A Shadow Over Sand [Dragon/Auerbach]

The sand pressed underheel, Auerbach's dogged march having lasted weeks with no end in sight. Sometimes he had stopped, for one reason or another. Usually with something trying to attack him, resulting in the same outcome.

Attempt after attempt, with no ability to actually harm him.

He'd wonder on why, each time. Understanding the idea of hunger, understanding the desire for something else, but incapable of understanding the means. Violence came far from easily, and when he did fight back, the feeling in his gut - where ever it was - soured. So he marched, step after step, into the horizon day after day.

The arrancar was downcast as he did, eyes tracing the sand for his next step.

A shadow overhead, and his face would turn skyward, tired white strands slipping past. "Big chiroptera*?"

(*tl note: chiroptera is a term for bat.)

Food was the only thing that was on the Dragon's mind. She felt no want for anything else. Just the never ending effort to stifle the hunger that gnawed at her very core. There was nothing around, hardly anything she could see for miles, and none of it was appetizing. But she had to keep looking, right? The beast wondered that to herself as her eyes scanned the empty horizon. Nothing but sand for miles. That wasn't new, though.

Perhaps it was because she gave up, perhaps even impatience and the desire to just open a Garganta to the human world, but the Dragon descended towards the sandy land beneath her. Wings flapping as she slowed her descent until she touched down with a loud thud. That was when she noticed it. Another Arrancar? She still couldn't tell. These things were still so new to her.

"And what are you?" She wondered in response to being called a chiropte-whatever the hell the thing had said. "Are you my next meal? Or just another nuisance come to sour my mood even more?"

"Chiroptera eat fruit, bugs. I am neither." Auerbach parroted his inane factoid with certainty, unmoving even as the hollow's pressure surrounded him. His head rocked to the side as he addressed the creature, blinking before continuing to speak.

"But chiroptera don't talk." Raising a finger to point, Auerbach's eyes widened at his less-than-rousing revelation. "So you must be hollow! Hollow eat hollow." His arm dropped, resting fist first on him hip. "So, not food."

Having dignity was not something that a Hollow should have, that much the Dragon believed. But this little Hollow man-thing... Even thinking about eating it left a sour taste in the beast's mouth. Was it because it was weak? Because it seemed to stupid to even understand what it was? How could she preach her inane elitism to something that barely even processed what she was?

"Yes, I am a hollow. Are you not?" The beast couldn't help but wonder. She had been doing that recently. Attempting to understand the world around her, that is. There was hardly anything to understand as a being of hunger and destruction. What good would it do her? Yet even for something so uninteresting that she knew wouldn't be appetizing, nor gratifying to consume, she felt almost compelled to talk anyways. "You don't smell like the rest of the beasts in this land, nor do you speak like them. Where do you come from?"

Thoughts became tangled at the idea. 'From' was not something Auerbach dealt with. 'Before' was not a friend, and frankly he couldn't stand the thought of 'Was'. 'Where' he could attempt to solve, but in the state he stood, even the sands held no name for him. As these thoughts were attempted, his eyes closed tight, knotting visible in the arrancar's forehead.

"Uhhhh...." Short of steam shooting out his ears, a lightbulb exploding above his head, Auerbach managed to produce a name whispered in a hallway out of earshot in a place of 'Before'.

"Las.... Noches? I think that's... A place." He scratched at his stitches, turning focus back to the hollow. "Where are we now?"

"Is it...?" The beast muttered under her rotted breath. "I don't know a 'Las Noches'. Since when did these cretins start giving places names?" The beast wondered, but she doubted this boy thing whatever it was had any idea of that. "Nevermind. We're in the middle of a foodless wasteland. I do hope for these fools' sakes that they didn't name this land either, lest they provoke my ire further." The beast spoke in her natural cadence, using words she knew the arrancar didn't understand, but it's not like she cared about this total stranger.

Her wings fluttered out as she scanned the horizon for food, only to find nothing. None for her, not even ones this little one could likely handle. And this one couldn't even make a dent in the hunger she felt, the Dragon already knew. "Do you eat?" She wondered without looking down to him, not even knowing if Arrancars ate Hollows anymore.

"Everything needs names." A finger dug deeper against a stitch, the interior pushing Auerbach's hand away from his face, a stinging sensation shooting down the arrancar's arm. His focus remained on the hollow, arm returning to his side with a faint crack. The following question was much more manageable than the first -

"I don't know where my stomach is at. But I'll eat when I find it!" The sliver of a smile as Auerbach's voice pitched higher in cadence, eyes shifting listlessly into the distance. "Where ever that is...."

A moment of silence, before the arrancar's head snapped back into place, looking at the dragon. "What's your name, hollow chiroptera?"

The Dragon scoffed at the idea of everything needing a name, though before she could speak, she heard the boy-thing refer to his stomach as... somewhere? Her already narrowed eyes squinted even more as she strained her brain to even comprehend what that could mean. Perhaps it was literal, perhaps it meant the thing was so weak it didn't quite feel the hunger it would in the later stages of its life, just like she did. The Dragon still didn't acknowledge it, instead taking the opportunity to shift back to names and her utter disdain for them.

"Names are for humans, who are afraid of dying. They use them to tie things to reality, but in actuality, all things will die. You, me, this 'Las Noches', it will all be gone one day. What will a name do for them then?" The Dragon hissed out in annoyance, always tired of reiterating her hatred towards the topic. "I don't have a name, and I don't want one. What's the use in having a name when you're all alone, anyways?"

Auerbach couldn't tell whether he liked the hollow or not. They didn't seem to like him, but they weren't being mean to him either. At the least, he was happy to have someone to talk to.

"Hew-man." The word amused the arrancar, a short laugh escaping from his resulting smile. "Sounds funny, whatever it is." The air of her breath was uncomfortable as she'd hiss, Auerbach taking a moment to step backwards. A sniffle in his nose, displeasure riddling some part of his brain somewhere far away.

"Names are important." Auerbach thought aloud, "Without a name, you turn into a thing. Things are used. Thrown away." A memory rattled momentarily, filled with enough unease that he was unsure of whether to parrot it.

In the inky black of Hueco Mundo, Auerbach turned to the eyes of a dragon, a breath between then and now. Speaking in a voice not quite his own. "'Without a name, you'd be inferior to the ones who are.'"

The Dragon stood frozen and listened to this creature's utterly deranged words. The more he spoke, the more annoyed she became, and the more annoyed she became, the louder the rumbling growls in her throat became.

"Names are for those who fear impermanence, like they need to tie themselves to this mortal coil with something that will ultimately fail to save them from the merciless clutches of death. Such is the human side of you speaking, creature. You are shaped like one, so I'm sure there's some inside of you." She said in as calmly of a voice as she could muster in her angered mind. "But if you truly wish to stand by those words, that as an unnamed creature I am inferior to you who has a name, then kill me. If I, a nameless beast who knows her place in this world, can kill tens of thousands of God-fearing, named fools, then your words are already proven wrong. Unless you mean inferior in another way, in which..."

The beast fluttered her wings with an amused, yet still annoyed chuckle. "...I'd like to see them try and prove that I am any less superior than them. I assure you, I am not, and I never will be."