other. His breath caught in his throat.
The woman's lips moved, forming sounds Coco didn't understand — soft syllables, foreign and flowing, like water over stones. She looked confused when they didn't respond, then tilted her head in a slow, searching way.
Coco swallowed. "…You're not supposed to be here."
She didn't answer. Instead, she reached out — tentative, almost shy — and plucked a sprig of lavender from the ground, holding it out between them like an offering.
He didn't take it at first. They didn't move at all, except to glance at the horizon, where the wind was picking up. This was wrong. Dangerous.
And yet… she reached out, finally, and closed their fingers around the flower.
The woman's eyes softened.
Coco exhaled, slow. "Alright. You're coming with me."
In the silence that followed, the meadow swayed on as if nothing had changed, though Coco knew it had