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Stories from the Verse
Con Verse Lea
Chapter 62: Beam 147
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 76
It was agreed that the next stop would be the outlaw caves, where Beam and Ashleigh, in her guise as Viper, had married. Her father would then stay there, while the others found a way to deliver her mother to him.
It was a long hike, made the longer by three factors, one that they needed to stay mostly out of sight and so couldn’t take main roads for any distance, another that only Warren and Ashleigh actually knew how to find the place or would be welcomed upon arrival, and third that both of them had to change into their outlaw outfits before arriving--outfits which they kept hidden in different locations in the wilderness.
Still, they traveled together until mid-afternoon, at which point Warren was going to separate from them, and they would go with Ashleigh. Part of that was because Beam and his people had already been to the grove in which she kept her outlaw gear, while Warren was still keeping his hiding place secret. The other part was that they could save some time by not having everyone go both places. Beam had some concern about letting Warren go alone, but couldn’t really spare anyone who would make a difference to that and wouldn’t be a burden to him. Besides, he was more concerned about Ashleigh. However, before they separated, Beam delved into his backpack and dug out a few gems. Selecting one, he handed it to Warren.
“Hold on to this for me,” he instructed. “If necessary, I can find that stone, and that means I can find you as long as you have it.”
“Is this magic?” Warren asked.
“Not exactly, but I don’t know that I can explain it. I don’t even understand it myself. It’s just that part of what makes us what we are includes that we can feel the direction to anything that belongs to us.”
“I pity the fool who steals from you.”
“Indeed. It’s not a good idea.” Then as an afterthought, he picked another gem and handed it to Ashleigh. “You’d better carry this for me,” he said, “just in case we get separated.”
“Separated?”
“I can feel all of them,” he said, nodding toward the others; “they’ve been with me for a couple worlds. I can’t feel you, yet. I don’t expect to lose you, but if I do, I want to be able to find you again.”
She tucked it in her clothes somewhere, and he had an afterthought.
“Besides, if we get separated and someone kills you, they will almost certainly take that from you, which means I can track them and--well, the details of what I would do to someone who killed you I probably shouldn’t say aloud. Let’s just say that they wouldn’t regret it for long.”
At this point Warren vanished into the trees, and Beam said to Ashleigh, “Let’s go get you dressed for work.”
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 #470: Verser Turnings. 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:
