This is food.
But not the kind meant for survival. This wascrafted. For pleasure. For warmth.
I don’t think.
I bite.
The taste detonates behind my tusks. It’s like a memory of warmth I’ve never had. Salt and sweet tangled up together. Butter—yes, I remember that from human rations during the war—and something floral and bitter and rich all at once. The texture is soft in the center and crisp on the edges. Each chew releases a new wave of flavors.
It doesn’t fill my belly.
But it does something far worse.
It lingers.
I crouch there for long moments, head bowed, letting the final crumbs dissolve on my tongue. The wrapper flutters in my hand. Fragile. Human. Like her.
What is this red-haired girl doing?
Why would she leave something like this… for me?
I stand and take the wrapper with me.
Back in my lair, the fire’s low but still warm. I stoke it absently, knuckles tight, mind elsewhere. The walls are lined with pelt and bone, but none of it feels like armor tonight.
I feed the wrapper to the flames.
It curls and blackens, vanishes into cinders.
The taste remains.
The warmth behind my ribs refuses to burn away.
She is a contradiction.
And now I cannot forget her.
And maybe she can’t forget me, because the next day, there’s something new.
She leaves another one.
Another cookie, wrapped in that same crinkly foil, tucked just beneath the outer sensor post. Right where the ash drifts pile up in neat little dunes. As if she knows I come here. As if she knowsIam the one watching.
She’s right.
I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’tcare. The humans brought their own protection. Their own supplies. Their own arrogance. And yet, I’m here every night now. In the shadows. In the stone. Tracking one small life as if it holds the gravity of a sun.
Her name, I’ve learned, is Jillian. I’ve heard it muttered with exasperation, snapped across coms, sighed in fondness by the boy Carson. I have not spoken it aloud. Not yet.
But I whisper it in my mind sometimes.
Jillian.
She is not like the others. I don’t mean in the lazy, superficial way humans often speak of uniqueness. I mean her core is carved from something different. She moves through Purgonis with the wonder of a child and the defiance of a soldier. I’ve seen her kneel in the dirt, radiation suit creaking, and cradle a shard of crystal like it might whisper secrets to her. I’ve seen her laugh—short, bright, unguarded. It carries over the canyon like chimes in a storm.
And I’ve seen her fury.
It flares up quick, uncontrolled, when Ciampa brushes her off or when the marines wave their rifles around like children playing soldier. Her eyes go sharp. Her spine straightens. There’s a kind of pride in her that refuses to bend.
