The air down here in Surfaceton was heavy, leaden and saturated with all the unmentionable filth our world has to offer. In the short lifetime of labored breathing you would imagine that you would get used to it....that it would become easier....but there is a certain psychological pathology that develops in a person who spends a lifetime fighting for each and every solitary breath. It soils the soul, festers the wounds of your being, and slowly but surely breaks your mind.
But such philosophical musings were far from the thoughts of Xilith as she made her way through the labyrinth of patchwork streets, sidewalks, and monstrosities of men and machines as she steadied her sanity against the unending cacophony of the scrubbers fighting the futile battle of cleaning the fetid air as it was pumped "up top" to those who could pay for the privilege of breathing an easy sigh.
Her mission tonight was to scrap together a few morsels of food for her brother as he waited behind in their hovel of a cubicle they called home. And though she had a mask, it had stopped working years ago when it fell from the sky with the rest of the refuse like some sociopathic rainstorm upon their weary and forsaken heads. Yet she pushed on and tried to pace herself in order to keep her breathing slow and shallow, because there was no pain like the pain that comes from the festering infection of to many deep breaths and she could not afford to be down any amount of time. Event he shallow breaths burned with an intense scalding of unknown chemicals mixing with the human waste, organic decay, and the overwhelming sea of death that ebbed and flowed as surely as the forgotten tides of previous eons.
She begin to feel her toes develop the sharp stinging pain of the beginning of rancid toxicity from spending to many hours and days in a row breathing raw air. Another four or five hours of this and those digits would be lost to the sour worm that feeds on the toxic flesh left in the wake of the toxicity. She needed to get back home soon to attempt the rudimentary detox of herbals that were grown by her family, but first......food.
As the next corner was rounded, she caught the glistening of the unique hairless and mucus covered rodents that only lived on the surface. The locals called them "chitters" but no one knew their real name.....if they even had one. And though they fed off of the immense filth of these lower levels their flesh was slightly less toxic than most organism and a prized source of protein. Xilith figured she could keep the back legs for her brother and family and sell the rest to her neighbors. The flash of the rodent's naked skin caused her to freeze and go into instinctual predatory mode, she would begin the stalk.
As she inched ever so slowly towards this feast of the fetid she forced her thoughts to stay focused on the task at hand and not all the ways this could fail and the pains her family would feel from another day of languishing without food. With one almost imperceptable movement of her wrist and the writhing flesh of this beast was in her grasp. The excitement of the hunt caused her to suck deeply through her gritted teeth and she instantly felt the sear of the blisters burst within her throat and lungs causing white-hot pain to shoot through her entire being, but she refused to relinquish her prize and began a stumbling lumbering back home to her brother.
All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter,
Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost
-Tolkien
