Something fun

Author's note: I had the idea while reading Romantically Apocalyptic over a year ago when I started this story. Yes, there will be life-alopes in the post-apocalyptic world, and while this post is canon. it is temporally displaced, and might vanish, who knows.

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Canis-Cornus-Americana in the wild

Saw this today poking around my camp, for those still hiding or trapped in the bunkers, on the surface we've taken calling them lifealopes, yeah I know not very creative, but it's a start. So obviously it was a wolf at some point but then it changed. Something we've noticed about them is that wherever they go plant life flourishes, rapidly growing or in cases where the earth was barren regrows rapidly, and in some cases cleansing previously irradiated and dangerous areas to safe levels. Eivan told me of creature like them living in the zone of alienation cleansing the Chernobyl disaster area, but at the time, sitting in the missile base I thought it was just stories he was making up to give us some kind of hope as we waited for either the gradual tic of our Geiger counters to inform us of our impending demise, or a cooling off of the area around us so we might escape to an uncertain fate..... sorry, dark thoughts again.

They're usually benign and calm and approachable, though lifealopes that were predators in the past become extremely territorial if you act aggressively to any new growth caused by their presence. You could say they're sort of like a Dryad, only they're not tied to any one tree or grove. We have found that "herbivore" lifealopes will attack and gore people that damage their "works" only to immediately heal the wounds as if to teach them a lesson. 

As for the one I saw today, it was skittish when I approached it, though the reason was rather clear. It has a partially healed gunshot wound to it's leg, apparently their healing and regeneration doesn't extend to themselves, or something about the wound is different. I didn't get a chance to examine and dress it's wound unfortunately because it wouldn't let me close enough. Hopefully I'll be able to convince it to trust me enough to see if there's anything I can do to ease the discomfort at the least. It's probably wary of me because of my rifle. I'll figure something out. I've also never seen on this far east into the ashlands.