Nano Day 7 - No title as of yet...

[joegoda]

For my Sis, who reads stuff, and those like her.



Driving early morning is one of my favorite things. It's quiet, the traffic is light, and everyone that is going to work is either getting ready to go or has already gotten there. Granted, this was a new road for me, and driving up I-25 had its own challenges and a whole different personality.

Angelina had thoughtfully picked up some scrambled eggs and sausage to go from the cafe before we left. That was fine with me, because the sooner this was over, the better I'd be. Still, the fact that she had gone out her way to get me breakfast did touch me. I didn't quite believe her when she said she had slept. Somehow, I got the feeling she stayed up the entire night, watching over me. Of course, that could be wishful thinking, and that is something I really don't like.

Not that there's a thing wrong with wishful thinking. It's just that like most wishes, wishful thinking is like a soap bubble in the wind floating on the land of dreams. It amounts to nothing more than disappointment and unhappiness. I prefer to be fairly grounded in reality, no matter how unpredictable it is.

I drove at a steady sixty miles an hour. Angelina was glancing over at me, every so often, I guess to check to see if I was going to talk about last night. The scenery that was passing by was beautiful, and all I was reminded of was how much I just wanted to take a trip, take my time, and enjoy it all the way.

"I'm sorry I'm so much trouble, Chester." Angelina's face was drawn and concerned.

"Yeah?" I said. "Thanks for that, Angelina. I appreciate it. At least it hasn't been boring." That part was true.

"You know, once we find Daniel and Matthew, they can take me the rest of the way to Oregon."

"I was thinking something along those lines," I answered her, nodding. "You'd be more comfortable with them, anyway, I'm sure."

"I am not so sure of that," she said. "I was watching you last night while you were doing... whatever you were doing."

"What?" I asked. "Scaring those punks away?"

"No, but that is something I want to ask you about." She rubbed her temple with the corner of the plastic fork she was eating her eggs with. "How did you do that?"

"Old man's reasoning," I said as I concentrated on passing a slow moving dump truck. "I just explained the situation to them, and they saw it my way."

The road was fairly straight, and moving in a Northwestern direction. The sun was behind me, and the air was a crystal blue with small clouds hanging in it. Traffic wasn't as light as it had been at seven. In fact, it was pretty crowded for an Interstate.

In Colorado, people will drive fifty or seventy miles, one way, just to go to work. You go to where the work is and sometimes work is nowhere near where you live. I know. I lived on the West side of the Rockies for a bit, in a little town called Mancos. Lovely little place, and I would have stayed there if not for some stupid decisions I made. I drove from Mancos to Cortez every day, five days a week, and back again. It was a forty mile drive every day. It's what you do to survive.

Though there was a lot of traffic, I was determined to take my time. I was going to enjoy this trip, crazy magic crap or not. I reached down to my ever present travel mug and swallowed coffee, hot and black. I pulled a cigarette from my pack and lit up. It had been along time since my last one, and after the nights activities, I figure I deserved it.

Smoking is a nasty thing. It is. It clouds your lungs, makes your clothes and hair and world smell like sour something or other. It is one of the things that, had I known about it when I was twenty-two, I would never have picked it up. It does not look cool. It's not even attractive in any sense of the word. It is addictive, period. When non-smoking technics and medicines become free, then I'll give it up. Or, I may just get bored with it. I've come close a couple of times.

Now that I do smoke, I find it helps me focus, it keeps me alert and gives my hands something to do besides tremble or twiddle. I do tend to not smoke around non-smokers, just because I believe it's the polite thing to do. There are times, however, when it's something that I just need to do. That day was definitely one of them.

We had just passed Walsenburg, and was about an hour out of Trinidad. I tossed my net and found Daniels signature, still up ahead. I mentioned this to Angelina, who nodded.

"No, Chester, I want to know what you did to them," she said. "Those men, those boys, they were not nice people and they could very easily have killed you." She pursed her thin lips. "And then they would have killed me. Why didn't you let the clerk call the police."

I sighed. It's amazing the faith some people have in bureaucracy. The most I've every seen bureaucracy do is screw things up to the point they have to create a law to make some sort of sense they created in the first place. The best I've ever seen bureaucracy do is leave well enough alone.

"Angelina, police can cause more trouble than they stop, most of the time. If Charlie had called the police, there would have been questions, and questions, and then we would have had to go to the police station to sign a statement." I glanced at her, saw her listening intently, as if I had anything intelligent to say.

"You saw the state I was in," I explained patiently. "Cops might have thought I was stoned or drunnk and locked me up till morning. They might have wondered who you were, and kept you overnight as a 'suspicious person'. There's no telling what might have happened. It was best that it turned out the way it did."

"Did you kill that one? The big one?"

