The Mardij and Rathey Excerpt

A Generous Portion of the Isthavalon Triad

The truck was definitely not a place to call home. This old converted semi smelled and the shocks were nonexistent. Mardij stood up from an old ratty mattress that did nothing to protect her back from the hard bouncy floor and she went to the “kitchen.” Fender was doing dishes with a dead bird and a scrap of paper at her feet. It’s so good to be alive and awake in the morning.

“Morning Fender, you feel the desperate need to kill things so early?”

“If you don’t watch out Mardij, it’ll be you and that flying midget.”

Mardij went and sat down at the dented steel table that had to be bolted to the floor. She put her head down and felt it as her head banged on the table with every bump.

“So where’d the bird come from anyway?” She asked this with a yawn and was about to go back to sleep when, “Your friend Sayo found some new friends and sent us a thought note. Being thought illiterate it’s only obvious to assume that Rathey tracked us.”

“How do you know it’s a thought note? And doesn’t it sound like you’re calling her retarded? ‘Thought illiterate.’ Grief.”

“She can’t write being illiterate illiterate and if she could she wouldn’t send me anything about enjoying that slave train though I know that’s what she wanted. She didn’t care much for me. So read it aloud to me so I can see if it is a thought note. It should be different for you if it was.”

Mardij picked up the note and the bird by the knife that was stuck in it and threw the bird in the trash.