The view on our hike was terrible, it was rubble as far as the eye could see, save for the few hyper resilient plants that managed to claw out a home for themselves in this dump. I couldn't even zone out either, because the ground was both not dangerous enough to take up all of my attention, but too dangerous enough to ignore. It was a nightmare

Soon after we had started walking, Zgax had given me the rundown on the wastelands. Despite seeing pictures of the San Francisco disaster of 2027, I still had trouble believing that devastation at this scale was even possible. I started to gain a newfound respect for the brave GDA troopers who helped keep earth safe from things like this.

Zgax seemed unbothered by the terrain, she marched forward at a consistent speed, only ever slowing down to wait for me. In fact, I think she was zoning out during this! I had tried to watch her to see if copying her movements might help, but I kept getting distracted by her feather hair and tripping. She, of course, somehow managed to catch me in time without trouble.

After a couple of hours of walking in silence, I had had enough. I would need to do the unthinkable… engage in small talk. “Zgax?” 

“Hm?” she responded, not even turning around to say it.

“Why don’t you carry ammo for your gun?”

“Oh, it’s faith powered, just like my glaive.” She held up her staff. After a moment of silence she added, “it isn’t turned on.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, how did you get it?” she let out a long sigh. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“No, you probably need to know if we are going to be traveling together. I am from a… very important family, a family that that is very important to the running of the empire-”

“You're a princess!” I half yelled.

“N-no….”  She was evidently very bad at lying. “Anyway, I didn’t want to be involved in all of this.” she said, gesturing around her at the surrounding wasteland.

We walked for a bit longer in silence, waiting to see who would talk first. Zgax broke before I did. “What’s life on earth like? for you at least, I don’t expect you to describe it without a comparison.”

“Lonely, I didn’t have many friends.” Zgax nodded in understanding before gesturing for me to continue, “People were too weirded out by me to try to befriend me, and when they weren't, I wasn’t good at reciprocating.”

Zgax finally stopped and turned to look at me, “you don’t seem that weird to me. Then again, I don’t have a great reference for your world’s culture either.” when I had caught up, she started walking again, this time being sure to match my pace.

“I was in a bit of a brain fog back then I guess. I was still trying to figure myself out back then.”

“Have you? Figured yourself out, I mean.”

“I have, but the answer doesn’t make me seem any less weird to a lot of people on earth.”

“Why is that?” she asked as we made our way up a rubble hill.

“You won’t judge me right?” Despite the good vibes she gave off, I was still scared to tell her, as I assume one always is the first time they come out to someone, willingly at least.

Zgax stopped suddenly, before taking off her helmet and giving me a reassuring smile. Around her radiated an aura of safety that calmed me down enough to realize that I was tearing up. “Of course not, you can trust me.”

“I am-” I paused to take a deep breath, “I am trans.”

Slowly I looked up at her, not to see a face of disgust, but of confused acceptance. “I know.”

“W-what?”

“I know a little bit about humans.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“It didn’t seem important?” Why was she getting confused?

“Normally people would make a bigger deal of that, at least where I’m from.”

“Oh…” she took a moment to think about what i had said before asking a follow up question, “like a good kinda deal?”

“N-no, not usually.

“I’m sorry, if you don’t want to talk about this we can not I was just curious about where you are from and wanted to get to know you and-” she stopped, “I’ll just stop talking.”

“No, it's fine.” I said, “how much longer do you think?”

Zgax stopped for a moment and surveyed the area. “What are you looking for?”

“Bugs. more specifically Psyotites. They should live nearby. They feed on psychic waves, this as a side effect of making them glow. They glow more when there are more Psyotites around because they are detecting each other. Psyotites are very cooperative little guys because their own psychic waves connect to each other. They aren’t necessarily a hive mind but they are great at working together. Also I've always wanted to see one in person.” this time she didn’t even seem to notice her rambling, getting lost explaining more about Psyotites. Not that I was complaining, It was mildly interesting and I got to stop walking for a couple of minutes. 

“Ah, found one!” she said,bringing me back. She triumphantly held up a bug about the size of a bee. It had no hair as far as I could see and its shell was black. It looked like a pretty standard bug to me, meaning kinda gross, save for two defining features, it didn’t seem to have a mouth and little sections of it, along with most of its back glowed a bright turquoise. “Based on this…. Based on this there should be a lot more of them.” Zgax said, a look of confused concern growing on her face.

“Is this bad?”

“I doubt it, it probably just has a very unlucky mutation. Poor little guy” she lightly patted its head with her finger before putting it back down, letting it scurry away to hide under some rubble. “Let's keep going.” she said as she put her helmet back on, and started walking.