The question surprised me. In fact, it surprised me greatly. I've been in a lot of situations where I had been pissed off enough to kill, but I never did. I've even said the phrase a couple of times, but only when I was alone.

There's a story there. When I was a small boy, my brother, I forget which one, did something that irritated me to the point I told him I was going to kill him. My father over heard me saying that and knocked me onto the ground. That was enough, because my father was a gentle man. He was the sort of person who believed that if a situation couldn't be solved by discussion, then a situation couldn't be solved and it should be walked away from.

I lay on the ground, and my father, gentle man that he was, yelled at me that if I ever said that to another person, I had better be prepared to back it up. He made me promise, then and there, that I would only say what I meant, and mean what I said. I promised him and went to our bedroom, crying. To this day, I mean what I say, and say what I mean. I'm not always good to my word, I mean, sometime life does get in the way, but I try my best to keep my promise.

I miss my father, a lot. Cancer took him, too, and there wasn't anything I could do to save him. He was a powerful person, moving through the world with grace and ease, loved by just about everyone that ever met him. He divorced my mother when her illness almost took his sanity. He remarried a woman that brought him happiness, but also brought him the stress that eventually took him. Most of what I am I got from him. My sense of duty, my sense of honor, my sense of doing the right thing.

That sense of doing the right thing also came from my mother. She was the one who the phrase "When she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad..." was coined. Sober, she was quite possibly the best mother I could have hoped for. Den mother, supportive, making cookies and cakes and bragging about how her boys were the smartest and being that sort of angelic mother that all the kids envied and wanted to be around. She gave me my sense of humor, my sense of morality, though I don't admit to having any, and my sense that people, regardless of who they were, deserved to be treated in a fair and just manner.

When she wasn't sober, she tried to kill all of us at one time or another. No, this isn't an exaggeration. And no, I won't go into detail about it. The past is the past and I prefer to carry the lessons I learned, and simply bear the scars inflicted from the crazy times. It's stupid to blame your parents for things that you, as an adult, choose to do.

Post traumatic stress disorder? There's not a person that came out of a womb that doesn't have it, so please... don't come telling me you have PTSD unless you were in a horrible accident, severely abused, and I mean severe, or a war. Other than that, learn to live and move on. We've gotten to be a world of victims, and it really disgusts me.

Okay, enough of my whining about how stupid people are, enough of me. Angelina had asked me if I intended to kill Skippy or whatever his name was. Slick. That was it. I Doubt if it was his real name, anyway.

"It never crossed my mind to kill him, Angelina," I said honestly. "I used an old trick that I knew to convince him and his buddy that we were not going to be easy prey. Bullies like that all follow the same rules. They always attack the weak, or who they perceive to be weak."

A car up ahead had pulled over to the shoulder. It limped along a bit further, and I could tell that they had a flat tire.

"There are only two ways to handle bullies," I continued. "You either have to never appear a victim, or you have to convince them that you are not going to go down easy. Either way, they will tend to leave you alone and go in search of other victims."

We passed the car with the flat tire, and I looked over at it. The driver was a man, about my age, in a fairly new car. He was talking on his cell phone, probably calling Triple A. I apologized to him as we passed, and Angelina asked why I did.

"Because for everyone that I pass that has car trouble," I explained, "I'm guaranteed to not have that sort of trouble. That poor guy has a flat tire, which means that I won't have one."

"That sounds a lot like superstition to me," she said. She had finished her breakfast long ago, and had leaned the passenger seat back, relaxing.

"Not exactly superstition, I don't think," I countered. "I've been driving enough to see signs, patterns of events. It's just that I've noticed that as long as I pass someone that has broken down, I never do."

"Couldn't it be that you just take good care of your vehicle?"

"It might be, if I did. I don't. I tend to forget or neglect or just simply can't afford it." I didn't tell her that I could see the lines of force that connected me to whoever was having the trouble, and I could see the exchange of energy that played there. I don't think it's something I do. It could be, though, subconsciously.

"I wonder what Daniel is driving?" I said, changing the subject. My net told me he was still up ahead. Maybe we would catch him in Colorado city, which was coming up in another twenty or so miles. Maybe we would catch him in Pueblo. Regardless, I couldn't count on him to find us. We had to find him.

I sniffed someone searching for us. Every time I tossed my net out to find Daniel, I got the barest whiff of a broadband search. It feels like a tingle at the back of the neck, but not quite. I really don't know how to describe it other than to say that it's a sense of justifiable paranoia given shape. I just know when it's happening, and I just know when it isn't.

"I think the bad guys are following, or maybe up head too," I told her. Her face crossed with the look of concern and worry. "You feel like telling me why you're being chased?"

"Not yet," she answered me. "Maybe soon, but not yet."

"It's not drugs is it?" I wondered aloud. "You're not on the run from some drug smuggler or something like that?"

