# 7: Wilbur- Ridge Running

..............................................................................................................................................

(later)

Well hell.

He’d been pedaling and Ridge running. He’d seen more game trail ends than he ever wanted to see again. Every trail he’d been down had ended in rushing water, except this one. The water at the end of this trail was calm and peaceful and stretched for as far as he could see. Which admittedly wasn’t very far in the fog but he didn’t recall a lake being here before, not according to his GPS.

He transformed his two wheeler into a boat, and set up camp. When in boat configuration it made a fine tent. He made a meal, spent a battery’s worth of time on the Internet and when the battery died, went to sleep.

Only to wake up a few hours later, adrift. Lucky for him that he’d stowed everything, cause the camp was just gone. The water had risen while he was asleep and he’d drifted awaaaaay.

Bummer.

.......................

The ratio was eight for one. If he pedaled eight hours he charged his smart phone enough for one hour of Internet. He was disappointed. The advertising had claimed more.

Disconnecting his paddle wheel from the charger didn’t seem hardly worth the effort so while he charged his cell phone he, of necessity, moved around. Fine by him. He was getting hungry and really, really, tired of fish. He made sure that a retractable lanyard connected his shoulder holster to his pistol. If he dropped the gun for some reason he wouldn’t loose it. He drew the gun. He was hunting, bird.

If he saw any dry (enough) land with a wabbit on it that would work too, or snake, or coyote or deer, what EVER. Anything that wasn’t fish.

He saw a clump of brush sticking up out of the water and peddled that way. If he peddled slow enough the paddle wheel was fairly quiet. He saw something flutter. Was it a bird?

“What’s up?” the voice of a little kid asked him. He couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl at that age. It seemed to be behind him. Oh. Well. There went the chance of sneaking up on a bird. Hell he’d probably miss it anyway. He wasn’t the world’s best pistol shot. He carried the gun mostly for self defense.

“Well...” he said “I was planning on shooting a bird for breakfast. I guess that idea won’t work will it?”

“Nope” the voice of the youngster said. “ If you shoot that clump of drift wood you might annoy the ArchMage. He might not like that.”

“The ArchMage?” Wilbur decided that with all the talking anything nearby would have pulled up stakes and left. He safed his pistol and holstered it, making sure the flap was closed and the lanyard was in place. “Who might be the ArchMage?”

“Him” the child’s voice said

The clump of drift wood lifted out of the water and fell away. The eye pod that it had been concealing rose into view, turned and looked closely at Wilbur.

Wilbur looked at the eye pod and the eye pod looked back.

Up close and personal it looked more like the windshield of an airplane or a boat than it did an eye.. Behind the glass Wilbur could see a figure waving at him.

“OH! “ Wilbur said. He waved back. “THAT ArchMage. Eye SEE!”

Laughter

Wilbur could hear laughter from somewhere.

........................
The Next Episode will be
# 8: Looks Like We Have Live One…
The Previous Episode was
# 6: Wilbur - Bad News…
The First Episode was
# 1 : Prologue…
..............
Book One: SoulStone
..................................................
I'm

@everittdmickey
.
I write
SPECULATIVE FICTION
My books on Amazon.
I engage in political commentary
and
generally talk about anything that strikes my fancy
on
Steemit
and
Sola

When watching the LameStream FakeNews Media

it's hard to tell what’s true or when they are lying isn’t it? It seems that they are more interested in influencing public opinion than they are reporting the facts.