A/N: Chapter three already! Whoo! A personal record! Too bad it's for the story nobody reads, haha. Anyway. Uh... enjoy (or don't), review (or don't), send me stinkbombs through PM (bear in mind there are nicer ways to tell me I need to practice my writing a bit more, though), I don't really mind. I'm writing this for me, but you're more than welcome to tag along. It's also for Neige, but. If he ever deigns to read it... (Notice me, senpai!) Heheh... This is pointless now so I'll just let you get on... *smiles contritely and waves you on*

CHAPTER THREE

Delibird was proving a most irritating companion. The first hour or so spent trudging back up the highway was tolerable; Neige had pretended to dodge the stationary cars and had shared sips of water from his plastic bottle with the little Pokémon whenever it squawked particularly loudly. By the time an hour and half had stolen itself away however, along with what little good humour remained in both him and the previously sunny weather, he was in no mood to do anything other than kick at rusted hubcabs as he passed them, causing more than a few to topple to the tarmac.

Every now and again a pair (and occasionally a triplet) of eyes would peer brightly at him from beneath a car, blink once and vanish. Flocks of flying Pokémon trailed across the sky in elegant formations, and once, as he was busy trying to un-develop a nervous tick that had started every time Delibird broke out into a series of happy, tuneful squawks, he passed a man hidden under a thick black cloak that swished about his feet; they nodded politely to one another, and besides the quick flash of what was clearly a wand tucked in the stranger's fist as it emerged from the cloak, he might have just been another escapee of the ruin of an old life.

"SQUAWK!" said Delibird cheerily, as they passed an exit to a gas station with most of its roof caved in. "SQUAWK!"

"Errrrgh… Your body isn't reacting well to our world, is it? You're, like, half-bird, half Pokémon right now."

"SQUAWK!" said Delibird, nodding seriously. Neige winced and pulled his cap lower over his eyes, wishing it covered his ears too. It was his Pokémon league cap— his favourite, the one he showed off proudly in most of his Pokémon-related reviews. Now his panicked, heat-of-the moment choice of head apparel made him want to deliberately faceplant. Well, bodyplant, really. Onto the road still sticky with the California heat that lingered even in the face of the oncoming storm clouds brewing blackly on the horizon. And then never move again.

"You're too small for a Delibird," Neige continued. He needed to speak, even if his ears were still ringing. He needed to hear words. Conversation. He wanted to stay sane while he did… whatever it was he needed to do to fix things. "And you can't say your name. But everything else… your tail, your personality-"

"SQUAAAAWK!"

Neige shuddered. Delibird flapped his wings, a little indignantly.

"It can't be just you," he mused, more to himself than the Pokémon. "The others who don't belong here, they must all have limitations too. Things our laws of physics just won't allow, maybe."

For the first time, Delibird did not reply to this, and Neige, seeing it as a slightly uplifting sign, decided not to ruin it and be silent too.

He was staring miserably at the gathering storm hugging the rim of the earth, peeking almost shyly above the faraway tips of city spires, when he saw the flash of orange flame amongst the grey clouds. He narrowed his eyes, as if that would zoom his vision any closer— there! It happened again! And was it just his imagination, or was there a dark shape in amongst the bleary grey? Another flash of bright fire, and this time… yes, if his plain human, non-zoomed-in eyes were indeed telling him the truth, the shadow was directly behind it. Its source, in fact.

"SQUAWK!" said Delibird. His wing clipped Neige around the ear as he fluttered to a more comfortable position on his shoulder. "SQUAWK!"

Neige rubbed his ear as he watched the faraway storm, attempting in vain to soothe his aching eardrum. Why, oh, why hadn't he brought his iPod? His earbuds? Even the Homer Simpson earmuffs that were a joke present from his sister one Christmas would have been welcome at this point.

His sister. The thought brought on a twist of anxiety deep in his stomach. Where was she now? She'd escaped her home, that much was certain. Before the communications systems went down, he'd got one text from her: Heading south. Family safe. Will text later to organise time and place to kill you for starting this. (It was you. I know it was.)

