Awakening

Chapter 3- The Central Landfill And It's Halfies

Chapter 3- The Central Landfill And It's Halfies 

"Quite the sight, isn't it?" 

I stared out the window, my eyes widening.  

Among the rubble and metal and wrecks laid a city. Towering buildings, peaking into the hazy morning sky, glinted and shimmered through the clouds and smoke. They reached up, several stories high, with windows made of shiny glass of all sorts of different colors. Red and orange and blue and purple stained windows casted a color pallet onto the streets, which were paved over with cement, criss-crossing through these cement streets was a long metal strip, curving and twisting, humming softly with electricity. I watched in awe as smaller machines, practically tiny versions of the Crusher except without wheels, zoomed over the streets. Street signs lined the sidewalks, flashing in different colors, the words on them fading away to reveal a new message every so often. In between the towering buildings were smaller houses and small businesses, people popping in and out of doors, walking along streets talking and laughing and chatting.  

However, the people were a very different matter. Because not all of them were actual people. 

There were lots of humans there, too, but mixed in between, standing near them, talking with them, holding hands and walking with them, were other things. 

I can't exactly describe them. At a first glance, you might mistake them for being human. The same lanky figure, tall and thin, with strong, uplifted heads that rose a little to far above their shoulders. Their necks, too long and too thin, seemed unnatural to be lifting the size of their head, a bit bigger than a normal person's. Their arms stretched down all the way to their knees, and seemed to have small ridges along the sides down to the elbow, each ridge tipped with a pale blue color. Small noses, large, blinking eyes, and nearly translucent skin all gave them an alienated look. 

I stared at these strange people for a long time, my breath halting in my throat. Their very presence seemed to give off an aura of... I don't know what. Strangeness? Not quite. Irritation? Definitely not. Awe? It just doesn't seem to be the right word. 

I struggled to grasp the concept of these creatures, walking down the streets and chatting and moving along with others, until the Crusher turned the next corner and I lost sight of them. All I saw were normal people on the street now, not any of those beings.

My mouth twisted in a slightly disturbed frown, I turned back to sit in my chair just as Jaxon started to speak. "We stick out a little bit, don't we?" He said cheerfully, staring ahead through the glass. 

And it was true. Outside, people were staring at the Crusher, different from all the other hover cars and machines. It rumbled over the streets, it's wheels squeaking and scraping against the cement, sounding our arrival. Their stares made me want to duck down under the seats, hide my face. I stared at the floor uncomfortably, not responding to Jaxon's words. 

"Sorry about that, little missy. My Crusher may be my pride and joy, but it's still an old model. Besides, if I tried to fly one of those hovercars  back out in the wasteland, they would be jerking and dropping all over the place. Not enough electricity and magnetism to keep them going, mm-hmm. That's one of their flaws. They can't do nothing like my Crusher can do." He said this giddily, with pride in his voice, ignoring their stares. 

"The city is beautiful." I said quietly, sneaking another peak out the window, and trying not to meet anyone's gaze. I don't know why, but it made me nervous, all of them staring at me like that with scrutiny in their eyes. Maybe it had to do with my past, I thought. 

"Beautiful, that it is. A lot of the big city folks say that us trash-dwellers live in little huts made of scrap metal. But that's not true at all; even though our buildings are made of scrap materials, it doesn't make us any  different than them."