Alanna looked out on the grass-covered plain. It was high summer, and with the exception of the green splotches of tree-tops that popped up along the banks of the small river as it bisected the tableau north to south, the only colors she saw were the blue of the sky and the golden brown of the prairie grass.
She turned slowly as she scanned the horizon, wondering how far she would have to walk to get to the largest group of trees she could see. Judging the height of the small rise she stood on to be 3 meters above the mean level of the terrain and knowing that her eye-level height was 1.45 meters, she estimated the horizon to be a little over 5 kilometers away. If the tallest of the trees were 12 meters, then she had a 13k walk ahead of her, at the least.
There were no visible paths ahead of her, manmade or animal. She wondered how long it had been since a creature of any sort had stood where she stood, or had gazed out on the distant western horizon.
With a shrug she bent down and picked up her rucksack, slinging it across her left shoulder in one well-practiced motion. She started toward the most prominent of the green splotches in her field of view at a brisk pace, the tall grass brushing her legs just above the knees.
She poked and jabbed with her hiking staff at the ground in front of her as she walked, both to give any small animals that might be in her path a chance to scurry away and also to ensure she didn't step into any unseen holes or ruts, especially not into a possible animal den. Experience was a mother of a teacher for that one.
Alanna had been working her way west/southwest since the last week of May, and knew she had been extremely fortunate not to have encountered many difficulties. There were still a number of maintained roads in the east, even though there were no longer any motorized vehicles. Various human-powered vehicles did use them, and though most settlements only numbered 1,000 or fewer inhabitants, the people who lived in or around them seemed to take an immense amount of pride in keeping the roads serviceable.
Everyday she had been training for her mission she had been told what to expect along the way. For over a year she had been taught how to find fresh water sources, how to hunt small game, which plants were edible, and how to doctor any injuries she might suffer.
Of course, great emphasis had been placed on how to deal with the dreaded Bandits that roamed the open prairie, the most oft-repeated advice being "Avoid them if at all possible".
The Bandits were legendary, but not mythical. They did exist, and like everyone else in the community she had been reared in she had been told stories, some plausible, some not so much. For the most part she regarded the stories as fairytales, meant to impart lessons or serve as instructional parables but with very little basis in reality.
For the first few days that she was on the road she had recounted to herself the Bandit stories she had been told, mostly out of boredom but also to help her prepare for the eventuality of encountering them. She was determined to complete her mission within the allotted time frame, and being slowed down or incapacitated by Bandits was not something she wanted to deal with.
Now, months after she got underway, her daily thoughts rarely focused on anything other than finding food and shelter. The food and shelter that was almost always readily available at the smaller villages that she had visited during the first few weeks of her westward trek had dissipated after she had crossed the small range of mountains that divided civilization from the wild.
The mission she was on was the same mission that 134 others before her had undertaken. Find out if there were others out there or if the settlements of the east were all that was left.
Alanna knew that of the 134 others that had gone before her, only two had ever returned, and those two had not entirely completed the mission. Both of them had turned back after facing what they had determined to be insurmountable obstacles - Seline the 73rd who turned back after encountering endless months and miles of continuous snowstorms, and Lynn the 102nd who showed up two years after she had left with a one-year old she said was the result of a Bandit encounter.
The sun was blazing in the cloudless sky as Alanna trod on. She was now 9 kilometers further southwest than when she started and it was time for a rest. She was looking about for something she might be able to sit on when something caught her attention.
She was suddenly acutely aware of her entire surroundings - every noise, every movement, even the slightest differences in the smells around her. Most of all though, her vision was focused keenly on what she saw in the distance ahead of her.
A slim column of smoke that was coming from a campfire.
No comments:
Post a Comment