Except all methods of communication except face-to-face talking and pigeon messaging had gone down not long after that, so of course he'd never heard another word from her. Family safe. Those two words had kept him strong while he battled his way through fictional villains and minions on his own journey south. It was a very half-hearted journey, though; without any further hints as to her location, and no incoming messages to steer him in the right direction, his sister might as well be headed for Australia for all he knew. As there'd been no time for organised military evacuations of the entire freaking country, most people to just scattered and took their own chances against things that, by rights, should not exist. With no official gathering points – and therefore, no leads – the odds of meeting up with her coincidentally were slim to none.

Perhaps that's why he'd been so compliant when Delibird had arrived with much-needed supplies and directed him north—towards the heart of the action, the place where he'd unleased upon the most unsuspecting world a danger it had never anticipated and certainly had no idea how to fight. If he couldn't take refuge with his family, perhaps he – as the Bringer-About of the End of the World (he felt it was a title requiring by necessity the capitalisation of its key words in his mind) – might actually do something about putting an end to it.

The first splatters of rain arrived with the early evening. Daylight lost some of its bite as the first dark clouds scudded overhead, and his sword seemed to grow heavier at his waist under the weight of the sudden chill permeating the air. The smell of wet grass and smoke grew thicker as well, but Neige figured that was only to be expected as he approached the vicinity of suburbia.

Houses were spaced far apart now, some distance back from the highway that had merged into two lanes a mile back. As the rain was starting to pelt down in earnest, Neige decided now was a good as time as any to find a place to rest for the night. All too aware of the sting of Delibird's claws in his shoulder as they both hunched into their bodies, he hurried down the dirt driveway of the nearest house. The front door wasn't broken, but it was wide open; the space beyond it was dark and not at all welcoming. A couple of steps inside, and a couple more moments to allow his eyes time to adjust to the drab lighting, proved that whoever had previously lived here left in a great hurry.

Just like everybody else in America, Neige thought glumly, kicking aside a rolled up pair of socks and a child's recorder that were lying at his feet. Wonder if they made it to Peru or something. If even there is safe these days. Not that there's any way to tell without the news.

Deciding to explore a little, he took the first door on his left and found himself in a sitting room. A sofa and a couple of armchairs faced a TV; clothes and cans and even books were scattered about the place, as if their owners had packed them in a fit of panic and then, just as thoughtlessly, tossed them out again to make room for something slightly more important. He shucked his backpack higher on his back; he thought he knew exactly how they'd felt.

Delibird flew off his shoulder – 'Finally,' thought Neige – and started pecking at various objects, scratching at them curiously with his claws. Neige left him to it and followed the main corridor down to its end, where he found a kitchen with all its cabinets wide open and the perishable food that the previous owners realised wouldn't last on a trek to safety rotting on the benches or in the open, dark fridge.

Also on the ground floor were a dining room, just off the kitchen (all of the seats were missing their cushions for some reason Neige couldn't fathom) and a study; nothing seemed to have been touched in there. Upstairs were the bedrooms and the bathroom. There were three bedrooms: the parents' and two kids'. The parents' room was where he'd bunk tonight, he thought; he dumped his backpack on the end of the unmade bed and rubbed his sore shoulders. Before he dug out his paltry dinner of stale potato chips and dregs of water, though, he wanted to check out the bedroom that had probably once belonged to a little boy. It was stupid of him to think, but some hopeful part of him couldn't help but wonder if he had left anything worth keeping behind him when he'd fled. Something like… a Nintendo game, perhaps?

The walls of the boy's room, lacking any loving parental touch, were fading fast; its blue paint was peeling off in curls, and the dinosaur frieze along the rim of the walls were they touched the ceiling were smeared with… dirt? No, Neige thought, stepping closer. It was soot.

Something crunched under his foot, and he glanced down, expecting to see a splintered wooden toy. Instead, he found himself staring at the still-smouldering remains of a fire.

