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Forget the cooler system. I’m going to invent better travel packs. Laramie peeled off a strip of meat and attempted to chew it into submission. For the number of times she vowed that while sitting on a tarp somewhere on the side of the road, she still hadn’t done it.
Maybe because she couldn’t figure out how to bottle the taste of chicken roasted over an open flame. The scent of corn and potatoes steaming in their wrappings among the coals. The sweet and spicy tang of the seasoning the Aclar travelers rubbed over anything they ate. The spice brought life to everything except travel packs.
She sighed, brushing dirt from her trousers. The red dirt was everywhere, underlying the finer top layer of grittier sand. It peeked out from the roots of the mesquite bushes and cacti littering either side of the highway. It brazenly draped itself along exposed hillsides, competing with the rough red and gray rock thrusting from the earth to create miniature hills and gorges that broke up the deceptively flat landscape.
The gorges were empty of water, but come a sporadic rainstorm, they’d be filled with life-giving runoff to turn the red and gray and brown into a lush green landscape teeming with the life that usually hid away from the sun.
She leaned against the rough wall of the derelict tower perched atop one of the rocky hillsides overlooking the highway. The smooth, keyless door hadn’t yielded to her touch. They never did, though she always like to try. They were sealed by the magic that had fled over three hundred years ago when the Rifts mysteriously opened up across every continent. Maybe she didn’t have the right kind of magic.
With magic draining from the land and the people, the towers had been left to ruin. They stood like silent sentinels, slowly crumbling in on themselves as if in despair that only hints of magic remained, lurking as spots of colors in someone’s eyes. Reminders of the civilization which had fallen to ruin when the magic left.
Laramie pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head. The bits of blue in her gray eyes were only enough to instill in her a knack for machinery and building—a gift left over from her Itan ancestors who were once the greatest architects and inventors before the Rifts.
Thunderclouds loomed to the northwest—lumbering gray giants huddled over the distant hills. They likely wouldn’t make it as far as her little campsite, but she’d still cover everything with the waterproof tarp.
Lightning flickered, illuminating the edges of the clouds piling atop each other. Another strike spiked the ground. If anyone was lucky enough to live over there with a harnesser, they’d have a good harvest. If the machines were calibrated correctly, they could get a month’s worth of energy off one or two strikes.
She’d read once the towers had been fueled by lightning, powering telescopes or boosting the magic of the Natuxian tower workers who once held mastery over the elements. Now, generations later, all that was left was the memory of how to catch the lightning as an additional power supply to oil and gasoline.
She shoved the rest of the bland meal back into the wrapper and stuffed it back into the saddlebags, exchanging it for a stiff leather tube. She carefully slid out a canister the length of her forearm. The contents flickered with bright white light—contained lightning she’d been able to siphon off from a harnesser.
Enough charge to last for a long ride. She returned it to the tube. It would attach to the engine in a specially modified space she’d made for it. The lightning could take over powering the engine, giving her an extra boost of speed without sacrificing the fuel that was already running low. She’d attach it and then refill the tank and spare gas can in town tomorrow before making her first big push west.
Rosche’s borders lay half a day’s ride away. His territory was big enough she might be able to sneak her way through. The town she’d passed through that morning said his gangs were always riding around, through the gas station attendant had put the numbers in the thousands.
She didn’t care who Rosche was, there was no way he was supporting thousands of men. His territory wasn’t that big.
Hundreds maybe, and even those numbers still gave her good enough odds of avoiding them on empty roads. She returned the canister to its place and laid out her knives and pistol on the tarp to clean.
Am I really going to do this? It was a risky move, going straight through known gang territory. And if he’d taken out the Tlengin, running into any of his riders would be bad news. Her knife scraped over the whetstone with a comforting rasp. The twin blades had seen her through plenty of trouble. And her pistol had gotten her through the rest.
She paused a moment, tapping the blade against her boot. It would be a long day’s ride to the other side. One long day, or a week going around. She blamed the itch in her feet for the whispers saying she should risk it. That it had been too long since she’d ridden on pure adrenaline.
Ade would kill me. The traveler woman had raised her, taught her to ride. Lekan had taught her to fight, and Temi how to coax machines to do her will. And Kayin? Kayin had stolen her heart from the moment he’d backed her in a race without question.
Kayin would be right beside me. A smile toyed at her mouth. It had been too many weeks since she’d seen him. Kissed him under the wide sky. Wrapped her arms around him as they swayed to the music of the guitars around the open campfires.
The only reason he wasn’t there was the traveler family needed him. I don’t deserve how he waits for me to come back over and over. She always swore that one of these days she’d settle back in with the travelers, but the drifter itch couldn’t be stilled even with their migratory lifestyle.
But—her gaze fell to the west where the setting sun had flung purples, flaming reds, and yellows against the sky and turned the storm clouds a deeper gray—she had a feeling that whatever she was looking for might be across those mountains. She sheathed the knife with a snap. Her heart whispered that every time, and she’d yet to find it. Maybe I’m just doomed to wander forever, searching for... whatever it is I’m looking for.
“Or maybe, I’m just being melodramatic,” she told the scrub brush huddled close to the ground.
It didn’t answer, but a deep coughing roar came from somewhere over the hills already covered in deep shadow. Her hand fell to her pistol. It sounded like a jacklion, and knives wouldn’t do much good against the large tawny beasts.
Laramie pushed to her feet, turning a slow sweep around her campsite, looking for any telltale shadow of a stalking predator. The solitary creatures were common enough out in the wilds between towns. She’d scared more than one off with a shot at their paws. For all their claws and teeth, they were skittish and easily intimidated.
Nothing stirred. Keeping the gun in one hand, she dug into her saddlebag again, pulling out a slender canister she hung off the handlebars. A flip of the switch sent a fluorescent light popping and snapping before it steadied. The near-soundless frequency it emitted would keep any neighboring jacklion away.
Still, she stayed standing, gun at the ready for another ten minutes, making sure the creature hadn’t decided to make its way over. Finally satisfied, she knelt back down, flipping out her bedroll. Her weapons stayed close as always. She’d woken up face to face with a red-scaled viper one time too many to make that mistake again.
Stars stretched out for miles above her, unhindered by artificial lights like some of the larger cities around whose outskirts the travelers would sometimes camp. She always got restless if she couldn’t see the full sky.
Sleep took a little longer to claim her due to the possibility of a jacklion still out beyond the hills. But the coughing grumble never came again, and the gentle noises of the nocturnal scavengers and the overhead rustle of the occasional nighthawk continued uninterrupted. Eventually she shut her eyes and tucked deeper into her bedroll to drown out even those noises and fell asleep.
