Nux was a tangible being once. For a few days. He had skin and bones and even a real working heart and brain. But Toast grabbed Capable's shoulders firmly and told her that life in the form of skin and bones tended to stop being tangible when three tons of explosion propelled steel hits it. They didn't need to go back. Because that was the way things went. Everyone was a brief, fleeting passage.
Now Nux was a dusty wasteland ghost that floated along in the periphery of Capable's vision. Paranoia was a disease she thought she'd never need understand, yet here it was digging it's poison dipped claws directly into her spine. It was always on the outside, brief shadowed glimpses during the day, a constant following presence that caused her to double take, triple take the empty air.
She screamed the first time he approached her straight on. It was night, everyone had settled down into their respective spots. Even Capable, though her eyes remained wide and clear in the sleep filled room.
Then there he was, right in front of her. She screamed and flailed and kicked and tore at him, real as could be. Or, almost real as could be; his appearance was smudged, slightly translucent and wavering along the edges. But he was there, bright eyes, pale skin, raised scars, all ten fingers and toes. Capable screamed louder and thrashed harder, and got close enough to nearly graze skin. And then he was gone, vanished, returning to the air.
The other wives, scattered around the room, jumped up with fear-shiny eyes and knives. Fragile grabbed her first, pinning her reaching arms down and stopped the screaming with a steady coo: "There's nothing there, there's no one there, nothing, no one."
After a long while, when her breathing slowed, eyes dried, and her arms stopped straining to grasp the air, Capable stumbled into sleep with silent wraiths swirling, calling through a storm behind her eyes.
The second night she held her tongue in wonder. Gut churning wonder. Didn't move an inch. Didn't dare to inhale. Nux soundlessly formed and laid down, resting just a few centimeters above the ground, eyes lined with hers. Capable's breath caught and she nearly jerked away as something bubbled over into a hot sting that filled her entire chest. He put a single finger to his lips and smiled. Her fingers tried to reached out, stable and self assured, to touch him. But before skin met skin, his figure whisked away again, there one moment, air the next. She felt nothing.
Capable counted thirty nights, one after the other identically the same. She would lie and he would lie and they would watch each other fall asleep, hands placed as close to the other as was allowed. The distance could have been inches, feet, could have been seconds, decades, Capable couldn't seem to conceive how many grains of sand lay between them.
Then the night came when Capable lay down alone and no pale body came to join her. After nearly an hour of breathless waiting, no movement, no sleep, she sat up and there he was: cross legged and wide-eyed at her feet. Wordlessly, he stood up and hovered over undisturbed sleeping bodies to leave through the doorway.
"Wait!" She whispered after him, and then clamped hands down over her mouth, whipping her head around erratically. No one in the room stirred. She scrambled up as quiet as she could, moving carefully through the room. Around the corner from the doorway, Nux's body hovered still, save for his shimmering edges. His skin illuminated the encasing dark. When she was close enough to begin to call out again, he moved away. She traced after his trail for what felt like miles, years, minutes winding through the carved out cliff. They popped out at the base, desert snaking out eternal before them. Capable stopped before her bare feet touched the sand. Nux kept going.
"Wait!" She whispered to him again, but he kept walking. "Nux!"
She danced along the edge of the sand, then, when his body was beginning to disappear against the edge of the citadel perimeter, she let out a swear and bolted back inside, racing back up all the endless circling stairs. She broke out at the top landing and ran straight to the edge, causing the guarding crew of War Boys to mechanically raise their weapons. She flashed her hands up and turned towards them, "It's just me", then grabbed the telescope.
One of the larger War Boys, skin pox marked and a skull carved into his chest, came up next to her. "Gave us quite a scare there. Almost shot you through the neck"
"You should have shot me through the head," she said absently, eyes scanning the horizon. Within seconds she spotted a silvery light flashing against the sand. He was headed towards the canyon.
"What's wrong?" The War Boy asked.
She passed him the telescope. "Do you see anything?"
He looked for a moment then pulled away and stared at her, brow furrowed a little, "Should I?"
"You don't see any sand kicking up?" she asked and grabbed the telescope from him, peering back through it, back to the canyon. There was nothing but the small scattered bones of the war rig poking out from the sand.
"Nah, we've been all clear tonight. Few scavengers out 'round the main road but, you know, that's the usual."
"Right," she scrubbed a hand over her face, "Okay. Good."
"Something up? Should we up the guard?"
"No, no, no. I couldn't sleep and thought I heard the wind pick up. I figured I'd just check and see if there was something blowing through."
"Well, I'll keep an eye out, but it's been real quiet out here."
She sighed and slunk back from the edge, "Okay, thank you. And I'm sorry. That I gave you a scare, I mean. I hope you have a nice night."
The War Boy blinked at her "Yeah."
And she darted back inside.