"Holy-!" he jumped back into the doorway, clutched the jamb. He strained his ears for the sound of any nearby humans; he heard nothing but the whistling of the wind outside the window and the patter patter of angry raindrops against the glass. He peered more closely at the fire: pieces of the wooden furniture in the room had been broken up and laid carefully across each other, ringed by mossy stones obviously brought in from outside.

Crumbs littered the singed carpet around the fire. Cooked and splintered pieces of bone, too; obviously this person hadn't had any trouble keeping himself/herself fed.

The child-sized bed was the only thing left untouched in the whole room. Its covers were rumpled, obviously slept in; carefully, easily, Neige picked his way across to it, feeling the sheets. They were cool to the touch. He peered up at the soot gathered on the ceiling again, bent to touch the fire. The fire was cold, but the soot was heavy on the paint. Feeling like Sherlock Holmes, he pushed himself to his feet again, deducing that this old house was a base of operations for somebody, and that they'd been gone long enough for the bed and fire to grow cold, but would probably be back to add more soot to the collection gathering above Neige's head.

Now he was left with a choice. He could stay, trust fate to give him one good hand out of a hundred bad ones, hope that this person might just be an ally in his barely-formed quest for redemption and heroism. On the other hand…

Maybe it was best if he just left now. This wasn't the only abandoned house along the road; and besides, even with the storm now rattling the windows in the panes, as if goading him to come out and play, he figured he didn't really want to take his chances if he'd somehow stumbled onto an Orc camp from Lord of the Rings or some equally terrifying monster's lair.

"Delibird," he called, hurrying quickly to the parents' room to fetch up his backpack again. His shoulders burned under the familiar weight, but he did his best to put it at the back of his mind as he re-emerged into the hallway. "Delibird, don't get too attached to this place, we've got to get go—"

He stopped dead, his hand halfway to the zip of his backpack to fetch his sweater. Standing at the head of the stairs, his foot stalled almost comically in the air above the final step onto the landing, was a boy. The first thing Neige noticed about him – besides the position of his feet, anyway – was his outfit. Brown, all of it, and exceedingly patched and old: oversized linen shirt, simple and archaic in design, basic trousers and soft leather shoes. His hair was much like Neige's own, if a bit longer; sandy, dripping from the storm and flopping into his eyes so that he seemed to blink in slow motion from under his straight fringe.

All of this he could deal with, Neige figured. This – a boy who seemed to have jumped straight from a still frame of a fantasy movie, lingering on the top step of a distinctly modern house probably built not long after Neige was born – would have been simple, downright easy in fact, to accept. Had it not been for the distinctly curved hunting bow slung over the boy's shoulder, bumping against a leather quiver stuffed full of arrows, anyway. An empty string bag was clutched in the boy's hand, swinging forlornly and completely forgotten as the two stared at one another. This kid clearly wasn't from around here.

"Who are you?" They asked together. Their answers were delivered just as simultaneously; neither heard the other's answer. Neige licked his lips. The boy finally dropped his foot.

"My name's Neige," Neige said quickly, before the other boy spoke. "Il Neige."

"You're not from Alagaesia either, are you?" asked the boy, flicking his wet fringe from his eyes in a way that struck Neige as kind of teenage-girl-y. It was the word 'Alagaesia' that made it click.

"Eragon?" he ventured. The boy's – Eragon's – eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"How have you come by my name?" he asked. His fingers tensed, moved an inch closer to his bow. "Are you the one who brought me here? For what purpose? Did you envy the link between Saphira and I from afar? Is it you who's taken my dragon away? Where is she? Is she alive? I can't sense her in this realm. Return me to her!"

This was all spoken very fast, and the bow had somehow moved closer to his hands with every question. Neige threw up his hands placatingly.

"Chill, Eragon! Er, that is—calm down. Please." He gestured exhaustedly to the boy's room. "You might want to sit down while I explain all this…"