“My Lord.”

Slade wondered how she knew he was awake.  Somehow she knew, even sometimes before he did.  He responded.

“Mmm?”

“He’s gone.”

That took a moment.  He searched his foggy mind for who “he” might be, then found a match.

“Of course Joe’s gone.  He went to get our blanket and such from Mlambo’s bunker.”

“No, my lord, I mean, he’s gone.  He’s not out there anymore.”

Again Slade had to wake up a bit more to make sense of that, but of course Shella could feel Joe with her scriff sense, if she relaxed and tried to feel who was out there, so she must have done that.

He sat abruptly.

“Gone.”  It was more a confirmation than a question, as he closed his eyes, relaxed, and tried to feel what was out there.  There was a clear vector to the gear they had left in the bunker, but there was no other person out there.

“Well, this certainly changes things.  I trust we can do without those things at least for a while; we’re not getting them back in this life--unless you want to go back and steal them.”

“Whatever my lord thinks best.”

“Yeah, well, your lord thinks best with food in his stomach.  Let’s see to some breakfast, and we can think about it from there.”  He began pulling his boots on; he had slept in his leathers, but knew better than to wear sweaty socks to sleep.  “I guess Joe was wrong.”

“How is that, my lord?”

“Apparently sometimes it does work that way.  It seemed a good time for him to verse out, and he’s gone.  The question is, are we next, or is there something else for us to do here?”

There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with twenty other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #243:  Verser Redirects.  Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter.  It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.

As to the old stories that have long been here:

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