Before dawn had the chance to break, Capable sneaked her way out of the citadel, food and water stashed in a bag, goggles in hand, hair hidden under a tan scarf. She hesitated once more at the edge of the sand, dipping her feet in slowly, testing the grains between her toes. It wasn't new, wasn't unexpected, it was sand the way sand was. The same constant present that clogged her nose and throat and clung to her skin. She was shaky on the first footfall, breathless and hyper-aware, but after two or three steps on wavering knees, she broke off into a steady stride, slinking around through the decayed shanty town.
The canyon was a solid two day trek through searing sand, and she crawled the entire way. Each time a sound that wasn't her own was made, a lizard or crow creeping the same way she was, she would hunch and hide her obviously living skin. "To be caught, to be dead," she whispered to herself a soft mantra keeping time with the mechanical movements of her limbs.
By the time she reached the open rocks and the wreck that lay inside, the sun had slid it's way down the sky for the second time. Her hands and feet were rubbed away, raw and gaping. She sat back on her haunches and stared at the vastness of it all, shelled out bodies of cars peppering the ground all the way back into the horizon. From this distance it looked dead. Capable wiped a stray bead of sweat and cleaned her hands quickly. Then she stood and bolted as fast as her tired legs would take her, to one of the large rocks that broke out from the sand. She skid and sat again behind it, trying to regain her huffing breath as quietly as possible. She leaned out delicately from around the rock and scanned the surroundings for a silver boy. Something moved along the edge of her vision. Capable swallowed her breath and scanned again, spotting the something, someone, alive and well, stirring in the carved out ribcage of the dead rig.
As silently and slowly as she could physically handle, she unsheathed her knife and crawled towards the moving shape. As she got closer, as close as she could be without leaving the rocks, she could see it. Them. A person. A man, not silver and strange, but real. decorated in layers upon layers of grime encrusted rags that formed almost a solid shell around his body. His hair hung long and matted with dirt in front of his face and he was picking at something small, black, and motionless on the ground.
She moved into the open air behind him, quiet crawling on all fours. This was familiar, the preceding calm of an attack. The moment breathed life into her tired bones, rejuvenated the spring of muscles when she leaped up, aimed at an exposed, fleshy neck. A neck that had immortal fury seared and scarred into it. It was a moment of brief gasping realization that got her pinned. Terrified eyes met terrified eyes as her body knocked back, head colliding hard onto the sand. She tried to grapple, flip, squirm out from underneath him, but he had her hands clamped down with instinctive conviction above her head. Reflexively, she dropped her knife and opened her palms wide. All movement halted. He examined her, eyes catching on to different parts of her, face, hands and hair. They stared at each other for a long time, when Capable breathed out,
"Don't I know you?"
His eyes stayed focused on her's. He moved suddenly and with a speed unburdened by his encasing rags, switching his hands- one to keep her in place, the other to snatch the knife- pressing the blade against her throat. She let out a small noise and his released his hold.
Capable sat up slowly onto her elbows and peered up at him. He met her stare, eyes bright and wild. She began to move to stand, hands still raised, precariously balancing the blade against her skin. He rose with her, jerky in his movements, knife switching between his palms.
Slowly, extremely slowly and with quivering fingers, she reached out towards him. He stood corporeally still. Capable pushed the matted mass of hair up and away from his face with a certain delicacy. She brushed off some of the grime and dirt, wiping away at hardened layers that chipped to reveal soft, peachy flesh underneath. The knife dug into her neck and she stopped.
She backed away from the blade and he let her. Once far enough away, she finally put her hands down. They stood now at a distance, both examining the other.
"Do you remember me, Max?" She sputtered, "We rode this road together, once."
He didn't acknowledge her, but instead sat down hard, kicking up a wave of dust. His focus had returned to the dead thing he had been chewing on. A crow. Feathers broken and bent, nearly blending into the night darkened dirt. Capable rubbed her nose and scratched at her neck. Other than the occasional crunching, the canyon was silent.
She turned away from Max's chewing and called out "Nux," in a whisper to the dark shape of the desert. Another "Nux", slightly louder. She turned and eyed Max, who was wiping his fingers against the fabric of his pants. He gazed up at her, then past her, and put a single finger to his lips. Capable whipped around and saw Nux's form, a silver shimmer, bright and reflective off of gleaming moonlit sand. He began to walk forward and she followed making fresh footprints into the waste. Through the rubble and the wreck, she trailed behind him keeping time with his gliding motions. There among the corroded hub of the resting rig, he stopped. A body lay half covered in sand, picked clean of any skin or muscles or hearts or brains. Nux's ghost vanished when Capable came to stand next to him.
She let out a soft sigh, "there you are", and sat at his head. His skull. She ran a hand through her already knotted hair. Here she was. She flopped back onto the sand and held her breath- breaths, endless breaths, echoing through the walls of pulsing lungs- for a moment.
Then she got up and covered the skull thoroughly in a layer of sand, hiding it from preying scavengers. Then she dusted herself off, and started to walk. Past Max, past the broken crow, past the rig, back to the citadel.