"No, Chester." She looked at me with a look of disgust. "It's not a drug smuggler or anyone like that."

She was quiet for a few miles and then said, "There is a war between two very old families. It has been going on now for decades, perhaps even centuries. They have never given an inch one way or the other, and they have never sat down and tried to settle their differences. It is a situation where neither family will win, and both families will suffer." She didn't say anyting more.

"Sounds like Romeo and Juliet to me," I said.

A look of surprise crossed her face. "Yes," she said. "Very much like Romeo and Juliet."

I love puzzles. It's something I do well. "So, you are the Juliet to a Romeo with the other family?"

"Yes, you could say that," she said without giving anything away. "Both of these families are very, very powerful. Not only in money, but also in..." she searched for the words, "things like what you did last night."

"All I did last night was go looking for something, and for my trouble I ended up in deeper trouble." Now I had folks looking for me, and that is something I really don't like. I prefer my life to be quiet.

"That's why I was going to ask you what you did." She settled back into the seat and crossed her arms around her. "I can't do anything like that. What did you do? Astral Projection?"

"No, I can't send my own image to other people." I looked ahead and saw a small red car pull over to the shoulder. It didn't feel quite right. "I just opened a different sort of sight and looked around to see if I could find Daniel." We passed the red car and I kept my eye in the rear view mirror. After a few other cars had passed it, I saw it pull back into traffic. Things like that make me nervous.

"I call it kite flying, because that's the image I use when I do it." I sped up a bit, pulled around a semi and a station wagon with a happy family in it. "I ride the string up to where the kite is and then I take a look around." I glanced at Angelina. "It's rather hard to describe. It's not an easy thing to do... No, it's an easy thing to do, but the effects are a bit hard on me."

"So I noticed," she said. "You keep looking in the mirror. Are we being followed?"

"Maybe." I didn't see the red car, but I could feel someone close by. "So, these two families are powerful in..." I prompted her, trying to change the subject.

"They are powerful in many things," she said. Her face had gotten that worried look again. She raised the seat back up and looked behind us. "They can conjure, and cast illusions. Some of them do spells and can cause harm from a distance. Some of them have other abilities. I don't know all of them." She turned back to look at me. "I don't see anyone."

"Well, neither do I," I said. "But that red car we passed a while ago? It didn't feel right, so I'm keeping an eye out for them."

"Why don't you just do what you did last night?" she asked. "Fly a kite?"

"Because if I did it now, we'd crash," I explained. "Doing things like that are dangerous, Angelina. When I'm there, I don't know what's going on here. And, as you saw, it's very, very tiring." I pulled into the passing lane for no good reason, and sure enough, the red car was there, just out of sight next to the semi, keeping pace. "Damn. Still there." I sped up.

"Besides, when I go out there, it increases the chance that someone looking for you will see me looking. Last night, I felt them, whoever they were. They were looking for you and they felt me looking for Daniel. They don't know who I am, but they know I'm with you. They weren't Daniel and Matthew. They were someone else, and they were not nice."

"But... they wouldn't harm me!" she protested. "I told you, they aren't bad people, just people that think what they are doing is right?"

"And what would that be?" I asked. "They want to stop you from getting back home, right?"

"Well, yes, but..."

"And they would do whatever the felt would stop you?"

"I suppose."

"How badly do they want to stop you from getting home?"

"They believe that if I get back home, it would end the war. I'm... a courier, of sorts."

"How in the hell would this centuries old war stop just because you made it back to your family?" This whole war thing was just about to drive me nuts. It just sounded stupid. Once I found Daniel, I was turning her crazy butt over to him and heading back home. After I visited the Vortex.

"I carry something," she said, "that would make them have to sit down and talk. Something neither of them can ignore."

"What?" I asked. "Are you pregnant or something?"

She didn't answer. She just stared out the window, watching the scenery.

I sighed, big time. I hate it when I'm right. "Jesus H jumping Christ on the Cross eating a bran muffin! You're pregnant?" No answer. "You are!" I said I slapped the steering wheel, hard. "And you think this will stop the war?"

Oldest story in the book. Woman wants to bring families together, so she gets pregnant by the enemies Romeo, thinking that nobody in their right mind would hurt a woman with child.

Well, there are lots of people not in their right mind, sweetheart.

I found myself clenching my jaw, a sure sign that I'm in a spot that I don't want to be. "Listen, Angelina, there are a lot of crazy people out there. If that other family, the one that isn't yours, hired someone to stop you and did not say 'Please don't kill her', do you think that would keep you safe? Do you think that the other family would even care if you lived or died, if it kept them in a position of power?"

I heard a sniff. Looking out at her from the corner of my eye, I saw her wipe her nose on the sleeve of her sweater. Dammit, she was crying.

