It was long and slender... and very sharp.<br/><br/>Those were the first things that had occurred to him the moment the mind-killer swarm had passed.  And only a moment later, he knew why they occurred to him.  It was his sole possession, the only thing he could ever manage to hang onto despite the ebb and flow of bad events that befell his tribe.  A stiletto.  A single, thin spike of metal, perhaps five inches long - if anyone could remember what and inch was these days.  With an ivory handle.  Ivory... that was its color anyway; the composition of the handle was suspect, of course.<br/><br/>His name was Zeref Cadester, but he never went by that.  "The Cad" suited him best, or "Cadester" only to those unacquainted with him.  He liked the sound of it - it had the ring of a powerful family, long since gone... lost to what humanity had become.  He wasn't even sure if anyone else ever remembered their family names once the mind-killers came through.  He saw it as his mark: a legacy of sorts to those he whelped.  Once in a while he would let his first name slip - a gift, he thought, to those that deserved it.  Or perhaps a parting bit of mercy to those who deserved worse.<br/><br/>He stood perhaps 5' 9", slightly under average as men went.  But he was fit, lithe and appealing, looking every bit of his virility, even if he could have used a little more meat on his slender frame.  His body was hairless, save for the shaggy, shoulder-length mass of black atop his head and the more curled batch further south.  His legs bore a smattering of aimless hairs, though nothing obtrusive, and were he older, his face would have had a darker tint about his jawline and mouth.  Years were hard to count when your mind was robbed every so often, but his could not have been more than twenty-four.<br/><br/>He hated when the swarms came.  The soggy feeling they gave his mind was bad enough, but the worst part of it was watching the others suffer far worse.  Supplies would be ravaged, months of hard work would be destroyed... lives would be lost.  It was a deep, primal fear he bore that one day he would be like them, that he, too, would lose his mind and run rampant in a panic, losing his life unceremoniously to a plant in the garden, or more damnigly, to a Frogly in the pen.<br/><br/>So that's why, when the swarm approached, he laid flat on the floor inside the manor house and stuck his stiletto into the wood before him.  And he focused on it, and kept repeating to himself what it was... long, slender, and sharp.  Long, slender, and sharp.  Long, slender, and...<br/><br/>Then his mind filled with wetness and for days he was never totally sure of anything.  He had milled around the house aimlessly, watching as if drugged as his fellow human beings tore open the stores, ravaged the livestock, and got themselves killed in the process.  What hurt more than seeing these people's integrity vanish in a blink was the fact that, the whole time, he could have tried to stop it... but never found the energy or the inclination.  Though his mind recovered more quickly than the others, and his memories and will came flooding back in a rush, in those crucial days he was as worthless as the rest of them - calm, but worthless.<br/><br/>Thankfully he hadn't lost his loincloth; the thin wrapping of orange-ish fabric still clung to him, despite the odds of it being stolen or simply discarded.  Besides his stiletto, the only material thing he valued was whatever he could find to wrap about his waist.  It wasn't out of shame - humanity's shame had long since died along with its inspiration and its dignity - but he liked to keep his maleness clean and protected.  It was more comfortable for him, and certainly more pleasing for his lovers.<br/><br/>The Cad called himself that because he was a Master Breeder - meant to spread his seed as far and as wide as he could.  He'd heard the term before, in a distant memory, describing a lover of many women, and it seemed to fit him approproately, given his name and occupation.  And when he wasn't living up to that, he was looking for anything that interested him... anything that looked useful, like it had been made for a specific purpose long since forgotten.  He greatly enjoyed finding out what that purpose could have been for any given object he stumbled across.  By touching any relic from the past he found, he felt himself drawing closer to that time when his name may have meant something.<br/><br/>But now there was work to be done, and he was making himself useful as best he could, piecing together what was left of the barn stores that had been strewn about.  With luck, he might stumble across something new that he could tinker with for a while.  Movement nearby caught him, and he glanced up, looking through his dangling hair to see Mina and Onyx - two exquisite creatures in their own right, he was grateful to see they had survived - starting to organize everyone.  He put down his work and stood up straight, waving to them gently and starting to make his way over.