Traveling the Lost Road by Aaron Lee Yeager
Author:Aaron Lee Yeager [Yeager, Aaron Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-02-13T22:00:00+00:00
Chapter Seven
Marinette started awake, her cheek resting in the mud. The river waters felt louder than before, and it took a minute to get her bearings. Storm clouds were moving in by the time she found her way back to camp. An advancing grey army of lightning and storm that fit her mood perfectly.
She said little to Beau as they broke camp. To her surprise, she found her tent and communications tower had been smashed to pieces during the night. It felt a little out of character for him to do something like that, but in truth she was glad to see it that way. Talking to her father had put her in a foul mood, and all the painful memories she thought sheâd moved past reared their ugly faces yet again. They taunted her at the edge of her mind, wordless, nagging voices with venomous messages. Broken scabs that oozed shame.
She barely paid attention as they hiked through the jungles. Her feel moved mechanically, following Beau as he worked his way between gullies of slick singing rocks, navigated through labyrinths of razor-sharp briars made of glass, and tip-toed across natural bridges of fallen armored trees. He seemed so at home here, so right. So at peace with himself and the universe. Meanwhile, she could not recall ever feeling like such a fraud.
Beau glanced upwards at the approaching clouds. The air was growing colder, with an acrid taste to the wind. âWe best be getting to a cave or something. The rain here can be pretty harsh.â
âIf itâs all the same to you, Iâd rather keep going,â she answered. âIâve always liked walking in the rain.â
âThatâs a fine way to get sick or break a foot.â
She snickered. âYeah, but I like it.â
He shrugged and flipped up his collar. When the first rains began to fall, she felt relieved. Without her hologram projector, she was unable to fashion an umbrella to keep the downpour off of her, and while her clothes were quite stylish, they really did very little to protect her from the elements.
âIâve always liked walking in the rain. Itâs a bad habit I picked up as a kid. Iâd get sick every time, but Iâd do it all the same. One time, I even got full-blown pneumonia. My parents didnât know what to do with me. Every time it would rain Iâd go and sneak off. Finally, they even wrote a special aversion subroutine and uploaded it directly into my brain.â
âI bet you hacked it.â
She nodded. âIt was the first hack I ever learned how to do. Kind of a strange thing, removing programs from your own brain. And now, here I am all grown up, and nothing has changed. My parents are still hiding things inside my head, and Iâm still the same frightened child Iâve always been. Stupidly defiant, needlessly abrasive, unapologetically self-destructive.â
Beau took off his pack and pulled out a map to check it. He watched Marinette as she leaned back against a glowing tree trunk and closed her eyes, letting the rain hit her face and trail across her cheeks.
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