I sighed. "Okay, look. Maybe you're right. Maybe nobody would hurt you, or the baby. Maybe you'll make it back and the world will be a happy place." I knew this wouldn't make the situation any better, but it was something that I had to say. "But I can't take that chance. See, I'm with you. That means that if, and I'm only saying if, they decide you don't need to live, it won't take them very long to decide that I don't need to live either."

She still didn't answer me. She just sat in the seat, sniffing, looking out the window.

Cursing, I pulled out into the passing lane. Red car was still there, just a few cars back. This just sucked. If they were just following me, and not doing anything aggressive, that meant that they were keeping track of me and whoever it was I really didn't want to meet was somewhere up ahead, and that didn't take any sort of magic to figure out at all.

We were nearing Apache City, just a few miles short of Colorado City. Since the red car was holding back, they probably figured I was just going to go straight up I-25, hook up with I-85 at Cheyenne, Wyoming and go West to Oregon.

Of course, now that I've seen them, they have probably seen me and they'll be looking for me to do some sort of tricky maneuver. Not wanting to disappoint them, I did.

I pulled off onto the shoulder and slowed down. The happy family station wagon passed me and I waved, smiling at the children. The semi came abreast of me and I sped up. I looked under the semi, through it's wheels and sure enough, red car was still there, if I recognized the tires correctly. I kept pace with them, on the other side of the semi until the sign for Apache City was directly ahead. When I could read the words very clearly, I put on the brakes and stopped the van. The semi and red car and all passed by me. If I was lucky, red car wouldn't notice that I had left the wagon train until they were at least in Colorado City.

"What are you doing?" Angelina asked, a look of surprise on her face.

"Trying to lose the competition." I waited until the semi was about a mile ahead then looked for a clear section of traffic. When the opening in the traffic happened, I turned the wheel, bounced across the lane of traffic and took County Road 670, through Apache City. I had no idea where I was going, but that's okay. I don't mind being lost, as long as I know where I'm at. I checked the rear view mirror every few seconds and didn't see any sign of red car or anyone else following us. Heck, maybe red car will go all the way to Cheyenne before they notice we're not there.

A sign, which had been shot with buckshot until you could see the field behind it, said 'Greenhorn, 3 miles.' which was just fine with me. At this point I felt like a greenhorn, lost in the wilderness and looking for a way out.

I looked over at Angelina. "How many days did you say you had to get back to your family?"

Wide eyed, Angelina looked out the front window. "Three days. In three days if I'm not home, my family will think I'm not coming back. They will shun me and launch an attack on the other family." She turned to look at me. "The attack will be magical, but it won't stop there. They won't stop until they have wiped out every last one of the other family."

"How do you know that?" I asked. "You haven't been back for how long and you know this? And what is this shunning? What is your family? A sect of demonic Amish?"

"I know because they told me. They sent a raven to tell me that if I didn't come back, they would consider me dead, and they would hold the other family personally responsible."

"Wait," I said. "I thought you didn't have any of this magic stuff."

She shrugged. "I have a little."

"Well, ain't you just full of surprises," I said sourly. "Hold on," I told her.

I turned the wheel sharply to the left and cut across traffic again, this time getting flipped off by a little old lady in a Mercedes. At least I think it was a Mercedes. I don't pay much attention to these things.

I turned down 264 in the town of Greenhorn. The town didn't start there, but the sign I read said it did. I had no idea where I was going, but I knew that the more turns I took, the harder I would be to find. Besides, the ocean was to the left, and Oregon was somewhere near the ocean, right? Keep heading West, and I was bound to get there.

One of the things about not being found is the ability to not be where people are looking. I was very good at hide and seek. Well, okay, I was good at the hide part. I was fair to middling at the seek thing, until I discovered my kite flying trick.

I was told, long ago by someone that I trusted, that I have a natural shield to me. That she could never tell where I was or even if I was. In other words, though I could feel someone looking for me, if I didn't want to be found, I wouldn't be, at least by anyone that had the ability to far-seek. Even if they have my spiritual signature, I just don't show up unless I'm also thinking about them or have opened myself up to them. Right then I wasn't open to anyone.

Comments

[tapestry01.livejournal.com]

Excellent!

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Why thank you, Mister Tim! Today is Municipal Liaisons Appreciation Day!! Yay you! Thanks for being there, Tim. You are one of my biggest inspirations.

[capi.livejournal.com]

*wheeeee*

More! MORE!!

Dang, you're cookin'! How many are you going to write this month? *hee*

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Just the one, hon. After a very large outpouring of this sort of stuff, I may not write for months. I don't know where all these words are coming from. I know I didn't think 'em up. Well... maybe I did.

[capi.livejournal.com]

You are WAY ahead of schedule, my friend!

And *rockin'*!!!!