Trading: Tails for Tales

Date: 9.7.2224
Location: East of Houston, Texas

Finally broke free of Houston. Left behind the shattered glass and heat-hollowed towers and stepped into something wider, quieter—nothing but wind, red dirt, and Brahmin. Dozens of ’em. Twin-headed and twitching like they know something we don’t. Watching.

Out there, I met a woman—Nora Sterling. Claimed to be a medic, running trade from an old, half-crushed pharmacy that smelled like sun-bleached gauze and old world mercy. When I mentioned I was from Vault 288, her whole face changed—eyes lit up like I was a ghost she half-remembered from childhood. Turns out, she was born in 288 too. Left before the ice age of my awakening. Said she wanted to see the world. Said curiosity beat comfort.

We shared food, sat in that dusty shop surrounded by rusted shelves and half-dead plants, and talked like we were on the same side of something. Until she told me the truth that still won’t sit right in my soul.

“They burn the dead,” she said.
“What dead?” I asked.
“All of ’em. People, Brahmin. If it’s meat and it’s gone cold, they cremate it. Harvest the acid. Fuel the cores.”

I almost dropped my fork.

See, I helped design those fusion cores—back when power was clean, when our energy came from vision, not violation. We built them to run cities, homes, dreams. Not to burn our ancestors into ash and bottle them for barter. That ain’t power—that’s perversion.

She said it quiet, almost like she didn’t want to believe it either. They keep their Brahmin clean in the Vault, not out of mercy, but efficiency. Healthy cattle means clean acid. Sick ones? Dead ones? Into the fire they go. And the worst part—those cores get sold. Traded. Shipped to anyone with caps. Raiders. Enclave. Brotherhood. No judgment, just transaction.

“That’s why I left,” she said. “Didn’t want to watch my mother turn into voltage.”

I respected that. Until she mentioned her pact with the Brotherhood. Said they protect her shop in exchange for medical supplies and loyalty. That set me sideways. You flee one machine just to serve another. I told her as much, but she just looked tired.

“At least I get to choose the terms.”

I stayed the night anyway. Her place was warm, beds clean, and her supplies fresher than anything I’d seen in miles. I needed a medkit bad—rads creeping under my skin, joints locking up like rust. I had no caps, but I had Brahmin tails—clean, fresh, three of them. Gave them over and walked out with a first aid kit that might buy me a few more days on this broken earth.

But still—her words sit heavy.

We burn the dead to power the living. We forge the future on the bones of the past.

And all the while, I hear New Orleans calling like a psalm in my ear. Pip-Boy in map mode, compass steady. My steps are not random—they’re remembered.

I keep walking.
The way home is long.
But I ain't lost.