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Marta was a bony woman, pale, tall and bald, but smooth-skinned, dressed in the familiar gray robes of the Dawn. For the duration of our journey, she carried a sack across her back, a jug in hand, and a basket of herbs on her arm. I carried my head high and astutely confident.

We were led to a sort of pump house that I hadn't seen in all my expeditions, buried among the dunes. It was almost mirage-like—old architecture peeking through sand like the eyes of an ancient bunker. In the swale was a concrete slab with drainage holes and a spigot on a tall metal pipe. With an unknown hand gesture towards the bunker's eyes from Marta, and a creaky twist of the tap, fresh water trickled out. I had the sense to keep my wits about me and my distance.

The women stood with their backs to me. Marta gathered the fabric drape framing Ophelia's face in her long, pallid fingers and folded it back over the crown of her head with a delicacy that suggested she might fear a bite.

The Ghoul Mother's hair came as a surprise—its presence where I had assumed absence and its impossible length. There must have been several feet of it. A white streak marked where the radiation had affected her, a bundle of strands that glowed like fibre-optic thread beneath the sun. Marta pinned the mass atop her head with pins and practiced precision. That curve of exposed neck was utterly beautiful.

Not for the first time in my life, I was being afforded too much power. I knew I was seeing something I shouldn't. I fixed my gaze on the horizon, stared off into the dunes, and listened to the distant and unimportant rattle of gunfire that my ear had been trained to hear. But then Marta moved around to work on the elaborate ties that kept her leader within her robes.

The first tie and its undoing revealed her shoulders, their fine slope and softened blades, not at all rotted or decrepit as I had been conditioned to envision. Her skin glowed bronze beneath the beating sun, warm where I had assumed cold, earthen and brown sugar—wholly human. The spigot's idle spray bled into the dragging hem of Marta's gown as she worked. A vulture hissed overhead.

The next tie unearthed the most generous swell of the Ghoul Mother's hips. What a shame it was to hide such a marvel beneath that heavy pool of fabric. Her shape was reminiscent of the painted relics our Scribes brought back from their luckier scavenges. Even so, nothing in the Wasteland had prepared me for her silhouette. I would not forget it. The remaining gather of robe hung off the crest of her hips like it was frightened to fall, and I was frightened too.

Before the final tie could come undone, Marta's eyes, mossy and sharp in their paleness, cut across her shoulder in warning.

I had been staring.

My fingers tightened around the shaft of my gun. I internally cringed at the thought of how it would look if I had accidentally fired—if I shot a bullet into my boot where I stood—and loosened my grip.

Water bounced over Ophelia's bare shoulders in magnificent sparkles. I had been well-watered, yet my throat had never felt more dry. My flask no longer satisfied me. I compared its contents against the water that caressed Ophelia's body in loving rivulets, the droplets dancing down the soft curve of her calves, and ruled it not enough. I wanted to be on my knees, beneath her—I wanted to open my mouth at her feet and drink it.